LGBTQ+ Alum Events
Interested in hosting an event? Want to get involved? Email us at pride@swarthmore.edu.
Upcoming
Alumni WeekenD 2024: Lavender Table Talk
Swarthmore alums who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community (during and post-Swarthmore) conversed about their experiences across generations, sharing stories, networking, and brainstorming ideas about how to connect with and foster community across the wider Swarthmore LGBTQ+ alum network.
To learn more about Alumni Weekend '24 please visit this page: https://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni-weekend-2024
Coming soon: LGBTQ+ Book Group
Please check back for more information. To make your you are on our mailing list, email pride@swarthmore.edu.
Past Events
2023
- Garnet Weekend: Drag Story Hour with Lil Miss Hot Mess '06
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Join Lil Miss Hot Mess '06 for a special Drag Story Hour event in which you'll not only get to listen to fabulous stories, but will be invited to sing and dance along as well, so you can unleash your brightest and boldest self! Lil Miss Hot Mess will read from her children's books If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It (Running Press Kids, 2022) and The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish (Running Press Kids, 2020), plus other favorites that address themes of identity, creativity, and imagination. Stick around after the stories for a brief discussion about the movement behind Drag Story Hour and what audiences learn from drag performers.
Lil Miss Hot Mess (aka Harris Kornstein '06) serves on the board of Drag Story Hour and is the author of the children's books If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It (Running Press Kids, 2022) and The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish (2020). She has appeared on world-class stages like SFMOMA, Stanford University, and Saturday Night Live, and was a founding organizer of the #MyNameIs campaign that challenged Facebook’s “real names” policy. She has published research in academic journals like Curriculum Inquiry as well as essays in The Guardian, Wired, NBC News, Slate, and Salon. When not twirling, she is a professor at the University of Arizona.
- Garnet Weekend: "Paris is Burning" Film Screening
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The Swarthmore LGBTQ+ Alum Network hosted a screening of this award-winning documentary about Ball culture in 1980’s New York City and the African-American, Latinx, gay, and transgender communities involved in it. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” C
- SwatTalk: Gender-affirming Medical Care with Dr. Kellan Baker
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Dr. Kellan E. Baker is the Executive Director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, the research, policy, and education arm of Whitman-Walker, a community health system in Washington, D.C. Kellan is a health services researcher, educator, and health policy professional with wide expertise in health equity research and policy, particularly with regard to sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations.
- Alumni Weekend: Lavender Table Talk
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Swarthmore alums who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community (during and post-Swarthmore) conversed about their experiences across generations, sharing stories, networking, and brainstorming ideas about how to connect with and foster community across the wider Swarthmore LGBTQ+ alum network.
- Alumni Weekend: LGBTQ+ Alum Network Breakfast
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LGBTQ+ alums connected over breakfast, hosted by the LGBTQ+ Alum Network Committee. Families and allies welcome.
2022
- Alumni Weekend: Lavender Table Talk
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Swarthmore alums who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community (during and post-Swarthmore) conversed about their experiences across generations, sharing stories, networking, and brainstorming ideas about how to connect with and foster community across the wider Swarthmore LGBTQ+ alum network.
- Garnet Weekend: Lavender Table Talk
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Swarthmore alums, current students and a few parents of alums who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community conversed about their experiences across generations, sharing stories, networking, and brainstorming ideas about how to connect with and foster community across the wider Swarthmore LGBTQ+ alum network.
2021
- Cafe on the Crum: Performing Gender
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Monday, April 18 on Zoom
8 p.m. ETParticipants enjoyed a powerful theatre performance drawn from All She Has, Anita Castillo-Halvorssen '15's one-woman show, followed by a discussion of the complexities that reproduction of gender has posed in our lived experiences as queer folks.
Anita Castillo-Halvorssen '15 (she/her) is a queer Venezuelan-Norwegian AEA actor, singer, educator, and film editor based in New York City. Originally from Colorado, she recently graduated from Brown University's MFA acting program at Trinity Rep. She is most interested in the lies we tell ourselves and how to eliminate them. Her work investigates the boundless potential of human identity, often by incorporating a wacky, zany sense of play. Currently, you can catch her in Harlem (Amazon Prime), Law & Order (NBC), or commercials for Match.com’s dating app. She’s appeared recently in several of Red Bull Theater's world premiere virtual readings of Spanish Golden Age plays by overlooked women playwrights. NYC stage roles include Grusha in a modern queer adaptation of Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at Artistic New Directions’ Eclectics Festival. Anita has worked as a teaching artist for Rhode Island Latino Arts, Brown University, the Young Actors’ Summer Institute, CUNY Creative Arts Team, the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and Swat! Additional training: British American Drama Academy.
- Cafe on the Crum: Telling a Life in Bricolage
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Thursday, Oct. 28 on Zoom
8 p.m. Eastern | 5 p.m. Pacific
Hosted by Janet Chance '87Participants reflected and refracted on their own experiences, in response to fragments of Shoshana Kerewsky ‘83's memoir.
Shoshana Kerewsky is a psychotherapist and faculty emerita in Oregon. She will publish her mixed-form memoir Cancer, Kintsugi, Camino later this fall. Excerpts have appeared recently in La Concha: American Pilgrims on the Camino Magazine and CURE - Oncology & Cancer News for Patients & Caregivers. She is currently teaching a University of Oregon Honors College class on the psychology of pilgrimage. Her co-authored chapter "Rewrite the Script: A Call for More Queer and Inclusive Couple Enrichment Programs" is in press in Handbook of LGBTQ-Affirmative Couple and Family Therapy (2nd ed.).
- Minding the Love
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Feb. 14 - March 31
Please consider sending fellow LGBTQ+ Alum some love notes this February as many of us observe Valentine’s Day! Share a virtual valentine to a particular alum you want to surprise, or to LGBTQ+ alum all together. padlet.com/SwatAlum/MindingTheLove
- Cafe on the Crum: Telling Stories that Matter
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Tuesday, April 6
8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT
Hosted by Anita Castillo-Halvorssen '15At this gathering, Broadway Producer Joshua Goodman '85 shared his experience bringing stories he values to life on stage. As a group, we reflected on and discussed the movies, plays, books, television, songs, and other precious media that have shaped who we are.
2020
- Curating a Diverse Bookshelf for Kids
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Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020
8 p.m. ESTFind yourself wanting to buy a kid's book by or about LGBTQ+ people and people of color, but have no idea where to begin? Children's book authors Emma Otheguy ’09 and special guest Lil Miss Hot Mess '06 shared resources for discovering new books for readers age 0–12 years and some of their top book recommendations.
This event was hosted by the Swarthmore Alumni of Color and the LGBTQ+ Alum Network, and was open to all alumni who wished to attend.
- Cafe on the Crum: Objects that Mean the World
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Wednesday, Nov. 18
8 p.m. Eastern
Hosted by Janet Chance '87At this gathering, we reflected on and talk about material objects that we treasure: what stories they tell, and why they matter to us. In response to what participants shared, art historian Jeff Ruda '69 provided insights about these objects, discussing how they relate to aesthetic, historical, and/or global trends.
- Cafe on the Crum: Connecting through poetry
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Wednesday, Sept. 30
8 p.m. Eastern
Hosted by Janet Chance '87We read aloud works by Jericho Brown, Joan Larkin, Audre Lorde, and Ocean Vuong; reflect on our own personal stories; and learnED about each other by sharing in small groups.
The first in a series, the LGBTQ+ Alum Network will host arts & culture conversations approximately once every six weeks from September 2020 through August 2021.
2019
- Alumni Weekend
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Members of the LGBTQ+ Alumnx Network hosted a mimosa brunch at Sharples during Alumni Weekend on Sunday, June 2, 2019.
- Swarthmore LGBTQ+ Alum Community Day
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Alums around the globe met in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Tucson, and on a video call to connect during our first worldwide Swarthmore LGBTQ+ Alum Community Day on April 28, 2019.
