GRWU and Coffee Talk

Date: May 6, 2022 9:10pm (PST)
Duration: 0:50
Misha B, Laura Simpson, Jonaya Kemper
Speaker headshots
Come join Jonaya, Laura, and Misha as they apply their Black Fae Day looks and have a The View-style chat, answering community questions and topics they find interesting.

Jonaya Kemper (she/fae/femme/they) is a game designer, educator, and activist, who specializes in the power of transformative games within marginalized populations. A graduate of NYU’s Gallatin Graduate School, Jonaya traveled the world to explore how embodied roleplay experiences like larp, can transform marginalized player’s perspectives of self. Their theory of emancipatory bleed garnered the prestigious E. Francis White Award for work that has impact and significance beyond the academy. Working across the game design spectrum to create innovative, engaging gameplay and equitable spaces, they have helped design large scale international events in stunning locations like Atropos’ Forbidden History, to smaller intimate experiences like Feeding Lucy, which can be found in Honey and Hot Wax: An Anthology of Erotic Art Games distributed by Pelgrane Press. Currently Jonaya is the Lead Game Designer of the NSF funded P3G project at Carnegie Mellon University where she also teaches embodied game design.

Laura Simpson (she/her) (Sweet Potato Press) is an award winning game designer and the creator of Companions’ Tale, an ENnie-nominated, Indie Groundbreaker Game of the Year 2020 winner, and Diana Jones Award honoree. She has also designed the nano-game Driving to Reunion, part of the IndiCade-nominated anthology #Feminism, and Distant Stars, part of The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book, published by Simon and Schuster.

Misha Bushyager is a longtime gamer and designer working on making sure the next generation of geeks sees themselves represented. She's one of the founders of New Agenda Publishing and a founding curator for More Seats at the Table, a newsletter highlighting gender-marginalized designers. She worked on Orun, #Feminism, Fate of Cthulhu, Lovecraftesque, Misspent Youth: Sell Out With Me, Masks: Unbound, and the as yet unpublished larp Nightingales. She's a panelist, writer, editor, and sensitivity editor for tabletop RPGs and larps. You can find her on Twitter as BGGameworks or on her website blackgirlgameworks.com.

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