Alexander "Sasha" Hedges Steinberg (born June 25, 1987), known professionally as Sasha Velour, is an American drag queen, artist, actor, and stage and television producer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Velour is known for winning the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, her drag revue NightGowns, and her one-queen theatrical work, Smoke & Mirrors.
Early life and education
Born in Berkeley, California, Velour was raised in New Haven, Connecticut until the age of nine when her family moved to Urbana, Illinois. Velour is the only child of Mark Steinberg, a scholar of Russian history and professor in the Department of History at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Jane Hedges, who served as editor at Yale University Press and managing editor of the Slavic Review. Velour is of Russian Jewish descent on her father's side, and identifies with her father's faith. Her grandmother emigrated from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic via Manchuria.
Velour graduated from University Laboratory High School in Champaign-Urbana in 2004. After high school, she spent a year abroad with family and worked as a part-time security guard at the Russian State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and interned at the Staatsoper (State Opera) in Berlin, Germany.
Velour obtained a BA from the Independent Program (with a focus on Modern Literatures) from Vassar College in 2009. In 2010, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow and completed a project that aimed to understand the role of different art forms in contemporary Russian society. She received an MFA in cartooning in 2013 from the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Prior to pursuing drag as a full-time career, Velour worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, an English language tutor, and as head of production for the children's book publisher, Toon Books.
Career
Early work in illustration and graphic design
Velour moved to New York with her partner John Jacob Lee (known professionally as Johnny Velour) in 2013. She created comics and zines that she self-published and sold at conventions. Velour's work was also published in The Nib, InkBRICK, Comics Workbook Magazine, QU33R, Cicada Magazine and others, under the names Sasha Velour and Sasha Steinberg. Velour also created a comic entitled Stonewall, which attempted to tell the story of the Stonewall riots using real and fictional characters. The work was called "a smart, beautiful and artful take on a significant and difficult historical event" by Highlow Comics. Velour's visual art has been the subject of two solo gallery shows. A show entitled “What's Your Drag” was on display at Be Gallery NYC in spring 2014 (in connection with BeFluent, the English school where she taught), and another solo show entitled "Nightrooms", was held at the Black Box Gallery (located in Bizarre Bushwick) in Brooklyn in March 2016. Velour's cut paper work was part of the group show "Coney Island Babies, Visual Artists from the Brooklyn Drag Scene" at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division that opened in Manhattan in November 2012. In March 2017, Velour designed a long sleeve T-shirt for "Contemporary Drag", a limited-edition fashion line for the New Art Dealers Alliance's (NADA) in collaboration with Print All Over Me and she performed at the NADA show that month.
Early drag
Velour started performing in drag while studying at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. She also met her partner John Jacob Lee (known as Johnny Velour) in Vermont when he was acting in a production of Annie. In the spring of 2013, Velour and her partner staged Whatever She Wants, A Drag Musicale at the Main Street Museum featuring local residents. She called producing the show a "milestone" of her drag career and moved to Brooklyn later that year.
Velour began performing in New York City in early 2014. She founded Velour, The Drag Magazine (originally named Vym), a magazine about drag, alongside partner Johnny in the summer of 2014. The magazine included interviews as well as varied art forms such as photography, poetry, and illustration that address the power, beauty, and purpose of drag. Three issues were published over two years and the magazine was compiled into a 300 page hardcover book in 2018.
Velour began producing a monthly drag show, NightGowns, in August 2015, at Bizarre Bushwick. The show has been regularly hosted at Bizarre Bushwick and National Sawdust, both in Brooklyn New York. The shows have been celebrated as "beautiful and funny and politically charged" by The New York Times. It was later adapted into a TV series for Quibi.