Care as resistance

Sabah Choudrey (they/them)

Sabah has been with Gendered Intelligence since 2014 as a proud trans youth worker, and in 2020 became Head of Youth Service. Sabah is passionate about building solidarity across trans communities, youth empowerment and making friends with cats. Outside of Gendered Intelligence they are a psychotherapist in training, public speaker and writer – ‘Supporting Trans People of Colour: How to Make Your Practice Inclusive’ comes out in January 2022. They are one of the founding members of Trans Pride Brighton (2013) and Colours Youth Network (2016) for LGBTQ POC youth workers and young people across the UK.

You can find Sabah on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Shon Faye (she/her)

Shon Faye is a writer from Bristol and one of the UK’s leading commentators on trans politics. After training as a lawyer, she left the law to pursue writing and campaigning, working in the charity sector with Amnesty International and Stonewall. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed, and her writing has been published by the Guardian, the Independent and Vice, among others. Faye recently launched an acclaimed podcast series, Call Me Mother, interviewing trailblazing LGBTQ elders. Her first book, The Transgender Issue, was published by Penguin Press in 2021 and was an instant Sunday Times bestseller.

You can find Shon on Instagram.

Harry Josephine Giles (Josie for short) (she/they)

Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Leith. Her verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia was published by Picador in October 2021 and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Selection.

She currently works in trans healthcare campaigning, and has a background in abolitionist and direct action political movements.

You can find out more on her website: www.harryjosephine.com.

You can find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Chair: Amy Rushton (they/them)

Amy Rushton is an NSUN trustee and an interdisciplinary researcher and writer on mental distress, critical thinking and creative work. Their professional background is in academic research and teaching in UK Higher Education; they are currently a Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University and have taught at universities across London and Manchester.

Amy is a long-term mental health service user-survivor and uses their platform as a researcher and teacher to advocate for mental health-related rights and justice. As a queer person, Amy has direct experience of how mental health services can emphasise ‘normalcy’ and cause further alienation and distress. Their current research project investigates how current writing by user-survivors around the world questions and resists the dominant story about the ongoing global mental health ‘crisis’. To date, they have published three peer-reviewed research papers as part of their new project and leads the World Literature Network’s research cluster on World Literature and Mental Health.