Welcome to Mia Kirshner Online, a website created to pay tribute to the beautiful and incredibly talented actress, author and activist. This is a non-profit fansite. The owner of this site does not know Ms. Kirshner personally and does not have any official affiliation with her or her representatives. All copyright is to their respective owners. No infringement ever intended. Please read the site Disclaimer, FAQ and Privacy Policy for further information. Thank you.
The Vampire Diaries (2010)
30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010)
I Live Here
Mia will be appearing on Tavis Smiley tomorrow, December 16, 2008. Please check your local listings for the appropriate time. Please note that I will add a link to the video once it’s online and available for viewing. 
EDIT: The video is now up and can be viewed here. I will upload a copy to our video archive very soon as well.
Best known for her role as The L Word’s bookish drama fiend Jenny Schecter, Mia Kirshner is very clear about one thing: to her, acting is a “day job.” Since 2001, the 33-year-old actress has devoted her extracurricular energies to I Live Here, a collage-style literary documentary of uprooted peoples in strife-torn nations that Random House released in November. The product of refugees herself (her father was born in a DP camp to Holocaust-survivors parents), Kirshner gives readers a gut-wrenching firsthand glimpse into the lives of the disenfranchised in such hotbeds of turmoil as Burma, Ciudad Juárez, Malawi, and the Russian republic of Ingushetia. With The L Word’s final season debuting in January and Kirshner planning to propel I Live Here into an even more ambitious outreach project, you have to wonder what she’ll be choosing as her next day job.
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Thanks to Paul for the link.
David Rancken of KVIL radio station in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX was kind enough to email me this morning and let me know about the interview he did with Mia recently. You can either stream or download the podcast here (it’s the 2nd interview under “The Rancken File”) and it’s about 40 minutes in length. It’s a great listen, so do check it out when you have a moment.
The L Word‘s Mia Kirshner takes the plight of refugees and the displaced personally. As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of a father born in a displaced persons camp in Germany shortly after World War II and a mother who’s a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, it would be hard not to.
Born and raised in Toronto, Mia studied Russian and English Literature at Montreal’s prestigious McGill University, before taking on the role of actress.
Never one to shy away from difficult subject matter, Mia has a fearless reputation in Hollywood, taking on numerous sexually challenging roles. She portrayed a dominatrix with psychic abilities in acclaimed Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand’s first English language movie, Love and Human Remains, she was a mysterious bisexual assassin in Fox’s 24, played the title role of murder victim and women whose sexuality was the source of much speculation in Brian De Palma’s Black Dahlia, and is a regular on the small screen as Jenny from The L Word, a Showtime drama based around the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women living in WeHo.
The recurring themes of female sexuality and empowerment, and the plight of those displaced by conflict collided, when, over a period of seven years and with the support Amnesty International, Mia journeyed around the world to gather the stories of women and children who were driven from their homes. From the war in Chechnya and the ethnic cleansing in Burma to those affected by globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi, Mia tells the tales of individuals would otherwise not have a voice in a compelling and beautiful new book, I Live Here.
Below, Mia shares one of the stories from her journey, which came a little too close to her home.
“I chose this passage, because there is nothing extraordinary about what happened to me as this happens all over the world to most women on different levels. I have no shame in this anymore and am thankful that it is one of the reasons that made me want to put this book together.”
Mia Kirshner, November 2008
It’s a familiar story: Hollywood star takes up a cause, hops on an international flight and gets “do-gooder” attached to her name in gossip magazines.
The tendency has become so familiar, in fact, that we’ve grown to almost expect today’s celebrities to come with social causes — whether it be environmental concerns in the U.S., or malnutrition at the international level.
But few of those philanthropists come back with stories as detailed as Mia Kirshner’s.
Known for her role on Showtime’s “The L Word,” the actress has released “I Live Here,” a paper documentary chronicling her seven-year immersion into global stories of refugees and displaced people.
Proceeds from the book’s sales go to Amnesty International.
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With the tag line “There are too many untold stories,” I Live Here brings to life those who blend into the crowds we see on the news every day.
I Live Here consists of four books packaged together in something like a quadruple record-album sleeve. Each of the books—which read like zines or graphic novels—focuses on an area where people have been displaced: Ingushetia, Russia, where many Chechens have fled the ongoing violence in their own republic; Burma, which many have left for Thailand because of military oppression; Malawi, where an estimated 20 percent of residents of the capital city, Lilongwe, are HIV–positive; and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where economic migrants toil in maquiladoras.
There’s a heavy dose of Canadian star power here, with actor Mia Kirshner and author J. B. MacKinnon supplying the editorial direction and much of the text, and Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons of Adbusters creating a visual style reminiscent of that magazine’s high-impact collage look. Ann-Marie MacDonald, Lynn Coady, Joe Sacco, and Julie Morstad also contribute.
Kirshner took on the project because “sometimes I think that the world is dying, melting, and forgetting.” Some of her journal entries, which form the backbone of each book, focus too much on her own personal history, while others succeed in bringing you to the four places she visited.
The collection can be confusing. The sleeve notes purport to tell you whether each piece is fiction or nonfiction but are often difficult to reconcile with the books. As well, there are some brutally violent images. But the reality is that violence is a key part of these stories.
One of the strongest pieces is “Twenty Poems for Claudia”. Lauren Kirshner, an author and Mia Kirshner’s sister, has created a narrative based on family photos, notes by friends, and missing-person posters related to one of the hundreds of murdered women of Ciudad Juárez. She reflects on the strangeness of her task: “Claudia, I’ve written your story five times, scrapped every one of them. I was trying to explain things that I had no way of knowing. Now I know what the problem was. I was thinking of myself instead of you. How I wanted things to make sense, to find logic in the fragments. Your story is not logical.”
I Live Here makes a strong attempt to bring to life the world’s oppressed in a way the news media cannot.
Source: straight.com
Mia Kirshner, most recently seen as Jenny on “The L Word,” is also an author, and I Live Here is not just another Hollywood starlet story.
It’s about her trips to four messy and malignant parts of the world — the Russian republic of Ingushetia; Burma; Juarez, Mexico; and Malawi — that have large disenfranchised populations. Kirshner tells the stories about the women and children in these places through journal entries, collages, photographs, paintings an more with the help of co-authors J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons.
The trips were made over a six-year period. Kirshner, 33, told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to do something that mattered after working on a show after Sept. 11, 2001, made her feel “pretty dead inside.” (She’s also been on “24,” and “Wolf Lake.”). She first organized a benefit for Afghan women, and then decided to focus on “people who are in war or displaced or living, basically, in an extremity.”
“I did this in the most foolish way,” she said recently. “I spent my savings on the book.
“But, you know, it’s worth it. And I also felt like I didn’t really want to ask for outside funding until I knew I was proud of the material.”
Source: kansascity.com
The cable star’s travelogue of global hotspots is elaborately designed and knottily layered
If you get annoyed when actors engage in activism, Mia Kirshner is right there with you. The 33-year-old actress — who played a stripper in the revered 1994 movie “Exotica” and has worked steadily since, most often in roles as a sexualized smarty-pants, like her character Jenny Schecter on “The L Word” — said recently, “I think some actors have exploited their philanthropic efforts to promote a film.”
Kirshner was saying such things because her new book, “I Live Here,” is unmistakably philanthropic. During the past six years, she traveled to four messy and malignant parts of the world — the Russian republic of Ingushetia; Burma; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; and Malawi -— that have large disenfranchised populations. “I Live Here,” is the product of those trips: Its four separate volumes, one for each region, tell stories about the women and children in these places through journal entries, collages, photographs, paintings, graphic novellas and images of found objects. Kirshner wrangled many collaborators; J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons are the co-authors, and there is a boatload of other contributors, including some of the subjects themselves.
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Actress Mia Kirshner’s book gives voice to the oppressed and displaced.
Mia Kirshner wants you to meet some people, people who have been forced from their homes by war or economic necessity, people living in the darkest corners of the world.
And she wants you to care about them the way she does.
The L Word actor and sometimes Vancouver resident has been to places most of us wouldn’t dare to go: a Chechen refugee camp in Ingushetia, brothels in Thailand filled with girls escaping genocide, war zones where children carry automatic weapons.
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