by Chelsea Cain
Zoë Eakle was born and raised off the West Coast of Canada in British Columbia. She currently resides in Vancouver where she is an actor, writer and member of the performance group Taste This. She writes largely for performance but has recently made the leap to the printed page with the 1998 release of Boys Like Her: Transactions, a book of short stories from performance written with fellow Taste This members and released by Press Gang Publishers in Vancouver.
Ariel Core is the editor of hip mama, the parentingzine (www.hipmama.com), and the author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide (Hyperion, 1998).
Rain Crimes is an aspiring photographer and currently works as a photography assistant. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in literature and has worked at several independent publishing companies and as a production assistant for television commercials. She is inspired by music and poetry and images, and hopes to one day find or create a career that incorporates all three. She lives in Seattle.
Angela Lam lives a double life. By day, she roams the streets of Northern California selling real estate, armed with a pager and voice mail. By night, she haunts the bookstores and cafes giving poetry and prose readings with the shadow of her son in the wings. She took time off in 1997 to attend a writer’s retreat at Hedgebrook in Washington State where she was able to indulge fully in a pampered bohemian lifestyle. She doesn’t think her two identities will ever merge; some people still know her by two different names.
River Light is a thirty-one-year-old writer, actor, feminist, dyke and videomaker (among other things). She has a B. A. in Fine and Performing Arts from Simon Fraser University. River’s essays and erotic stories have been published in a variety of places. In 1998 she co-facilitated a panel/workshop titled ‘Writing Porn’ for Write Out West, a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered writers conference. Light’s work in video has been shown on Rogers Cablevision and on Coast 11 Cablevision, and a two-minute video she created won first prize in the audio/video category of the UN pavilion’s Messages Of Peace contest at Expo86. Her play, A Thin Line, has been produced twice and was chosen for the juried performance festival Vancouver Women in View.
Lisa Michaels is the author of Split: A Counterculture Childhood and a contributing editor at the Threepenny Review. Her work has appeared in Glamour, Salon and the New York Times Magazine.
Cecily Schmidt is currently traveling the country with the man she loves, not searching for anything in particular, yet finding so much, trying to learn what it means to have acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa, cherishing clean water, drawing pictures and collecting words, staying in constant motion, checking out art therapy graduate programs and possible places to live when the time comes to be stationary again.
Elizabeth Shé is the author of the novel Shoulds Are for Saints: The True Life Adventures qfSuzy Le Speed. Her work has appeared in the 2 girls press anthology. Northwest Edge: New Writings from the Pacific Northwest. She is the former editor and publisher of MEOW, a Seattle arts journal.
Diane B. Sigman lives in Northern California. She wishes to express her profound love and gratitude to her husband, John, and to her parents, who generously permitted her to share their story.
Rivka K. Solomon continues to steer clear of turkey (‘Pass the tofu, please’). She is currently writing a memoir about growing up as the daughter of some of Boston’s earliest feminist activists. She is also editing a book of short narratives by gutsy females, That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts.
Chelsea Cain spent her early childhood eating organic tomatoes off the vine on a commune in Iowa. The magic and hope of her girlhood continue to shape her. But she still hates carob. The author of Dharma Cirl: A Road Trip Across the American Generations (Seal, 1996), she works as a freelance writer and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Wild Child
Zoë Eakle
Ariel Gore
Lisa Michaels
Angela Lam
Elizabeth Shé
Carin Clevidence
Paola Bilbrough
Rain Grimes
Chelsea Cain
Cecily Schmidt
Diane B. Sigman
River Light
Rivka K. Solomon
Suzanne M. Cody
Contributors