Even though I only got three hours of sleep, I couldn’t wait to get back to the festival Saturday morning.  For me, the day started with two workshops:  Mixed Race in Media Space: Tangible Ways to Voice Your Ideas and Concerns followed by Use It! Turning a Mixed Roots Experience into a Powerful Piece of Writing.  I got a lot out of both sessions.

Next was the Mixed in Hollywood panel discussion moderated by the wonderful Elliott Lewis author of Fade.  On the panel were Angel Nissel co-executive producer and writer for Scrubs/author of The Broke Diaries and Mixed,  and Karyn Parsons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Sweet Blackberry Productions.  I filmed some of it and will have it on youtube pretty soon.

Another session of readings followed the panel discussion.  Unfortunately, I missed most of them (a girl’s got to eat), but really enjoyed what I did hear from Liberty Hultberg.

Readings were followed by screenings of In the Name of the Son, Parallel Adele, and….

The other films were great and it didn’t kill me to have to watch my big face in a semi-large group of people.  I liked listening to people watching it.  And, from what I can tell, they liked it! Phew!  There was a q&a afterwards, and seeing as I was the only director there, all of the questions were for me.  Thank God people had some questions to ask!  My mom filmed it and I intend to put that on youtube as well.  Pretty soon 🙂

My best friend from college, Sophina, (who was also my first biracial friend) came with some friends, as did my (step)sister Megan, and of course my mom was there and it was really just wonderful.

The event ended with Angela Nissel and Maria P.P. Root being award The Loving Prize for inspirational dedication to celebrating and illuminating the Mixed racial and cultural experience, followed by performances by the very talented Jordan Elgrably, Juliette Fairley, Kaypri, Jason Luckett, Lisa Marie Rollins, Jennifer Lisa Vest, Maija DiGiorgio, and Chris Williams.

Wow! What a line-up, what a weekend!  It all went by so quickly!  It was like a whole week of stuff packed into 2 days.  Heidi and Fanshen, I don’t know how you did it!  But I’m so grateful that you did!  Thank you for including me.

The weekend left me with lots of thoughts.  Some old, some new.  I’m still trying to process and incorporate and figure out what to do with it all.  But if I had to sum it up in one sentence, (today) it would be…