Panel to explore transgender rights and ‘identifying in the public sphere’

Transgender journalists and advocates Tiq Milan and Meredith Talusan will speak at Yale on Monday, March 6 at 4 p.m. as Poynter Fellows in Journalism.

“Discussing Trans Rights and Identifying in the Public Sphere: A Panel Discussion” will take place in Rm. 121 of the Center for Teaching and Learning, 301 York St. The panel will be moderated by H McCormick, YC ’17.

Born in the Philipines, Talusan moved to California at age 15. After earning her B.A. from Harvard, she attended California College of the Arts, and then enrolled at Cornell, where she earned a M.F.A. in creative writing and a Ph.D, in comparative literature. She is a former LGBT staff writer at BuzzFeed, and has contributed essays and reportage to The Guardian, VICE Magazine, Matter, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Inquiry, Narratively, The Advocate,and many other publications.

Milan has been an advocate, writer, and journalist working within the LGBT community for over a decade. He is a regular on-air guest for Huff Post Live and various MSNBC news outlets. He has written for BET.com, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Source, Vibe and others. He is the former editor-in-chief of IKONS magazine, an LGBT pop culture magazine, and has been a freelance pop culture journalist for several years, interviewing people from Jay-Z to Cicely Tyson. Most recently, he was the senior media strategist and national spokesperson for GLAAD, where he worked to call attention to the needs of the LGBT community, particularly transgender people of color.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree from Yale in 1927. The fellowship brings to campus journalists from a wide variety of media outlets who have made significant contributions to their field. Among recent Poynter fellows are Majora Carter, Eli Kintisch, Scott Anderson, and Ben Solomon.