Pocket Change Collective 1: Adam Eli and Alok Vaid-Menon in Conversation with Seth Day

Our Fall 2020 Books & Ideas season begins with online conversations with the writers of Penguin Teen Canada’s Pocket Change Collective, a series of small books with big ideas by today's leading youth activists and artists.

In The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness.

In Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

Adam Eli is a community organizer and writer in New York City. He is the founder of Voices4, a nonviolent direct-action activist group committed to advancing global queer liberation and was included in Out Magazine's 100 most influential queer people of 2018.

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and public speaker who has been featured by HBO, MTV, NBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, and more. Their creative challenge to the gender binary has been celebrated around the world.

Moderator Seth Day is a transgender man primarily known for their work as the host of Rad Child Podcast. Seth has a BA in Art Education, works as a nanny and art educator, and previously worked as a museum and classroom educator. Seth originally hails from New York, but currently resides in Montreal where he lives with his wife and rabbits.

The Koffler is thrilled to present virtual conversations with all six Pocket Change Collective contributors: Adam Eli & Alok Vaid-Menon (September 29), Kimberly Drew & Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (October 6), and Amyra León & Hannah Testa (October 21).

Pocket Change Collective 1: Adam Eli & Alok Vaid-Menon in Conversation with Seth Day is presented with Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers. The bookseller for this event is Glad Day Bookshop. Books can be ordered here.

Watch a Zoom recording of the talk on YouTube:

Listen to an audio recording of the talk on SoundCloud:

Koffler Centre of the Arts · Pocket Change Collective 1: Adam Eli and Alok Vaid-Menon with Seth Day

The conversation has been transcribed for accessibility purposes. Please click here to view.

Books & Ideas: Fall 2020 Series
Our year-round Books & Ideas series spotlights provocative writers, novelists and thinkers, celebrating literary excellence and fostering critical dialogue through compelling book launches, author talks and in-depth interviews. This fall, in conjunction with programming across the Koffler's multidisciplinary art streams, Books & Ideas takes up themes of youth activism, food culture and politics, and environmentalism, presenting a series of virtual events on our online platform.

Books & Ideas was launched with the generous support of Dorothy Shoichet & Family and the Estate of Joseph Koenig.

Books & Ideas Media Partner:

Images at top: The New Queer Conscience By Adam Eli. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. | Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon. Illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.

Adam Eli and Alok Vaid-Menon with Seth Day

Photos