FOOD, STORYTELLING, & COMMUNITY.

FOOD, STORYTELLING, & COMMUNITY.

Tender Table celebrates Black and Brown community by connecting and honoring our identities, traditions, joy, resilience, and fight for collective liberation through storytelling and food.

Tender Table began as a storytelling event series in 2017
and has featured over 140 storytellers across 9 U.S. cities.

We are based on the occupied land of the Wabanaki people (also known as Maine).

Our team

Frankie Tran


Frankie Tran is a Vietnamese American community organizer and author of a poetry collection, Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018).

FOUNDER & CO-ORGANIZER, they/them

Veronica A. Perez


Veronica Perez is an artist, mother and community organizer whose work focuses on the diasporic Puerto Rican experience using hair and other textile-based materials.

CO-ORGANIZER, they/them

Jenny Ibsen


Jenny is an artist, community organizer, and restaurant worker. She loves to cook and share meals with others, play with clay, and swim in the ocean during all seasons.

CO-ORGANIZER, she/her

Sydney Avitia


Sydney Avitia-Jacques is a trans, Chicanx community organizer who loves to make zines and sit in circles with people.

CO-ORGANIZER, they/them

We would like to give special thanks to former Tender Table members Natassja Pal, Vy Hong Pham, Emmeline Eao, Daela Muñoz, and Wainani Paikai.

Tender Table is an affinity space for BIPOC community members in Maine to gather, find joy, and support each other.

The people who attend our events co-create the space with the organizing team, from hosting events to teaching the community new skills to providing mutual aid in times of need. Together, we make Tender Table a collective and communal experience that is nourishing and healing for one another by sharing our recipes, practical skills, creative talents, and friendship in a culture that makes us tired, withdrawn, and divided. 

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