Pride Events and Activities

Celebrating 2SLGBTQIA+ authors, books and voices  

Memorial University’s Office of the Vice-Provost, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism invites you to celebrate St. John’s Pride Week 2022 at an in-person and virtual  event celebrating 2SLGBTQIA+ authors, books and voices. Panelists and featured authors from the Memorial community include Daze Jefferies, Xavier Campbell and Bethany Jacobs. The event will be moderated by Santiago Guzman, writer, performer, director and graduate of Grenfell Campus’ Bachelor of Fine Arts program. The event will conclude with an audience Q&A.  

Please note that this is a hybrid event, with the option to participate in-person or online.

 Date & Time:  Thursday, July 21, 12:00 - 1:30 pm

Location: Education Building on the St. John's campus, ED-1014

Participate online: https://mun.webex.com/mun/j.php?RGID=r0483cc083924f2448c0c39114fbfc784

Meet the Authors

Xavier Campbell was  born and raised in Jamaica, and has considered Newfoundland and Labrador home for over a decade. These islands are quite different, but Xaiver feels that living in Jamaica prepared him for life on the Rock. His fiction has been published in The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, and the anthologies, Us, Now by Breakwater Books and Release Any Words Stuck Inside You III by Applebeard Editions. His second play, “One Name” is currently being workshopped by Halifax Theatre for Young People.

Bethany Jacobs is cis-female, Annishanabe, queer, Two-spirit and an ace activist. They have participated in planning the AceCon for the UK throughout the COVID-19 with the confernce being online. They are constantly working on building and sustaining nurturing relations amongst communities which involve their intersectional identities and experiences. They use poetry, song-writing, and academic writing as a way to cope with lived experience and traumas which come from being a queer Indigi student. They  have a passion for trauma-informed practice, and hope to one day be a Trauma Therapist, are planning on starting their own healing and wellness company upon graduation next year, incorporating their social work education with cultural practices, and working from a sociological and gender studies based perspective. Bethany sees art as a practice which can cultivate restorative justice and relational vitality amongst different relations which we have as humans, and believes that through artistry such as writing, people can become more introspective and connected within "All my Relations," and continue in their personal healing journeys to see beauty come within the harsh spaces in life.

Daze Jefferies (she/her) is an artist, writer, and educator born and raised in the Bay of Exploits on the northeast coast of rural Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland. Deeply informed by geographies and histories of trans women (and) sex workers in Atlantic Canada, her research-creation and multidisciplinary projects have been exhibited at Eastern Edge, The Rooms, Unscripted Twillingate, St. Michael’s Printshop, Inverness County Centre for the Arts, and Cape Breton University Art Gallery. Daze is co-author of Autoethnography and Feminist Theory at the Water’s Edge: Unsettled Islands, she has recent publications in Land of Many Shores: Perspectives from a Diverse Newfoundland and Labrador, Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Riddle Fence, HELD, The Dalhousie Review, Arc, and Feral Feminisms. 

Santiago Guzmán (he/him/they) is an award-winning playwright, dramaturge, performer, and director originally from Metepec, Mexico, now based in St. John’s, NL. He is the Artistic Director of TODOS Productions & the Artistic Associate for Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre. Santiago’s work as a writer aims to put local, under-represented narratives and characters on the frontlines, whilst inviting audiences to appreciate the vibrancy of Newfoundland and Labrador from a diverse perspective. Their work has been supported, developed and/or produced by theatre companies and festivals such as TODOS Productions (NL), Resource Centre for the Arts Theatre Company (NL), Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland (NL), Rising Tide Theatre (NL), Neighbourhood Dance Works (NL), Eastern Front Theatre (NS), PARC (pan-Atlantic), Ship's Company Theatre (NS), Theatre New Brunswick (NB), Boca Del Lupo (BC), Paprika Festival (ON), and the National Theatre School of Canada’s Art Apart Program (QC).

Most recently, Santiago’s play Urn received the Senior Dramatic Script Award of the Newfoundland and Labrador 2022 Arts and Letters Awards & was shortlisted for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award 2022. Santiago's work is very gay, very brown, and very real. Representation matters.