Sandra Alland

"This is not My Coming Out Poem of Pain, this is Sandra Alland's brilliant Beckett cut-ups... The images come so fast you sometimes feel like a Slinky falling down the stairs, yet the emotion and intention are clear, moving, and often funny..."

– The Skinny (Edinburgh/Glasgow),
4-star review

Bio: Sandra is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and performer. Her work has been published and presented throughout the UK, North America and Europe.

Sandra's poetic love-affair with voice-activated software and disability poetics, Naturally Speaking, launched in December 2012 in Toronto. She has published two other books of poetry, Blissful Times (BookThug, Toronto, 2007) and Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, Toronto, 2004). In 2009, Edinburgh's Forest Publications published Sandra's chapbook of short fiction, Here's To Wang, which went into its second printing in September 2010. Sandra was recently awarded an arts commission from the LGBT History Month Commission Fund 2013, to mentor six new queer & trans* Deaf and disabled filmmakers and create a documentary about queer & trans* Deaf & disabled artists in Scotland.

Sandra's work has been anthologised in publications including Poems For Pussy Riot (English PEN), The State of the Arts (Coach House Books), Outspoken (Playwrights Canada Press), Can'tLit: Fearless Fiction From Broken Pencil Magazine (ECW) and Matrix Magazine's New Feminisms. Other publication highlights include Gutter (Glasgow), Chroma Journal (London), anything anymore anywhere (Edinburgh), dead (g)end(er) (Saint Catharines), Drunken Boat (U.S.A.), make/shift (U.S.A.) and Alucema Review (Spain). She was recently a guest editor at Jacket2 for a special edition on Scottish poets.

Besides being known for text-based work, Sandra has a reputation for innovative interdisciplinary collaborations and performances. She co-founded the multimedia troupe, Zorras, with whom she composed, performed and created films from 2007-2013. She has performed widely throughout the UK, including at Edinburgh International Book Festival (Words Per Minute), Soho Theatre (Oxford Playhouse/ Chroma), Scratch (The Arches), Noisy Nights (Traverse Theatre), Bar Wotever, Museum of London, Jawdance (Apples & Snakes), Aye Write! Festival and Queer Mutiny. She recently toured in Canada twice, appearing at locations including Grey Borders (Saint Catharines), Gallery 101 (Ottawa), AvantGarden (Toronto) and Impossible Words (Toronto). Last spring Sandra featured at festivals, squats, conferences and social centres in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Amsterdam and Berlin.

Sandra’s film about migrants to Scotland, Here, screened at Berlin's 2010 Entzaubert Film Festival and at Equality Network's EveryoneIN anti-racist LGBT events across Scotland. Her short films, including Slippery, have shown at galleries and events in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Berlin. Sandra has had major exhibitions and screenings in Birmingham (mac), Glasgow (Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art) and Stirling (macrobert). Her group shows include Berlin's Schwules Museum and London's Tate Modern. More on Sandra's photography and videos here.

Since early 2009, Sandra has curated Edinburgh's multimedia, multicultural, queer and trans* cabaret, Cachín Cachán Cachunga!. She also co-created Canada's first Silent Slam (a live, projected writing competition), and created events for entities including Cobourg's Poetry & Literary Arts Festival, and Toronto's This Ain't the Rosedale Library, The Theatre Centre, The Queen West Art Crawl and Mayworks Festival of Working People & The Arts. In 2003-04, Sandra took part in an exchange between Canada and Mexico to explore the nuances of translation between languages and media (Banff Centre and FONCA). She has also been artist-in-residence at Glasgow's Trongate 103 and GoMA. She is founder and member of the LGBTI Deaf and Disabled artists' collective, b)other.