Biographies of Speakers for the 2010 Women's Visionary Congress
Irina Alexander
As the only elected female member and Vice Chair of
Students for Sensible Drug Policy's board of directors, Irina has had an opportunity to converge two of her main interests- feminism and drug policy reform. This past summer, she worked as an outreach intern at
Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) in Washington, DC, which had a great impact on her. She is excitedly finishing her last semester at the University of Maryland as a criminal justice major with a minor in black women's studies. Irina was born in Russia, moved to America when she was 5 years old, but still considers it an important part of her identity. She loves meeting people who are going to change the world, enjoys sharing her photography, and can't wait for the next moment to lie down with a book.
Burning Dan
Burning Dan
travels the world teaching people to spin fire and be who they want to be. He was a gymnast for 10 years, worked up from mailroom to CTO of a security and software company and co-founded an online video game startup in the late 90s. He co-created a collaborative art website which was just named to the Huffington Post's Top 100 digital media game changers of the world. He's trained in self-transformation, the power of language, cognitive science, and intentional inspiration. He's performed on Broadway, naked oil wrestled an albino and a porn star, stepped outside in a hurricane, taught a room full of 100 black people to dance, stood on an erupting volcano and built a pillow fort on an airplane. Visionary photographer, experientialist pyrophiliac and avid remix culture advocate, Burning Dan is an internet citizen bent on saving the world with panache.
Kristina Cazador
Kristina Cazador was born and raised in Northern California and has shaped her life around her commitment to both Buddhist teachings and the sacred use of entheogens. She has traveled and lived around the world and has developed a deep infatuation with South America and the mysteries of the Amazon jungle. Being graced with the teachings of a few key teachers and shamans, she is now carving out her own path as a modern woman walking the road of the visionary.
David Coyote
David Coyote has been involved in psychedelic study and therapy since 1980. At the beginning of his spiritual practice, he had two overwhelmingly powerful visionary experiences with psychedelics, which gave him a taste of the transpersonal realm beyond the small self or ego. He has spent 30 years practicing and teaching Buddhism in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including 3 years as a monk. In 1990, he began an entheogenic practice centered on the ceremonial use of Ayahuasca. He has studied with a Brazilian based Ayahauasca Church as well as had in depth training with Maestro-Curanderos in the Amazon basin -- spending a total of 2 years in training retreats in the jungle. He leads workshops exploring the meeting of meditation and shamanism.
Alicia Danforth
Alicia Danforth is a clinical psychedelic researcher and writer. She coordinated and co-facilitated treatment sessions for a cancer anxiety trial with psilocybin at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. This study marked the first time psilocybin was provided in as treatment in a clinical setting since research was stopped in the early 1970s. Inspired by the results of this work, Alicia enrolled in a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto. Her doctoral research in-progress is on the potential of MDMA and similar compounds as potential supplements to psychotherapeutic interventions for individuals with high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. In additional to her academic and clinical work, Alicia has volunteered as a crisis support provider with Kosmicare at the Boom festival in Portugal and as a Green Dot
Ranger at Burning Man.
Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia
Carolyn Garcia first encountered the world of psychedelics while
working in the organic chemistry department at Stanford University.
She later joined a group of psychedelic pioneers called
The Merry
Pranksters and climbed on board the
Great Bus "Further" where she lived
until 1967.
Carolyn and her family settled in San Francisco with
her future husband, Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead. In 1976,
Carolyn published her classic book on organic marijuana cultivation,
The Primo Plant, which is still in print. In 1987, she joined the
Rex
Foundation founded by members of the Grateful Dead. Garcia is also a member of
the
Threshold Foundation and sits on the board of the
Furthur
Foundation.
Kat Harrison
Ethnobotanist
Martina Hoffmann
Martina Hoffmann
works as a painter and sculptress.
Her paintings offer the viewer a detailed glimpse into her inner
landscapes - imagery that has been inspired by expanded states of
consciousness: the realms of the imagination, meditation, shamanic
journeys and the dream state.
"The visionary artist makes visible the more subtle and intuitive
states of our existence and creates maps and symbols reflecting
consciousness. My work is an attempt to show spirit as the universal
force which unifies us beyond the confines of cultural and religious
differences. By accepting the interdependency of all life and our
universal interconnectedness we have a chance to heal and transform
the planet's general state of woundedness. In using art as a tool
for transformation, we have the opportunity to create a reality as
beautiful, healthy and strong as our imagination permits."
Martina has exhibited her work and spoken on behalf of visionary
art and culture internationally. Together with her husband the
AmericanFantastic Realist, Robert Venosa, she teaches visionary
painting workshops.
Jessica Lucas
Jessica Lucas began interpreting at the age of sixteen. She has
participated with national indigenous confederations to help preserve
and protect the land as well as the knowledge of different cultures
from companies, researchers or governments that forget to be grateful.
She has also worked with literary translations, as well as medicinal
ceremonies and conferences in North and South America. Curious about
the impermanence of reality, she is a student of linguistics and
ethnobotany, among others.
Raised in Argentina until her move to the U.S. for school, she has
spent much time over the past three years in the lower Amazon working
with indigenous and mestizo groups living in rural areas. She is also
currently responsible for teaching a wilderness survival course in the
Utah great basin desert, where she has the opportunity to learn from
the people and the land.
Mariavittoria Mangini
Mariavittoria Mangini PhD FNP has been a family nurse midwife for twenty five years. She has written extensively on the impact of psychedelic experiences in shaping the lives of her contemporaries, and has worked closely with many of the most distinguished investigators in this field. Her current project is the development of a "death midwifery" practice providing services to dying persons and their families.
Annie Oak
Annie Oak is the founder of the
Women's Visionary Congress and the Women's Entheogen Fund. She is a journalist
and filmmaker who was inspired to create gatherings that celebrate the work of visionary
women. While occasionally social and grateful for friends and allies, Annie prefers the
wilderness and the company of other species including her cat and her horse.
Diana Reed
Diana Reed (Slattery) is a novelist, psychonaut, and video performance artist. For the last 10 years, she has been developing a project centered on the exploration of the visual language, Glide, which appears in her sci-fi novel
The Maze Game. The
LiveGlide software is a three-dimensional interactive calligraphic writing instrument for Glide forms. States of extended perception were used in the conception, design, and implementation of LiveGlide. Diana is almost done with her Ph.D. work in psychedelics and language. She is gearing up for a new project: in-depth oral histories of psychedelic lives.
Marsha Rosenbaum
Marsha Rosenbaum is director emerita of the
Safety First Project and director emerita of the San Francisco office of the
Drug Policy Alliance. She received her doctorate in medical sociology from the University of California at San Francisco in 1979. From 1977 to 1995, Rosenbaum was the principal investigator on National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded studies of heroin addiction, methadone maintenance treatment, MDMA (Ecstasy), cocaine, and drug use during pregnancy.
Nicki Scully
Nicki Scully
has been teaching healing, shamanic arts, and the Egyptian Mysteries since 1983. During her first visit
to Egypt with the Grateful Dead in 1978, Nicki experienced an epiphany that transformed her life. She
deepened her focus on healing and began delving into the hidden shamanic arts of Egypt. She is now a lineage
holder in the Hermetic tradition of Thoth, her teacher and mentor. With Thoth she developed Alchemical Healing,
a comprehensive healing form that is practiced by thousands of practitioners internationally. In the late '80s,
Nicki founded Shamanic Journeys, Ltd., and continues to guide inner journeys and spiritual pilgrimages to Egypt
and other sacred sites. Nicki lives in Eugene, OR, where she maintains a healing and shamanic consulting practice.
She welcomes you to study with her in her beautiful garden center.
Nicki's newest published work is a seven CD audio program,
Becoming An Oracle, Connecting with the Divine Source for
Information and Healing . Her most recent books are
The Anubis Oracle, A Journey into the Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt
(book and card deck, September 2008), and
Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt, Awakening
the Healing Power of the Heart (2007), both co-authored with Linda Star Wolf and illustrated by Kris Waldherr. She is the author of
Alchemical Healing, A Guide to Spiritual, Physical, and Transformational Medicine , and
Power Animal Meditations, Shamanic Journeys with Your
Spirit Allies .
Elizabeth Stephens and
Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle &
Elizabeth Stephens are the
Love Art Laboratory.
Annie Sprinkle was a prostitute and porn star for twenty years, then
became an internationally acclaimed performance artist and sex
educator. She has authored six books, and produced and starred in her
own brand of feminist "post porn" films. Much of her work was inspired
by her experiences with psychoactive substances, shamanic journeys,
tantra and ecstasy breathing. Sprinkle is currently a popular
visiting artist lecturer at colleges and universities. She has a
Ph.D. in human sexuality. She toured four different one-woman theater
pieces about her life to sixteen countries.
Elizabeth Stephens is interdisciplinary artist and activist who has
explored themes of sexuality, gender, queerness, and feminism through
art and performance for over 20 years. She is also an art professor
who for the past three years has been the chair of the Art Department
at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She is currently
pursuing her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UC Davis.
Sprinkle and Stephens utilize visual art, installation, theater
pieces, interventions, live-art, exhibitions, lectures, printed matter
and activism. Currently they’re touring their new theater piece, Dirty
Sexecology -- How to Make Love to the Earth. They live ecstatically
together, along with their dog Bob, in a Victorian home in San
Francisco.
Teafaerie
The Teafaerie has been an avid entheogenic explorer for many years, and she has served as ground control for well over 100 trips. She writes stories, poems, movies, plays and essays, makes videos, organizes flash mobs, and is one of the founders of Prometheatrics, a big cool Esplanade camp at Burning Man. She co-founded Flow Temple, a flow arts and fire dancing school in Los Angeles, where she is active both as a teacher and an artist. At various times she has been a writer, nanny, actress, childbirth doula, homeless person, live-action storyteller, toy inventor, street performer, and party promoter. Some people say they serve God or their country; the Teafaerie just serves the Tea. Her column
Teatime! Psychedelic Musings From The Center of the Universe appears monthly on the excellent psychoactive information site
Erowid.org, and she also contributes to its subscription magazine, Erowid Extracts.
