The Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference -- the largest LGBTQlA college conference in the nation -- is set Feb. 13-15, 2015 at Illinois State University, and will be hosted by ISU students and university staff.
ISU President Larry Dietz maintains his school's selection as the conference's venue dovetails well with the university's strategic plan mission to "further define our actions to enhance diversity on campus."
Keynote for the event, on Feb. 13, is actress Laverne Cox, who has travelled the country speaking about "moving beyond gender expectations to live more authentically." Cox currently appears in the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black, playing the groundbreaking role of “Sophia Burset,” an incarcerated African American transgender woman. Laverne is the first trans woman of color to produce and star in her own television show, VH1’s TRANSForm Me, which was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.
Entertainment headliner is Kit Yan, who is featured in HBO's Asian Aloud. Yan is a New York based spoken word artist from Hawaii whose poetry has been reviewed in New York, Bitch, Curve, and Hyphen magazines and he has toured internationally with Sister Spit, The Tranny Roadshow, and Good Asian Drivers. His work has recently been featured in Flicker and Spark and Troubling the Line, two gay/transgender poetry anthologies, and he has a forthcoming book with Transgenre Press.
For information on the conference, visit https://saapps.illinoisstate.edu/dos/mblgtacc2015/.