Can food be queer? What are the histories of queer food?
MOFAD presents Queers at the Table: Coming Together, featuring a panel with queer food historians Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum, joined by writers, artists, activists, and food industry professionals Isabel Barbosa, Ericka Mabrie, and Rani Som. We’ll be showcasing and celebrating queer forms in its multiplicity, along with food, drinks, and a lively panel.
Ticket includes access to Flavor: The World to Your Brain from 6 to 7 PM,
bites from Pri Aguilar, and drinks.
Megan J. Elias (she/they) is co-editor of Queers at the Table (Arsenal Pulp Press 2025) and Director of Food Studies Programs at Boston University. A historian of American foodways, she is the author of five books about food history. Her most recent book was Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture (Penn Press 2017). At BU Elias teaches courses in food history, food and gender, and food memoirs and the Introduction to Gastronomy. She is currently working on a book about the hospitality industry and also a book on food for the ‘Gendered Perspectives’ series published by Taylor and Francis. Her other books include Stir it Up: Home Economics and American Culture (Penn Press, 2009); Lunch: a History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014).
Alex D. Ketchum (she/her) is co-editor of Queers at the Table (Arsenal Pulp Press 2025), an Assistant Professor at McGill University's Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), and the co-organizer of the Queer Food Conference. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing restaurant Mother Courage of New York City, Ketchum's second book, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses (Concordia University Press 2022), is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. She is also the author of the book Engage in Public Scholarship! A Guide to Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press, 2022) and the zines How to Start a Feminist Restaurant (Microcosm Press 2018) and How to Organize Inclusive Events (Microcosm Press 2020).
Isabel Marie Barbosa (they/them) is a disabled, genderqueer, transdisciplinary artist and researcher. Through an embodied research practice that inverts the hierarchy of the senses and prioritizes intimate, relationally-transmitted knowledge, their work explores the various intersections between food, queerness, philosophy, and art. They have a particular interest in immersive modalities that engage the body holistically, and create experiential work that involve audiences as embodied participants - whether it be through writing, installation, performance, or shared meal. Currently residing in Brooklyn and working to finish a Master of Arts in Gastronomy, their everyday life is focused on cultivating community care and eating well.
Photo Credit: Olivia Hewitt
Ericka Mabrie (she/her) is an Earth worker, baker, spiritual herbalist and entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, NY (BA, Economics, Georgetown University.) She is the founder of Faery Good, an Earth-rooted microbakery and herbal practice for whimsical living that helps cultivate resilience and alignment through heart-centered awareness. Additionally, she is part of the Hattie Carthan Community Foodways in Brooklyn, where she serves as an ancestral land steward, practicing regenerative urban agriculture and using ancestral technologies to advance a more equitable and vibrant local food system.
Photo by Shriya Samavai
Rani Som (she/her) is an Indian-American trans femme visual artist and author. Her work (published under the name Bishakh Som) has appeared in The New Yorker, MoMA.org, Autostraddle, The Strumpet, The Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review and The Brooklyn Rail, amongst other publications. Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) is the winner of a 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner for Best LGBTQ Comics. Her graphic memoir Spellbound (Street Noise Books) was also a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Rani has illustrated two books about architecture: The Prefab Bathroom: An Architectural History, (McFarland Press) and Cocktails and Conversations: Dialogues on Architectural Design (AIA New York). Rani’s artwork was featured in solo shows at ArtLexis Gallery and at Jaya Yoga Center and in group shows at The Society of Illustrators in New York, the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, Issyra Gallery, the Grady Alexis Gallery, De Cacaofabriek in the Netherlands and most recently at Art Omi in Ghent, NY. You can see her work at www.bishakh.com.
Pri Aguilar (They/Them) is a queer Peruvian-American, storyteller and culinary artist. Their food is centered around comfort food, complimented with seasonal ingredients and unique flavors that reflect their influence of the multicultural communities growing up in NYC. They also run Nueva Yolk, an ice cream and sorbet pop-up that honors distinct and familiar flavors of the Latin American diaspora.
