Thomas Doherty is a Portland-based world-leading expert on climate crisis anxiety. He is a climate crisis therapist, author and the acclaimed Climate Change & Happiness podcast co-creator and co-host. Doherty is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and Past President of the Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology. He has multiple publications and professional presentations on nature, mental health and well-being; his groundbreaking paper on the psychological impact of climate change, co-authored by Susan Clayton has been cited over 800 times. He was also the founding editor of the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal Ecopsychology. His new book, The Sustainable Self: A Guide to Coping, Identity, and Action in a Climate Changed World is out later this year.

Alex Johnston is an award winning filmmaker, scholar, and educator, based in Seattle. His work explores the politics and aesthetics of documentary and non-fiction media, with a focus on projects and processes that engage with abolitionist theories, practices and movements. His work has screened at a wide range of venues, including the Berlinale, AFI, Indie Lisboa, London Short Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, and the Miners’ Colfax Medical Center, a convalescent home for hard rock and coal miners in rural New Mexico. He is an associate professor of Film & Media at Seattle University.

Kamila Kuc is a Polish-born, London- and Seattle-based filmmaker whose work has shown internationally in places such as National Gallery (DC), Goethe Institute (Georgia), the Whitechapel Gallery, the ICA and BFI London, Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and many others. Kuc’s first feature, What We Shared (UK/USA/Abkhazia, 2021; funded by the Arts Council England) dealt with trauma of the 1992-93 war between Abkhazia and Georgia and led her to seek training in Social Justice and Multicultural Counseling at Seattle University. She’s been drawing upon her knowledge as a counselor in her artistic work. Her Plot of Blue Sky (UK/Morocco, 2023; funded by the Arts Council England) won the 2024 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Practice Research award in Short Film category for her ‘collaborative practices and ethical approach to working in different cultural contexts.’ Her Plot of Blue Sky has also recently been awarded the 2024 Jean Rouch Award at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival (Tampa, Florida) in recognition of ‘the exemplary use of ethnofiction techniques produced in a collaborative manner that embody the spirit of Rouch’s “anthropologie partagée” (shared anthropology).’ Kuc’s oeuvre has been extensively written about by the leading documentary film scholar, Dara Waldron in the 10th edition of Found Footage Magazine (October 2024). Kuc owns Dark Spring Studio – an international production company dedicated to the production and distribution of artist moving image works that focus on stories that are personal and that are committed to social change.

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. With strange obsessions revolving around Twin Peaks, the Seattle music scene, and Coast Salish Salmon Ceremonies, Sasha explores her own truth of indigenous identity in the Coast Salish territory.

Her collection of essays Thunder Song: Essays was released on March 5, 2024.

Rana San is an intermedia artist, curator, and connector pondering hypervisibility, bodily autonomy, and immigrant liminality. Her creative and curatorial practice centers experimental and analog approaches to storytelling through film, writing, and movement presented on screen and stage. Based between Seattle and Istanbul, she has been working with dreams since childhood.

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke is an author, filmmaker, and curator exploring the liminal spaces of the literary arts. Her interest in how words are experienced has resulted in gallery installations, classical music performances, broadsides, karaoke, and video poetry. Chelsea was recently published in Tri-Quarterly and featured in Local Sightings Film Festival (WA), Aorta Poetry Film Festival (NZ), and Festival Fotogenia (MX).