Kimberly Dark is a writer, sociologist and storyteller, working to reveal the architecture of everyday life so that we can reclaim our power as social creators. She’s the author of four books, including Fat, Pretty and Soon to be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society and Damaged Like Me: Essays on Love, Harm and Transformation. Her essays, poetry and stories are widely published in academic and popular publications alike. She teaches for Cal State Summer Arts and travels to offer keynotes, workshops and lectures internationally and online.
Kimberly brings decades of experience (and multiple awards) as a facilitator, performer/storyteller, and teacher entertaining people with complex yet accessible messages about the human experience, about the body in culture, and about the ways we co-create our culture.
Kimberly’s lectures, workshops, and performances engage with themes that include:
- Gender
- Sexuality
- Body Size/Shame
- Media Representations
- Gender, Race and Wealth/Income
- Understanding “the 1%”
- Beauty and Appearance Privilege
- Personal Sovereignty
By looking at the complexity in our lives, Kimberly teaches her audiences how to become the subject of their own stories, and how to co-create a better world. Tell us about your requirements, and Kimberly can tailor the right lecture, keynote presentation, workshop or stage-performance for your venue and time-frame.
The Gayness: Love and Hate in America
As debates over the validity of transgender and queer lives heat up in the U.S., Kimberly offers new ways to think about fear and hatred toward LGBTQII2 people, and to contextualize the relationship between these and other fears of “the other” which are currently driving policy and negatively affecting people’s lives and healthcare. Through engaging, often funny storytelling and smart, accessible social analysis, Kimberly helps audiences discover the responsibility of our interconnectedness and the joys of our differences.
Unconscious Bias Training
We are all capable of practicing with language and approaches that increase inclusion and acknowledge the oppressor and the oppressed within – while finding compassion for both.
How do we do it? We need to know how the brain works. Once we know how the brain works to cause bias, we can address what is unconscious, and we need allies and co-conspirators in the process.
This training will enable you to:
• Promote equity and involvement
• Develop leadership potential
• Build tools for peer mentorship
• Gain useful professional development experience
Being Brilliant Bystander
We’re surrounded by difficult conversations about racism, elections, the pandemic, policing, and more. How can we have a positive influence during disagreements and reroute conflict into a useful discussion? When is it important for us to speak up or act? Kimberly draws on her experience as a conflict resolution facilitator to share the skills of the “brilliant bystander” along with safe and effective ways to restore fairness in power conflicts, resolve conflict, and encourage others to participate.
You Don’t Owe Anyone Pretty
In this program, Kimberly Dark explores how appearance privilege works in the U.S. and why focusing too often on our own appearance cannot lead us to personal peace, nor social equality. Students will laugh as they learn:
• How to listen for and see the social hierarchies that normally remain hidden because they’re so common.
• How to disrupt everyday injustice and shame through witness, kindness, humor and straightforward common sense.
• How to stand in their own “is-ness” – the power of being that transcends appearance (because our looks change through our lives, y’all).
• How to practice love and pleasure – in our own bodies and as advocates for others’ well-being and dignity as well
Appearance privilege includes being pretty or handsome, but also relates to racism, fat stigma, disability justice and more. This smart, funny program includes relatable stories and involves the audience in building strategies of resistance. The audience leaves empowered, and aware of their tools and brilliance as social creators.Appearance privilege includes being pretty or handsome, but also relates to racism, fat stigma, disability justice and more. This smart, funny program includes relatable stories and involves the audience in building strategies of resistance. The audience leaves empowered, and aware of their tools and brilliance as social creators.
