Cai Quirk (they/them or ey/em) is a lifelong Quaker with passions for Witness, personal discernment, and diverse methods of spiritual deepening. With a gender that transcends binaries, Cai is practiced at deeply questioning societal expectations and norms and in shifting towards roots of individual and group integrity. Spiritual deepening, Witness, and integrity are expanded in Cai’s writing, photography, and music practices. Cai’s upcoming book of photography and stories, Transcendence: Queer Restoryation, connects themes of spirituality, mythology, and gender diversity, nature and storytelling. See more at caiquirk.com.

While at Pendle Hill, Cai will be creating further stories and writings that explore themes of gender and spirituality, some of which will be interdisciplinary, weaving the words together with photography, video, and/or music. The powerful act of queer restoryation creates new queer stories and myths where others were erased. In this era when more and more people are openly identifying as transgender and non-binary, and wider society is struggling to keep up, such stories are a beacon of hope that invite readers beyond binaries and into ways of seeing and honoring fluidity and change as natural. These myths and stories live in liminal spaces, between and beyond male and female, night and day, land and sea, earth and sky, life and death, self and other, self and earth. They are stories not only of gender, but also more broadly of self-discovery, living authentically, and following Spirit.

Welcome Cai!