Your perception of Femininity and Masculinity challenged: this program was a celebration of Gender, Literature and Creative Energy.

Alvina Chamberland and Alara Adilow read from their work and spoke with Alejandra Ortiz about in what way these concepts define their work and their lives. After the conversation (in English) the venue was turned into a Room of Joy, with music and dance to celebrate everyone's uniqueness, opened by a performance of poet and spoken word artist Zaïre Krieger. Music artist and performer Patri Roa Johansen and DJ Shari Jae subsequently got everyone on their feet to dance along.

Alara Adilow is a Somali poet and writer living in the Netherlands. Her poetry collection Mythen en stoplichten (Myths and Traffic Lights, 2022) was one of the most striking debuts of recent years. She has published poetry in Dutch literary publications, and works on her first novel Kijk es naar al dit licht (Look at all this light), to be published in 2025.

Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels, residing between Athens and Berlin. Through poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor her novel and English language debut Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024) dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30.

Zaïre Krieger is a poet, spoken word artist, activist, journalist and translator. Her performances are layered, rhythmic and sincere. She translated the poem The Hill We Climb recited by Amanda Gorman during Joe Biden's inauguration into Dutch. In 2025, Krieger's bilingual poetry collection Chameleon will be published, about creating your own place to feel at home and allowing yourself to be multidimensional.

Alejandra Ortiz is a trans woman refugee from Mexico who fled transphobia and violence. In The Netherlands she works toward a better life for trans persons, and especially for trans persons of colour -- with or without papers. Ortiz wrote the autobiographical De waarheid zal me bevrijden (The Truth Will Free Me, 2022) about her youth, her life as a transgender woman, and her quest for a safe place to be herself.

Patri Roa Johansen is a Colombian-Danish classically trained musician, a performance artist, and a trans community builder. Currently, he lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is a member of Papaya Kuir, an intersectional feminist organization for and by Trans, Lesbian & Queer Latinx asylum seekers/migrants in The Netherlands. He is also a founding member of the award winning House of Løstbois, an Amsterdam-based drag king collective. Since 2019, Patri aka LatinX Charm, has done creative research on gender expression through realness drag.

Shari Jae has been the driving force of the T-Huis (Transhuis) in Amsterdam, a safe space for trans people in Amsterdam's Red Light District, since its inception. In 2024, she took a festive leave as coordinator. She remains committed to the target group. As a baby, she arrived in the Netherlands in the late 1960s from Biafra (now Nigeria), where a civil war was raging at the time. Growing up with foster parents, she never saw the effects of polio as an obstacle. When she was in her 40s, she made her gender transition. She has been an ambassador for Pride Amsterdam since 2021.

Trans, Writing, Joy is curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Alejandra Ortiz and Shantie Singh.