Speakers: Nat Raha, Mijke van der Drift, Alejandra Ortiz, and Simon(e) van Saarloos

Date: 7 March 2025, 17:00-19:00hrs
Location: University of Amsterdam, REC A 209.
Register here
Registration deadline: 6 March

'Femme' describes a constellation of queer, gendered expressions that uproot expectations of what it means to be feminine. Building upon experiences of transformation, belonging and harm, Trans Femme Futures (Pluto Press) is a transfeminist call for collective liberation. Trans Femme Futures envisions the future through everyday actions that revolutionise our lives. Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift discuss struggles around trans healthcare, the need for collectives over institutions, the importance of mutual care, and transfeminism as abolition. The authors show how social change can be achieved through transformative practices that allow queer life to thrive in a time of climate, health, political and economic crises.

In the words of Marquis Bey, “When one thinks of trans, feminism, and radical as genuinely, inextricably entangled, one thinks of this book. This is what we need at this moment: a powerful, steadfast commitment to liberation. And this is it.”

In this book launch, authors Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift engage in conversation with writers Simon(e) van Saarloos (author of Against Ageism: A Manifesto) and Alejandra Ortiz (co-founder Papaya Kuir, author of De Waarheid zal Mij Bevrijden) on topics such as radical transformation, mutual aid, transfeminism, and abolition.

Bios:

Mijke van der Drift works on transfeminist and anti-imperial ethics through philosophies of movement, collective action, and counter-cultural production. This work takes the form of writings, performances, and sound pieces, often by way of inter-disciplinary collaborations. Mijke is Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London and co-chair of its Union branch. Mijke is founding member of the arts collective Red Forest. Together with Nat Raha, Mijke co-authored Trans Femme Futures (Pluto 2024). They published in Social Text, with Cambridge University Press, and co-edit the Radical Transfeminism Zine. 

Nat Raha is a poet, and Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at the Glasgow School of Art. Her poetry is of an experimental queer lyric, attending to hirstories of struggle and resistance to racial capitalism, through de/re/materialising sound, form and syntax, on the page and in performance. Her books of poetry include apparitions (nines) and of sirens, body & faultlines. Her performance work, epistolary (on carceral islands) was co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival, Scotland and TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, Ireland, 2023. With Mijke van der Drift, Nat is co-author of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (Pluto Press, 2024), and the article ‘“They would plant the rose garden themselves”: Femmeness, Complicity, Solidarity’, published in Social Text.

Alejandra Ortiz is a published author, researcher, and community builder.  A brown Mexican trans woman with a history of marginalization, violence, and sex work among other intersections. In the Netherlands since 2015, Alejandra devotes her activism to the visibility and empowerment of marginalized communities with projects by organizations and collectives such as TNN,TranScreen Film Festival, Queer Network Alliance, Transgender Europe and her collective; Papaya Kuir. In 2022, her memoirs De waarheid zal me bevrijden was published by Lebowski Publishers. In 2023, she was awarded the Winq Community Award. She was the curator of Queer Currents 2023 and Pride Photo Award 2024 and was named Rising Start of 2024 by Harper's Bazaar Nederland."

Simon(e) van Saarloos is a writer, artist and curator based between Berkeley, California and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They are the author of six books and have contributed to over more than thirty edited volumes, books, and journals. Van Saarloos is the author of Against Ageism. A Queer Manifesto (Emily Carr University Press, 2023); Take ‘Em Down. Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting (Publication Studio 2021) and Playing Monogamy (Publication Studio 2019) as well as several books in Dutch: Herdenken herdacht (Prometheus 2019); Enz. Het Wildersproces (Atlas Contact 2018); the novel De vrouw die (Nijgh & Van Ditmar 2016); the collection of columns Ik deug / deug niet (Nijgh & Van Ditmar 2015) and Het monogame drama (De Bezige Bij 2015).

This is event is made possible through the generous sponsorship of NICA: Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis; Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, and, Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality.