co-Founders, creative directors & lead facilitators
Pınar sinopoulos-lloyd (they/it)
photo credit: Sarah West
Pınar is an award-winning Indigenous multi-species futurist, mentor, anti-disciplinary researcher, adorer of the natural world, and awkward basketweaver.
Enchanted by the liminal, Pınar is a mutation of landscapes being Quechua and Chinese from their mother’s side and Turkish on their father’s. Guided by a central prayer, they envision a multiplicitous queer ancestral-futurism, promoting multi-species accountability and remediating human supremacy in the Chthulucene. Their prismatic writing, rooted in multi-gender, multi-cultural, and multi-racial parallel realities, reflects their lifelong apprenticeship to the ecotone of riparian systems.
In 2023, Pınar achieved a groundbreaking milestone, becoming the first racialized person to accomplish a Track & Sign Professional (Level IV) certification from Tracker Certification North America. Currently completing their Masters of Science in Environmental Studies on the Indigenous science of wildlife tracking, Pınar views wildlife tracking as integral to their Reindigenizing process — reclaiming Native lifeways, stewarding Ayllu (multi-species kinship ties), and restoring Ayni (entangled reciprocity) that continue to be systemically disrupted. #LifewaysBack
Awe, adoration, and enchantment guide their research. Pınar is infatuated with the shrubsteppes and high deserts of both the Columbia and Colorado Plateaus and is the greatest admirer of Kangaroo Rats, Rubber Boas, Poorwills, Bitterroot, and Pygmy Short-Horned Lizards. They are honored to live alongside them on the eastern foothills of the North Cascades on mətxʷú lands.
They were the 2020 recipient of Audubon National Society's National Environmental Champion as well as R.I.S.E. Indigenous 2020 Art & Poetry Fellowship. Pınar is the founding Council Member of Intersectional Environmentalist; trans ambassador of Native Womens Wilderness; and a founding member of Diversify Outdoors coalition. Additionally, they serve as faculty at Attune (formerly WE Immersion), at Weaving Earth and facilitate and design multi-day programs at Colorado College and the University of Colorado Boulder with their beloved/co-visionary partner/co-founder of Queer Nature, So Sinopoulos-Lloyd.
IG: @queerquechua + @queernature
So sinopoulos-lloyd (they/them)
So (they) is a white queer Greek-American naturalist, scholar, and “multispecies monk” who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of Alnobak territory (central Vermont). So worked as a seasonal shepherd throughout college and considers their life path(s) to be deeply inspired by the resilience and tenderness of cloven-hooved beings, who inspired them to question human-centrism and study the earth more closely.
The soul of So’s work is animated by confluences of ecology, identity, mysticism, & so-called “apocalypse.” So holds both a BA and MA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and Claremont Graduate University, where they focused most of their studies on Eastern Christianities, place studies, semiotics, and visual culture. Currently their work lies in the theory, praxis, and cognitive neuroscience of place-making through the lens of wildlife tracking. They have had their writing published by The Wayfarer, Written River, Loam, Nature is a Human Right, and forthcoming in Atmos. Their special interests are tracking, shepherding and ungulate ecology, multi-spectral photography, new media studies/cybernetics, being a spouse to their beloved, and trying to find socially responsible ways to info-dump. You can see more of their work at their “personal” site Apocalyptic Ecology.
Some of So’s awards and achievements include Track & Sign Specialist (Western Washington), and Expert Rifleman (Project Appleseed).
