SORAYA JEAN-LOUS McELROY is a Haitian born, Harlem and Brooklyn raised mixed media queer womynist artist currently living and loving in New Orleans. Her love of black womyn and families, motherhood, nature, Afrofuturism, comics/graphic novels and the African Diaspora are central themes in her work. Soraya is the co-founder of Wildseeds: New Orleans Octavia Butler Emergent Strategy Collective. Wildseeds work, steeped in Black feminist traditions of survival and healing, engages Octavia Butler and other speculative/sci-fi and fantastical authors a resource for social change. Soraya is constantly imagining and creating new work and was awarded the Alternate Roots Visual Scholars grant in 2014. Most recently Soraya was the creative facilitator, curator and contributing artist for Wildseeds “Sacred Space”at ExhibitBE and co-organizer of Black Futures Fest: A Celebration of the Black Fantastic in New Orleans 2015.