Jules Sherred

Jules Sherred (born January 9, 1976) is a Canadian commercial food photographer and stylist, writer, journalist, blogger, and advocate for disability and transgender rights. As a survivor of conversion therapy in a healthcare setting, he helped to ensure transgender people were protected by Bill C-4 An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy). He is the author of Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook.
==Early Life==
Sherred was born in Thompson, Manitoba on January 9, 1976. His family moved to British Columbia when he was three, where he has since lived for most of that time on southern Vancouver Island.
As a teenager, he was put into foster care. It was while in foster care that he was subjected to converstion therapy in a healthcare setting.
==Career==
===Geek Media Personality===
Sherred began his career in entertainment in 2008 as a radio personality for Party 934. During his time at Party 934, he created the Geeky Pleasures Radio Show, a geek entertainment show where he would occasionally interview geek entertainers. From his radio show, the Geeky Pleasures blog was born. He shut down both the Geeky Pleasures website and radio show in 2013 after getting doxed. During this time, he also wrote for Wired, Nerdy With Children, and Quirk Books. While writing for GeekDad, he wrote an article about Canadian English that has been widely cited by academics and media alike. He wrote for GeekDad until 2019.
===Photography===
Sherred is an accredited photographer through the Professional Photographers of Canada. In 2021 he was a guest speaker at the Light Matters photography conference. In 2022, he produced the art exhibit Nourish: A Celebration at the Cowichan Valley Arts Council gallery. He was a staff writer for Fstoppers. He is an instructor in the Andrew Scrivani Academy. His commercial photography business is called Polaris Creative.
===Political and Advocacy Work===
In 2017, Sherred worked on Jagmeet Singh's NDP Leadership Campaign, helping to create his campaign's LGBTQ2 policies; policies which would later become part of official NDP policy. In 2019. Sherred was campaign manager for incumbent NDP MP Alistair McGregor. Throughout 2021, he worked with No Conversion Canada and lawmakers in Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti's office to ensure transgender people and people undergoing conversion therapy in heathcare settings were included in the Canadian conversion therapy ban.
In 2019, Sherred created the website Disabled Kitchen and Garden because of a lack of disabled voices and resources in food spaces. This website was the foundation for his first cookbook Crip Up The Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook, for which he received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. Crip Up the Kitchen is the first major change to how recipes have been written in close to 100 years. He has a partnership with Cowichan Green Community and the Cowichan Farm and Food Hub to create programming to combat food insecurity in the Cowichan Valley region.
==Bibliography==
* Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook (ISBN 978-1-77151-396-8) (2023)
Category:1976 births
Category:People from Thompson, Manitoba
Category:Canadian people
Category:Food photographers
Category:Writers
Category:Journalists
Category:Bloggers