Sarah & Taryn will be tabling at the Info Fair at Ladyfest Philly next month. We will be selling donated zines to raise money for this year's event! If you're interested in donating your zine to help Philly Feminist Zine Fest please send packages (with suggested retail price) to:

Philly Feminist Zine Fest
c/o Taryn Hipp
Po Box 54
Magnolia, NJ 08049

We will list all zinesters who donate as Philly Feminist Zine Fest sponsors on the website! 

More about Ladyfest Philly: Ladyfest Philly is a grassroots event dedicated to the artistic, organizational, and political work of women, trans, genderqueer, intersex, and queer people, and their allies. Ladyfest combats substantive, cultural, and structural inequalities by building upon the existing Philadelphia community of artists, musicians, and activists.  It aims to foster a more inclusive and safe environment through performances, workshops, panels, opportunities for collaboration, and more.

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for?

I’m an author, illustrator, and cartoonist. My most recent ongoing project is called Dee’s Dream, a story about a young woman and her friends who are trying to launch their careers in the competitive music business. I am also one of the organizers of the Philly Comix Jam, a Philadelphia based cartoonist meet-up.

2. How does feminism relate to your work?

It is easy to see the way feminism relates to my work by observing my characters in my stories. Many of the characters are multidimensional women who stick up for themselves, their rights, and their beliefs.


3. Who are your feminist role models?

The Gorilla Girls, Kathleen Hanna, Pussy Riot, and more.

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways?

One can see the influence the Rumiko Takahashi’s manga has on my current work Dee’s Dream. Her work that I find most inspiring is Urusei Yatsura, a comedic science fiction story from the 80s.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked.

If you could have any superpower what would it be? Telepathy.

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you
responsible for?

My name is Taryn Hipp & I write a zine called Sub Rosa. It's a personal zine about whatever is happening in my old lady, sober, college student life. I've been writing Sub Rosa for like 8 years or something, I'm actually not entirely sure when I started writing it but it was soon after I put out the final issue of Girl Swirl which was the zine I wrote as a teenager into my twenties. I am also one of the organizers of Philly Feminist Zine Fest & the lady behind Bad Idea Sleepover, a feminist button thing.

2. How does feminism relate to your work?

Feminism doesn't just relate to my work, it relates to every single thing I do. I found out about feminism sort of by accident. I got into punk rock which introduced me to riot grrrl which introduced me to feminism & from there my entire life changed. Without feminism I don't
think I would have accomplished really much of anything I am proud of in my life.

3. Who are your feminist role models?

This questions is so hard because I feel like, all the women who inspire me are feminist role models & I'm inspired by so many women. My sisters are my feminist role models. My sister Jennifer is a mother who is raising the raddest little girls I have ever met. My sister Veronica has been working since she was 15 to support herself & she'san "A" student at Penn State & I find them both so fucking inspiring because they were able to get over some serious life bullshit & become their own definition of successful & I find that so cool.

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways?

If I answer this honestly I'll look like a giant nerd but the truth is, Courtney Love. Even when I was into riot grrrl back in the 90s & all the riot grrrls hated her, I knew she was like me or I was like her. I was a misfit in a crowd of weirdos & I was too emotional & "crazy". Her lyrics have always spoken to me & even on this last records that everyone hated I found myself sitting in my bed at thirty-something years old  sobbing over how I could relate. It's fucking weird but awesome.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked.

Q: Would you like all this money so you can travel to zine fests all over & hang out with rad kids making zines & would you also like this pet unicorn?
A: Yes please.

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for? 

I'm Mary Tasillo. I'm one half of the founding power behind The Soapbox: Independent Publishing Center, which houses a zine library and print studio. I also make one-off zines (as well as artist books and other paper art) under the press name Citizen Hydra Projects, and am half of the zine How Not to Flirt.
 

2. How does feminism relate to your work? 

Where to begin? I've always been interested in connecting social and political issues with personal narrative, and feminism seems very innate to me, so it often makes its way into the things I make, whether it be through using Craig's List personal ads to shed light on unbalanced expectations being placed on women, or advocating though better communication while venting dating frustration, or talking about what it means, as a woman, to walk out in public through city streets. In work with The Soapbox -- archiving the self-published narratives of others and teaching and otherwise supporting self-publication -- feminism is part of a larger valuation of social justice, in helping anyone share their story in a zine or print.


3. Who are your feminist role models? 

I feel very fortunate to have been a teenager in the nineties, when there were a lot of strong visible women in music and even living in a small town I could go to the drugstore for a copy of Sassy magazine and read about a Bikini Kill/Huggy Bear 7-inch, get advice from the likes of Beck and Iggy Pop in the Dear Boy column (to say nothing about all the rad women who were contributing), and get solid sex education. Which is to say that there are a ton of musicians and culture makers from the nineties and beyond who fit the bill of role model quite well. 

The writers Rebecca Solnit & Brenda Hillman, for figuring out how to juggle politics and art.


4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways? 

Lynda Barry's approach to memory, the way the past is so connected to the present for her, influences my thoughts about narrative. Maira Kalman proves that you can be successful writing grown-up picture essays. Peter Schumann of Bread & Puppet Theater proves that you can write a deeply serious essay balancing text and images. The prints of the German Expressionist Kathe Kollwitz and contemporary political poster work of Justseeds artists are influential in always reminding me that visual expression can impact our political and social culture.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked. 

Yes, I would love to take a boat down the Mississippi with you, and make paper along the way while you (fill in your creative endeavor here - I can think of a bunch).....

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for? 

My name is JB. I just moved to New Jersey for grad school and I have effectively convinced a 5 year old that I am part werewolf. It is probably true. I make a bunch of different zines, Sassyfrass Circus (a heavy-on-the-comics caffeine-fueled perzine), Femme a Barbe (a compilation zine for bearded ladies and other gender outlaws), Doykeit (a compilation zine that engages questions of anti-Zionism, queerness, and Jewishness),  Archiving the Underground (a sort of meta-zine on zines and archiving, academia, and libraries), and some one-off zines like a paper doll zine called Interview Clothes and a cut-and-paste sci-fi zine called Why Does The Sea Rush to Shore.

2. How does feminism relate to your work? 

I think that zines are a feminist mode of creating media--regardless of the content of the zine, the object of the zine itself, DIY methodologies and engagement with lived experience, engage with feminist histories of production. In terms of my zines, they all are informed by a feminist politic, whether dealing with media representations, queering the body, resisting neo-colonialism, or puking on annoying people. 

3. Who are your feminist role models? 

All my role models are feminists. Right now I'm going to say Octavia Butler, Marina Abramovic, Lynda Barry, Audre Lorde, Susan Stryker, Gloria Anzaldua and Emma Goldman. The list could go on for a long, long time. 

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways? 

My work has been influenced by my role models of course, as well as by tons of underground comics artists like Melinda Gebbie and Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and other zine makers who push me (whether they know it or not) to keep making zines and to push myself to make "better" zines (put more time into writing and editing, always try new things, don't chicken out on difficult topics) like Jami Sailor of Your Secretary, Mimi Nguyen of Slander, Noah Geraci of Tuff Town, Ramsey Beyer of List, Dirk Keaton of OCD Throws Bows (and mo' bows) and all my zine pals in D.C. and Philly and Chicago and everywhere. Again, the list could go on for a long, long time. 

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked. 

Q: Would you like this grant to finish your comic book that you spend all your spare time working on while having no money?
    A: Why yes, yes I would.

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for? 

I am Michelle Smith and I am the founder of Riot Grrrl Philly. Im 17 years old and pretty much ready to take on the world. Asides  from RGP I also run the concert group called Four Season Festivals, which is dedicated to procuring and running venues in and around the Philly area.

2. How does feminism relate to your work? 

Feminism is very important to my work in several ways. The most obvious being RGP where we strive to be inclusive to all female identified people in whatever we can. The other part is prominent in FSF which aside from trying to get all ages venues set up, we also make a huge effort to promote equality in the mosh pit. We do this by making a point of telling people to be respectful in the pit so everyone can have a great time and this has actually made a huge difference in the shows I've put together so far. This makes it so the pit can still be kickass but no one is getting the crap beaten out of the. 

3. Who are your feminist role models? 

My feminist role models are Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Val and all the unnamed other women who have made riot grrrl great. I also really admire all the other people I've met in the Philly scene. 

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways? 

I've been influenced by my friends in West Chester who really introduced me to the DIY ethics that I have come to love. Also bands like the Runaways and Operation Ivy just really inspired me to get up and do something for my fellow punk community. My parents, though clueless are pretty supportive of my shenanigans with people who have tattoos and rainbow hair. 

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for? 

My name is Maggie Eighteen and I'm the cyborg behind All That's Left, a dystopian series of post-binary smut stories about bodies, relationships, and making do with what's left in a new era. It follows a recurring cast of characters, which you get to know over time despite the non-linear nature of my story telling. I do recordings of the stories as well, for folks that don't care to read or who like a little audio embellishment with their sci-fi, and I also do readings with the Laser Lifequeer sci-fi collective at A-Space in West Philly.

2. How does feminism relate to your work? 

All That's Left is literally about a group of cyborgs living in a fucked up, ruined urban edge-town, who have to do shitty morally confounding jobs in order to protect what's dear to them and their communities. The reigning power structures have been degraded, governments and other institutions have fallen, and it's basically an exploration of traumatized people exploring their freedoms and challenging themselves to get by. I started writing All That's Left before I had any radical concept of feminism though, which is funny to me because now I think that's what feminism has always been about: liberating yourself from within complicated and oppressive power structures and coming together to create meaningful ways of living. 

3. Who are your feminist role models? 

My role models have always been female-bodied cyborgs from 1990s anime movies and comics. So there's Motoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell canon, Cyborg #18 from Dragon Ball Z, Armitage from Armitage III (technically an android), and Gally from Battle Angel Alita. For a multitude of reasons, male Japanese authors had a thing for powerful feminist cyborgs in that era, and I always wanted to be as capable and respected and able (and hot!) as those characters they created. Which is a fascinating and complicated thing, I guess. 

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways? 

Again, dystopian cyberpunk anime and comics from the 90s, as well as a lot of blockbuster sci-fi movies from the second half of the 20th century, really appealed to me when I was an adolescent (and still do). I have always wondered why more people don't make more radical and creative explorations based on those media because almost all of them are about corporate domination and oppressive power structures--they're premonitions and predictions, and they're all horrifying. The sleek possibilities of the capitalist, globalized economic future is juxtaposed with renegade, militant communities of the poor and oppressed, and what's nuts to me is that that shit is true and real right now and has been forever! There are glimpses of possibile futures within dystopian realities, and being able to see them and explore them is what interests me.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked. 

Do you want to have a Ghost in the Shell marathon date with me?

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you
responsible for?
I'm Mo Karnage. I write Cuddle Puddles and Hot Pants, a funny little personal but very political zine. I've been processing a lot in the past few years and haven't made a new issue, and the issue I'm making for the Philly Feminist Zine Fest will be issue number 8 (I'm skipping 6 and 7 for now). I hope to go back to 7 and 8 one day. I help organize the Richmond Zine Fest, and am part of the Wingnut Anarchist Collective and various other activist/anarchist projects in the Richmond area.

2. How does feminism relate to your work?
That's a real great question. I didn't vocally identify as a feminist until 2012. It's been something that has been so back burner to my other identities. I think that patriarchy and internalized misogny has a lot to do with why that was so back burner. Feminism relates to my work because patriarchy affects my life on a daily basis. I believe in the intersectionality of oppressions and a lot of the political work I do is around fighting various forms of oppression.
I've identified as queer for a long time, and gender queer for some years now, and both of those are tangential to my feminist identity. I think that consciously considering feminism in my life is enhancing how I see my queerness and genderqueerness. But wait- I talk about this all a lot more in the upcoming issue of Cuddle Puddles and Hot Pants # 8 The Feminist Issue. So I guess you should get a copy later this month. 

3. Who are your feminist role models?
Shameful to say, I don't know that I could name many feminist role models. I've been doing a lot of reading lately of feminist and queer stuff. I'm just impressed by people brave enough to share their stories, and smart enough to critique their own tactics and deal with privilege among other issues. I'd say I'm definitely looking for role models. In real life, my friends Chloe and Eris and Izzy and Kat are probably my role models for feminism. They've helped me feel a sense of community and strength in feminism and womyn that I didn't get on my own. I've also been pretty thrilled that the full time organizers of the Richmond Zine Fest this year are all womyn, and I'm pretty impressed with everyone involved. 

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways?
I'm terrible at names, but I've been influenced by people (mostly women) who write personal zines, with an honestly that I think is incredibly brave. I'm not always as eloquent, but I do try to find ways to write about the less perfect moments in my life. 

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked.
That's tricky. And now I'm just thinking of all the questions I have for myself, that I don't yet have answers for. I guess I'll just go with, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" Oh god. That's a terrible question. I want to live in an anarchist collective, have enough hustles to have no bosses, raise a child collectively, and snuggle with Grits and Flapjack my sweet dogalogs. I want to write a book, but I don't know of what. It might be a zine compilation even though my zine isn't popular enough to justify such a thing. 

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you responsible for? 

My name is Cassie J. Sneider.  I make zines and wrote a book called Fine Fine Music.  I also host a monthly reading series in Brooklyn and San Francisco called THE WORST!, which is writers, musicians, and other weirdos telling stories about horrible jobs, bad dates, and other laughable nightmares.

2. How does feminism relate to your work? 

You have to be pretty tough to make it as just "an artist," and I realized early on that there wasn't going to be anyone paving my way for me.  I have been fortunate enough to meet a lot of other writers who gave me a chance by giving me readings and letting me tour with them. It's really easy for women and queer writers to not realize their own worth because they are constantly being Gravitronned to the sidelines in a system that doesn't work for everyone.  By running my own reading series and small press, I am able to give other writers a shot at showcasing their work.  

3. Who are your feminist role models? 

Michelle Tea and Dorothy Allison are incredible bad-asses who macheted through a lot of uncharted territory for women writers.

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways? 

When I was in junior high, I took "Dave Barry Turns 40" out of the library about 20,000 times.  Something about his neatly wrapped-up tales of white upper-middle class suburban fatherhood really did it for me.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked.  

"No, you can't touch my tattoos, Person I Don't Know in the Grocery Store, but thank you for asking instead of leaning over and touching me."

1. Who are you!? What zine/project/form of creative genius are you
responsible for?

We are Kelly Phillips and Claire Folkman, contributors and editors
extraordinaire for the all girl comic anthology Dirty Diamonds

2. How does feminism relate to your work?

When we decided to start an all girl anthology we wanted to create a
space for ladies to showcase their awesome comic talents in a genre
where the available printed materials are generally made by men.  Its
a strength in numbers type of situation.  If a bunch of girls get
together and make a book it helps create a more solidified community
for female comic creators, especially in Philly!

3. Who are your feminist role models?

Our moms, cause they raised us to not take no shit from nobody

4. Who or what has influenced your work, and in what ways?

A big influence on Dirty Diamonds is the memoir/auto-biographical
comic genre.  We ask our contributors to submit (semi)
auto-biographical work because we want to learn about what other
ladies are thinking/feeling/doing/drawing/writing in the here and now.
 We also want to serve as a place to document what life was like for
girls and comic creators in the first half of the twenty-first
century.

5. Answer a question you've always wanted to be asked.

Q: Who does your hair?!
A: Oh, we've got a girl.  She's great, don't ya think?