This event takes place on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required. 

Charis welcomes Zena Sharman in conversation with Kai Cheng Thom for a discussion of Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose, a remarkably frank memoir about interdependence, grieving, and parenting as a queer femme that doesn't leave out the messy or the erotic.

Staying Power, Zena Sharman's memoir in essays, is a beautiful and honest journey of care work, grief, parenting, and chosen family in the wake of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the lessons and inheritances of being raised by survivors of complex traumas, the book challenges the notion that one must be healed in order to parent well and celebrates the transformative power of queer family-making beyond gay marriage and assimilation into the nuclear family.

The book, which recounts the author's experiences of raising three children in a four-parent queer family, asks, "If leaving has helped you survive, how do you learn to stay?" Sharman finds answers in queer kinship, femme erotics, Leatherdyke lineages, and the radical possibilities inherent in doing motherwork outside of motherhood, recognizing that sometimes you fight the thing you want most.

Staying Power is a moving, deeply personal account of one person's journey of unlearning independence through an experiment in queer collective care.

Zena Sharman is an essayist and non-fiction writer whose work explores themes of community, identity, and care.

She is the editor of several anthologies, including The Care We Dream Of and the Lambda Literary award-winning The Remedy (both Arsenal Pulp Press). She co-edited Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011), which was named a Stonewall Honour Book and nominated for a Lambda Literary award.

Zena's writing has also appeared in Room and Xtra Magazine. Staying Power is her debut memoir.

Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performer, and creative arts facilitator based in tkaronto/Toronto whose work delves deeply into the themes of revolutionary love, transformative justice, spirituality, and healing from collective trauma. With roots in the spoken word community of Montreal, she is author of six award-winning books in multiple genres, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, the essay collection I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World, and the non-fiction collection Falling Back In Love With Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls, which was an instant Canadian bestseller. Over the course of her career, Kai Cheng’s work has received multiple literary awards, including the Stonewall Honor Book Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Writers. Her picture book, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea was also featured on Dame Julie Andrew’s podcast, Julie’s Library. For over five years, Kai Cheng was the author of the advice column “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse” for Xtra Magazine, which ended on its 100th edition. Kai Cheng is, additionally, a somatics teacher, professional life and leadership coach and group process facilitator, as well as a known lasagna lover and wicked witch.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending our event, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.

Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose -- Zena Sharman in conversation with Kai Cheng Thom