Grace Poore  

Grace Poore is a South Asian feminist lesbian writer and video activist who produces and uses video to advocate for an end to violence against women and girls. Much of her work looks at the intersections between domestic violence and other oppressions, and how mainstreaming the movement to stop domestic violence continues to marginalize women who defy the conventional understanding of domestic violence. She does video presentations and offers workshops to community and campus groups in the US. Her documentary, VOICES HEARD SISTERS UNSEEN has been screened at conferences and domestic violence workshops in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and is used by battered women's programs around the U.S. on how best to translate personal and organizational attitude into empowering policy and practice. Her video, THE CHILDREN WE SACRIFICE, is about preventing incestuous sexual abuse of the girl child in South Asian communities. It involves India, Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Canada and is being released in conjunction with community workshops in all four countries. In addition to video production, Grace has worked for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in Sri Lanka and the US-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her writing deals with the violence of coerced heterosexuality, cross-racial hostility, and the complications of multiple homes for South Asian women living in sexual exile in the US. Her essays and short stories have been published in various journals and anthologies including Sinister Wisdom, Gay Community News, Trikone, Our Feet Walk The Sky, The Very Inside, Pearls Of Passion, Options, and Patchwork Shawl: Chronicles Of South Asian Women in America.

Grace is currently the Regional Program Coordinator for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. (07/12)