Don Orr Martin has been an active member of Quirk-e and on its Coordinating Committee since 2017. He was co-editor of Quirk-e’s 2020 anthology Together We Stand: Queer Elders Speak Out. Don grew up on a small farm in eastern Washington State and spent most of his adult life in the state capital of Olympia. He has been a LGBTQ activist and community organizer since 1972. He retired in 2014 after a 25-year career as a health educator and project manager. He studied journalism and political history in the 1970s, founded a radical, collectively-run print shop, and was a graphic designer for many years before his career in health promotion. He was also an avid performer, set designer, or director in over 50 community theatre productions.
Don and his husband, who worked as a biologist for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, met in the US in 1993, were officially married in 2013 in Canada, became permanent residents in 2014, then Canadian citizens in 2021. Don loves to cook, read, travel, and write. He believes the stories of queer elders are compelling and that the telling of them is inspirational.
