Clare SummerskillClare Summerskill is
a freelance academic, an oral historian, a playwright and a lesbian comedienne
and singer-songwriter. Her publications include Gateway to Heaven: Fifty
Years of Lesbian and Gay Oral History (Tollington Pres, 2012), Creating
Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories (Routledge, 2019), and she co-edited
the recently published New Directions in Queer Oral History. Archives of
Disruption (Routledge, 2022). Her plays include
Rights of Passage, based on interviews with lesbian and gay asylum seekers
in the UK, and Hearing Voices, based on the
experiences of patients on a secure psychiatric ward. She regularly tours her one-woman comedy shows to theatres around
the UK and the US, bringing lesbian humour to the forefront of
alternative comedy. She co-founded the Oral History Society's LGBTQ
Special Interest Group and is a
patron of several LGBTQ organisations including Kenric, London Gay Symphony
Orchestra, East London Out Project (ELOP), Mind Out, Diversity Choir, and
Educate & Celebrate.