Zoe Nicholson

My life is my canvas and my actions are my medium. My unquenchable curiosity and relentless hunger for social justice has forced me to share. That sharing is my art form.

Give me a room of people and I can change lives. It rings a vain statement but, in fact, it is something gleaned from my rearview mirror. Very early on, it was clear I had the gift of illustration through telling a story. Long before the trendy honorific of “story-teller,” I was attracting and repelling through my deep call to use language. My array of brushes, from camel hair to q-tips, are my words.

My life has the single message, WAKE UP. While I am asking myself to live fully awake, I seem to dare others to consider the possibilities. I have offered spoken word poems at Slut-walk to City Council. I present lectures on the Women’s Movement, LGBTQ Rights, forms of Nonviolent Direct Action, Suffrage; all through the lens of CHANGE.  Mostly my life is about amending the US Constitution and demanding that ALL Americans have equal rights under the law.

Now, at age 74, I have crushed my coal into a diamond, culled the best of my insights and refined my art.

**My one woman full length stage presentation, Tea With Alice & Me, it not about tea but a cup of revolution.  This is about the heart of Alice Paul over the arc of her entire 92 years.  The Vote was only a fraction of her work.  At 21, she began plotting an Amendment to the US Constitution, at 38 she wrote the ERA and worked for her remaining 52 years to give women full Constitutional Equality.  She is my North Star.

Most recently I am featured in the documentary, Still Working 9 to 5.  I have written 5 books and dozens of performance poems, publicly fasted, heckled national politicians, been featured in three films and appeared on the PBS series (We’ll Meet Again with Ann Curry); but I specialize in audacity. I hear its contagious.

I’m just a little disturbance, are you?