Skylar Kergil

Skylar Kergil is a transgender singer-songwriter, activist, educator, writer and artist who is from Acton, MA but currently resides in Boston. After high school, he attended Skidmore College, serving on the board of the Pride Alliance, as a Peer Mentor, and an active member of the community until graduating on May 18, 2013 with honors and leadership awards. While he majored in Studio Art with a concentration in drawing and photography, he pursued a wide range of classes and interests in gender studies, environmental studies, philosophy, poetry and biology. As of now, he is traveling to educate, working on his music, and writing a book about his transition through high school and college.

Most often known on the internet as his pseudonym “Skylark” or “Skylarkeleven,” he began documenting his transition on YouTube in 2009 when he began hormone therapy. Being transgender is not the only identity Skylar assumes, but it has been one that has formed his passions around LGBT rights and advocacy for the community. Because of his YouTube vlogs and written blogs, he has been invited to speak internationally on college and high school campuses; due to wishing to complete his college career, he had to decline most of these invitations. In Fall of 2012, he was a speaker at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY, which led him to become the keynote speaker at the 4th largest national Breaking the Silence Rally sponsored by GLSEN in April of 2013. He has also presented at colleges nationwide and The American College Health Association annual conference among others. The New Yorker blog, in an article titled “Being Seen: YouTube Diaries of Transgender Youth” describes Skylar as “an upbeat, articulate F.T.M., tak[ing] viewers through his initial physical and psychological changes on testosterone, interviews with his mother, post-surgical reports on his mastectomy and hysterectomy, and his life as a college student and aspiring musician four years later.”

Using art as a medium of activism, his project “Re-humanizing the Transmasculine Community,” which began as his senior thesis but has continued, was described in an article by Trent & Arthur Press as “beyond sustainable. It collapses borders, ideologies, and hopefully produces some very good art.”

Outside of transgender activism, he is an avid reader and writer as well as a singer-songwriter described by the FTMDen as having a style that is “acoustic, though some would argue ‘passionate’ better describes it.”