Ayden LeRoux is a queer writer and critic from New England. Once upon a time she attended culinary school, worked as a cheesemaker on a goat farm, and studied to become a somm. Now she writes fiction and nonfiction exploring embodiment, eroticism, and illness, in order to complicate narratives about caretaking, gender, sexuality, and family structures. She is a Contributing Editor for BOMB, and writes art and literary criticism that covers work pertaining to sexuality, disability, and food. Her praxis is informed by experience in artist collectives, worker-owned cooperatives, and farming, and seeks to cultivate radical hospitality, generosity, and intimacy.

LeRoux’s work has been published in BOMB, Bookforum, Catapult, Electric Lit, Entropy, Guernica, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Rumpus, and was honored as Notable in Best American Essays 2021. She has received support from MASS MoCA, Bread Loaf, Tin House, Creative Capital, LMCC, A-Z West, the ACE Hotel, and the Alaskan Parks & Recreation Dept. Originally trained as an artist, LeRoux’ photography, performance, video, and installations have been presented in solo exhibitions at IDIO Gallery, Flux Factory, and the Institute for American Art, as well as in group shows at chashama and the International Photography Festival.

In addition to her own practice, Ayden is the Co-Director of Odyssey Works, an interdisciplinary collaborative performance group. She is the author of two books about their work, Isolation and Amazement (Samsara Press, 2013), and Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) co-written with Abraham Burickson. With Burickson, she co-founded an alternative art and design school with a curriculum that centers empathy, experimentation, and rethinks the relationship between artist and audience. Odyssey Works has been featured by The New York Times, ArtInfo, Newsweek, Hyperallergic, the Marina Abramovic Institute, Vulture, NPR's Studio 360, Fast Company, and San Francisco Magazine. She has lectured and led workshops at the Adobe, Apple, Battersea Centre for the Arts, Brooklyn Museum, California College of the Arts (CCA), Facebook, Fordham University, the Future of Storytelling, the Immersive Design Summit, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Modern Elder Academy, Stanford, University of Texas Austin, and Yale, among others. 

She has taught diverse subject matter in a variety of academic, nonprofit, and community education settings, including food and art at Boston University, interactive art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), writing and disability studies at UC San Diego, writing for artists at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, sex education at Flux Factory, and nonfiction at Redbud Writing Project.

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For more information, email:
 aydenlmgrout [at] gmail [dot] com 
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