Chella Quint is a Brooklyn, USA-born, Sheffield, UK-based designer, writer, educator, performer and public speaker. She studied dramatic writing at NYU Tisch before moving to Sheffield and completing a PGCE at Bretton Hall in Drama education. A former drama teacher and head of PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economics Education), Chella coined the phrase ‘period positive’ in 2006 and founded #periodpositive to use humour and joy to challenge menstrual taboos, encourage better menstrual literacy, and find long-term solutions to period poverty. She became a leading expert on menstruation education in the UK, advising on regional and national policy on menstruation education and period poverty at the regional. corporate and policy level. In 2019, she launched the Period Positive Pledge as a framework for developing menstruation-inclusive policy and outreach, through which her network offers the Period Positive Places and Schools Awards.
Chella writes articles, books and comic essays, scripts and performs solo shows, delivers public engagement projects and designs installations on themes inspired by science, health, taboo, product design and social justice. She co-hosts the annual Sheffield zine fest and has been publishing the print zine Adventures in Menstruating since 2005. Her 5-star comedy show of the same name has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Women of the World Festival and tours regional comedy, literature and science festivals. Her zines are held in a number of international zine libraries, and she has a chapter in Down the Pan: New Directions in the Sociology of Dirt, a monograph from the The Sociological Review. She has recently written a period book for grown ups, Be Period Positive, and also a children’s book about menstruation called Own Your Period.
She won the 2013 Specialist Factual Presenter Pitch Award at Sheffield Docfest, the 2014 Off the Shelf Poetry Slam, a 2016 mentorship with Third Angel Theatre Company, was chosen for the 2019 cohort of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme, and won the Mary Ann Rawson Award for Education in the Women of Sheffield Awards 2021. Chella has been featured on Woman’s Hour, the radio documentary A Bleeding Shame, and the 28 ish Days Later Podcast (all for BBC Radio 4), the CBBC Newsround special Let’s Talk About Periods, and has contributed to the Break the Barriers Report for PLAN UK and to Gemma Cairney’s book, Open. Chella is part of Lab4Living’s 100-Year Life Project as a doctoral researcher exploring the impact of taboo, representation and attitudes to the menarche and the menopause transition on consumer/patient agency. She regularly appears on BBC Radio Scotland and frequently writes for national print media.
Click here for her project portfolio.
Chella’s author page at The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/author/chella-quint
Chella’s author page at The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chellaquint
Chella’s author page at The Times Educational Supplement:
Chella Quint 