2025-2026 Featured Creatives

Introducing the individuals featured in the 2025-2026 season of the Rooted Resilience project.

Author Corrie Locke-Hardy (she/they) is the queer owner of The Tiny Activist, a consulting business that focuses on social justice education and literacy. For their “first career,” Corrie spent nine years in the hospitality industry cooking professionally, concentrating on pastry and bread. They worked in a wide range of establishments, which reinforced the message that community is key. This cookbook is a combination of Corrie’s lifelong passions for education, activism, and yummy treats. She lives a hobbit life out in western Massachusetts with her spouse and two rescue dogs. If you find her, she'll probably give you a snack.

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers in Western Massachusetts and England. Born in Brooklyn into Interlink Publishing, a family-run independent publishing house, she learned the power of literature at a young age. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books, March 2023). She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations.

Indë (they/he) is an artist-scholar born, raised, and residing in Massachusetts. In a nutshell, they contend with American imperial systems of division, using multimedia compositions to combat the lynching, disenfranchisement, and misrepresentation of queer people of color.

The Small Victories studio was established in 2011 by artists Isa Wang and Vincent Frano. They combined their interests in illustration and environmental stewardship to design beautiful and functional items that inspire us to connect, uplift, and care for one another. Today, Small Victories is a small team of creatives with a shop in Northampton, MA at Thornes Marketplace. We make many of our own plantable seed cards, original illustrations, pronoun badges, and accessories just down the street in our private studio.

10% of all our profits are donated to ecological and LGBTQ+ organizations and our products are made with eco-conscious materials whenever possible.

James (he/they) is an educator, community organizer, nonprofit professional, poet, and consultant focusing their work on social justice education, racial equity, and LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and liberation for all.

James currently serves as a Co-Director for Translate Gender, a trans-led organization aimed at uplifting the voices and experiences of trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive youth as well as their families/caregivers. Besides this, James is a statewide Senior Training Consultant with the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, providing training, technical support, and curriculum development to PreK-12 schools and agencies across Massachusetts.

James is currently based in Western Massachusetts, where he lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc peoples. He holds a Master's degree from Queens College, and a Bachelor's degree from Hunter College. In his spare time, you can find him building and repairing bicycles, hiking somewhere, or spending time in community.

Shai (he/they) has been part of Translate Gender for many years, getting their
start as a Youth & Family Group Facilitator; then moving into Smith School for Social
Work as a clinical intern and later clinician, and now operating in the roles of co-director.

They founded coACT, a community theatre collective for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth. Shai's focus is on centering QTBIPOC community members and services as well as building a nonhierarchical horizontal community based practices and policies within a nonprofit organization.

Shai has an MSW from Smith College School of Social Work and a history as a sexuality
and relationships educator and activist. He identifies as nurodivergent queer-fag trans-nonbinary immigrant of
color and white, and has been living in the US since 2015. He has many years of experience supporting folks in their journeys to gender self-determination, self-expression, and non-judgmental exploration of identities, including (but not limited to) gender. As well as supporting and advocating for survivors of gender and sexual violence.

Shai is also an actor, theatre director, event producer, and a poet. He practices many forms of bodywork and healing, as well as drama therapy, trauma-informed care, and transformative ways of care and community. Shai has been vegan for the animals for over a decade and started his vegan journey 18 years ago. He is a firm believer that liberation work means liberation for ALL.

Jey Weisgerber (they/them) is a nonbinary trans community member of Western Mass, where they have established roots through deep friendships and co-creation of Yet Another Queer Pop-Up Market, a joint venture with collaborator and friend M Rudder. Jey is also the founder of Found & Faded, a creative small business that focuses on unique hand-dyed clothing and accessories, as well as block prints, paper goods like cards and notebooks, stickers, and whimsical gifts for the inner child. Their messaging focuses around the queer and trans experience, ranging from angsty snark to passionate dissent. Connect with them online at bit.ly/m/Found_and_Faded and at markets around the Valley.

M Rudder (they/them) is an artist, entrepreneurial creative, and spiritual director who co-creates spaces, relationships, and experiences that affirm, center, delight, and strengthen under-represented intersectional communities and individuals. Their work includes partnership development, event programming for 2SLGBTQIA+ & BIPOC creatives and families, co-founding and managing Yet Another Queer Pop-Up Market, creating in their studio life as To Encounter Belonging, and their work as a Spiritual Director within the 2SLGBTQ+ community and the Bombyx Fellows program. Each of these is a reflection of their commitment to cultivating a deep and meaningful space for interconnection, agency, and resilience.

Karol Matuszak is an actor and performer of Polish origin, currently living in Ashfield. His journey in theater began in 2017 at the Copenhagen International School of Performing Arts (CISPA) in Denmark. In 2019, he moved to Fredrikstad, Norway, to join the BA Acting program at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, from which he graduated in September 2022. During his time at NTA, Karol first connected with Double Edge Theatre, and since then, he has participated in several intensives and exchange programs in Ashfield. In May 2024, Karol officially joined the company of Double Edge Theatre, where, in addition to performing, he works as an Outreach Associate and a cook. In the most recent summer spectacle, The Heron’s Flight, directed by Jennifer Johnson and Travis Coe, Karol played the role of Minos, the Minotaur.

Karol’s artistic practice blends various backgrounds and techniques, drawing from both classical and experimental theater, and is rooted in a highly physical approach that views the body and mind as one. His work is fueled by themes such as sexuality, migration, politics, and religion.

Since September 2021, Karol has been developing The Rainbow Cycle, a series of works, including two projects co-created with his life partner, Travis Coe: an indoor solo performance titled Rainbow Exodus and an outdoor, site-specific performative action called The Rainbow Table, which he continued to develop during a residency at Østfold Internasjonale Teater (Norway). Both works in the cycle address the exodus of LGBTQ+ individuals fleeing Poland due to increasing social and political hostility.

A gifted jazz vocalist, Leo (he/him) croons over syncopated bass lines, colorful keys, and hip hop beats with supreme ease. His cool, sophisticated musicality is reminiscent of Stevie Wonder and João Gilberto, not only in ingenuity but in his ability to convey complex ideas in deceptively palatable ways. This ability is more than a knack, it’s a means of survival. As an autistic trans man, Leo has to swim upstream, and his music is rife with Black American blues. Yet Leo perseveres, and his songs of love and everlasting comfort shine all the brighter.

Wylder Ayres (they/them) - Musical Artist & Organizer

Meet the project co-directors.

Luc Abbott (they/he) is the owner and founder of Bloom Local and has been cultivating and queering platforms and spaces that foster collective growth in the River Valley of Western Mass since 2021. Bloom Local’s mission is to unite locals with 2SLGBTQIA+-friendly businesses and organizations, nurturing a community where a culture of support blooms.