Alok Vaid-Menon

Alok Vaid-Menon Bio

Alok is a famous writer, performance and media personality born on July 1, 1991, in the United States. Alok performs under the name ‘Alok,’  a gender non-conforming artist, and uses the pronoun ‘they’ for singular.

They have been using poetry to challenge gender harassment and racism since youth. This probably spurred them to graduate from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in Feminist,  Gender, and Sexuality studies and comparative studies in race and ethnicity and a Master’s in Sociology in 2013. 

Through their explicit performances, they enriched with a stream of consciousness, political comedy, and emotional content to teach theories and histories that have been submerged. They incorporate the dynamics of transmisogyny, expressing the continued attack on the trans and gender non-conforming people and releasing their inaugural book of poetry, FEMME IN PUBLIC, in 2017. Similarly, they also reflected it in their fashion as they designed three gender-neutral fashion collections in 2018.

Vaid-Menon has walked for and modeled several fashion brands, including the New York fashion week opening ceremony and Harry’s and Polaroid Eyewear. They have appeared in several fashion magazines and editorial, having publications including ‘Beyond The Gender Binary’(2020) and featured in live performances, TV and film appearances including spoken fest Mumbai (2019), what I wish you knew: mental health roundtable (Netflix 2020), a little late with Lilly Singh (NBC, season 2, episode 16,2021).

Alok has won several awards such as Vogue: 9 Trans + Gender Non-Conforming Writer You Should Know (2018), NBC pride 50 alongside James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (2019), Out Magazine 100(2019).