In 2025, Unfixed and QStack founder Troy Ford are collaborating to create Unfixed : Unsung—a short, independent film that explores the lives of four LGBTQ+ individuals living with chronic illness or mental health challenges, capturing the humanity and complexity of identity and how it intersects with our health and well-being.
The film aims to provide the subjects an opportunity to authentically share how their health and possibly healthcare have been impacted by identity and sexual-orientation. What are the impacts of societal misunderstanding and misinformation on the LGBTQ+ community and how does that distort identity, agency, presentation and self-awareness? How do these biases affect healthcare, access and treatment outcomes? What coping mechanisms have been helpful and harmful? And what progress have we made as a society and where do we still need to grow?
currently in production!
meet the cast
Antmen
antmen pimentel mendoza (he, she) is the author of the chapbook MY BOYFRIEND APOCALYPSE (Nomadic Press, 2023; reprinted by Black Lawrence Press). antmen writes, works at the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley, and studies at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.
antmen lives in Oakland and is online as @antmenismagic and at antmenpm.com.
Gail
Gail Marlene Schwartz is a dual citizen, a queer mom, and a newbie fiber artist. Her adult novel, Falling Through the Night (Demeter Press), won the National Indie Excellence Award for LGBTQ fiction and was a finalist for an Independent Publishers of New England book award. Other titles include the middle grade novel, My Sister’s Girlfriend, a picture book, The Loudest Bark (both from Rebel Mountain Press), and a chapter book, Clementine in Quarantine (Facile a lire). She co-edited a collection of essays, Boyhood Reimagined: Stories of Queer Moms Parenting Sons (Motina Books), which will drop on June 1st 2025. She is a founding member of the magazine, Hotch Potch Literature and Art, and hosts the Substack Writers in Relationship.
Gail lives and writes in Ottawa Ontario with her partner, visual artist Erin Needham, and their occasional roommate Alexi, who is 15. Check out her website for more info and find her on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Aris
Aris Hearth is constantly changing. He was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania, on land whose original caretakers include the Monongahela and Osage people. His family vacationed deep in the Appalachian woods every summer during his childhood, where he discovered his own love and connections to the land. He can’t imagine ever being apart from the mountains he calls home.
Aris has considered himself a writer since the first essay he was assigned in fifth grade. He wrote about his grandma being his hero for following her intuition in a way that ultimately saved him and his younger sibling from harm. A deep intuition runs in his family and he has spent the past four and a half years working to hone his own. This has involved much personal and generational healing, which he considers his life’s work and calling.
You can learn more about Aris’s journey through his Substack publication, A Perspective of Leaves, where he reflects on his discoveries and affirmations through story-telling and poetry. His goal is to bring people closer together through writing and to offer a unique perspective. His offerings there are one way he honors himself and his community.
Dalia
Dalia Kinsey is a Registered Dietitian and Inclusive Wellness specialist with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of holistic wellness and social justice in public and private sectors. Dalia rejects diet culture and teaches people to use wellness as a self-care and personal empowerment tool to counter the damage of systemic oppression. Host of the Body Liberation for All podcast and author of Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation,
Dalia continually creates wellness tools and resources that center the most vulnerable, individuals that hold multiple marginalized identities. Dalia’s work can be found at https://www.daliakinsey.com/
