Katrina Byrd
2025 Speaker
Writer, The Daily Flounce
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Katrina Byrd (she/her), writer and playwright living in Jackson, MS, received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women. An emerging writer published in several magazines, Byrd is a six time Arts Commission grant recipient.
On November 18, 2019, she was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is 100% fatal. Dora, Katrina’s partner of 23 years, died on February 2, 2020, 76 days after diagnosis. A few weeks after Dora’s death, Byrd’s advocacy work began. For the past five years, Byrd has become fluent in telling hard and uncomfortable stories. With her business, Daily Flounce, Byrd offers virtual writing courses and coaching services for writers, creatives and advocates.
With her Boa Flouncer alter ego, she inspires, motivates and spreads joy. The Boa Fluncer is a social media influencer who encourages followers to be themselves. “If who I am offends you, then, honey, prepare yo’self!” With attitude, flair and feather boas, she delivers messages of hope. “Honey, keep struttin’ yo’ strut. Don’t give up.”
For the past five years, Byrd served with several ALS organizations, testified before the FDA, became a NEALS Ambassador and was selected as a 2023 ALS/MND Symposium Patient Fellow. Byrd also continued writing and expanding her brand, The Boa Flouncer, a chick who inspires and spreads joy as she struts and flounces her boa. Organizations she’s served with include ALS Hope Foundations Veteran Action Committee, Les Turner Foundation, After ALS, Honey Badgers, ALS Therapy Development Institute, ALS Problem Solvers, NEALS, Everything ALS, Live Like Lou, R1, and I AM ALS. Byrd shared her ALS story on many panels, had a poster accepted to the 2023 International ALS/MND Symposium and she was selected as a 2023 ALS/MND Symposium Patient Fellow.
Byrd also serves on the Healey Recruitment and Retention team, on the LEITH Lab Community Advisory Board at Yale University, on the Every Life Foundation Rare Disease board and she served with the Department of Defense as a part of the 2024 CDMRP-ALSRP process.
