When Natalie Meisner started her career in theatre, she was cast for roles that didn't represent the women she knew or the women she wanted to become. So Natalie started writing her own plays. In today's episode, poet, playwright, and professor Natalie Meisner discusses the importance of LGBTQ2S+ representation in all stories. Natalie shares how comedy can be a catalyst for social change and how her book, Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family, lifts the veil of silence around fertility and pregnancy while making us laugh at the same time.

About Dr. Natalie Meisner

Natalie Meisner is a playwright / poet from Nova Scotia, a full Prof at MRU, and Calgary’s 5th Poet Laureate. Her work deploys the power of comedy for social change.  Baddie One Shoe is a collection of odes to renegade women. Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story illuminates the life of the last Canadian jailed for homosexuality. Speed Dating For Sperm Donors was a hit at Lunchbox & Neptune. Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family topped non-fiction lists and My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me is about a two-mom biracial family finding community.

Natalie holds a PhD from the University of Calgary in creative writing, an MFA in Creative Writing form the University of British Columbia. She is the recipient of the Annual Alberta Playwriting Competition, the Canadian National Playwriting Award, and the Lion Award for Advocacy and Awareness for Original Stage Play. Her forthcoming book, It Begins in Salt, is a collection of poems and love letters to those that share the tides of life. It urges us to love harder and give homage to those loved.

Natalie's Books: 

Baddie One Shoe (Frontenac House) 

Speed Dating For Sperm Donors (Playwright's Canada Press)

Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story (University of Calgary Press)

My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me (Nimbus Publishing)

Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family (Fernwood Publishing)

It Begins in Salt (Frontenac House)