John Cameron Mitchell, the Director of Rabbit Hole, Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch can be found this year in their own podcast, Cancellation Island as well as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman on Netflix.

Lydia Lunch is a poet, singer and self-empowerment speaker.

The Baddest Bitch In the Room. While it’s easy enough to explain the title of Sophia Chang’s award-winning book, unless you’re deep in the know it’s harder to figure out how and why she took on this identity. A quick call to the RZA, or the GZA, or A Tribe Called Quest, or Raphael Saadiq would clear that up.

Chang is a multi-hypenate’s dream: in addition to being an author she’s been a manager, music director, record exec, producer, and, as of late, leading the charge as the prime mover behind Unlock Her Potential, an American mentorship program for cis, trans, & non-binary, femmes, gender expansive, gender non-conforming, and gender-fluid people of color.

When does she sleep? Probably (possibly?) never.

The journalist and activist and SWer, Andre Shakti identifies as queer, kinky and polyamorous. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vice, and Out Magazine.

Christine Sun Kim was born Deaf to parents who were not Deaf. She parlayed a life lived without sound into an obsession with sound. Armed with one MFA in Sound and Music and another in Visual Arts, Kim started crafting a career out of the intersection of sound, language, music, sign language and the notion that sound is not purely an auditory experience.

She is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Ford Foundation Fellow, and a TED fellow — and beyond that the kind of wild world notice usually reserved for people like Beyonce: Kim performed the pregame show at the 2020 Super Bowl.

The performance artist Fauxnique has just realised her first book, Faux Queen: A Life in Drag.

The performance artist Ron Athey’s interests are singularly and almost monomaniacally his interests and while you’re welcome to participate as many have in shows like Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance, Judas Cradle, or the Incorruptible Flesh series, you wouldn’t be the reason he is participating.

Dean Kuipers is a journalist and author best known his radical approach to environmentalism. His books, Burning Rainbow Farm and Operation Bite Back are essential reads.

Cintra Wilson is a writer, performer and cultural critic.

Derek Walker lists his occupations as instigator, janitor, secretary, mailroom person and owner at creative agency Brown & Browner in Columbia, S.C.

Robbie Lee is a photographer like no other.

Jamie Stewart is the frontman of Xiu Xiu, and has created sonic covers of David Lynch film soundtracks and contributed to the Nina Simone songbook.

Brontez Purnell is a writer, director and dancer. He is the recipient of both the 2018 Whiting Award for Fiction and the 2022 Lamda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for his latest novel, 100 Boyfriends.

Vernon Reid is the grammy-award winning frontman of Living Color.

From her work on MTV’s Daria to Courage the Cowardly Dog, Pilar Newton-Katz is a world-famous illustrator and animator with over 20 children’s books to her name.

Mike Patton, a 19-year-old Humboldt State English lit major, was plucked out of obscurity to front Faith No More, a band poised for Grammys and future fame.

Vaginal Davis is an artist, composer, curator, filmmaker, writer and one of the founders of the homo-core punk movement both was and remains, a force to be reckoned with.

The 35-year-old Lilly Sparks began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) followed by a $10 mil natural foods start-up and then founded the sex-positive porn site, afterglow.

Chelsea Wolfe is a singer-songwriter who combines doom metal and folk.