All blog posts written by Stacey May - Shameless Magazine - your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth

All posts written by Stacey May Fowles

Page 2 of 47

It has arrived!

June 17, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

She’s Shameless is fresh off the printer and will be across Canada in bookstores shortly. We’d like to take this moment to sincerely thank all of our wonderful contributors who made this book such a fantastic project. We hope you’ll enjoy reading their courageous and exciting contributions as much as we enjoyed working with them! We’d also like to thank the wonderful folks at Tightrope Books for being supportive of the project from day one.

If you’re in Toronto, you can already pick up your very own advance copy from Pages Books and Magazines. (We also encourage you to order the book from your local independent book store.)

And don’t forget the official launch, our first ever Prom/Anti-Prom, next Tuesday at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. We’ll be featuring contributors from the book, alongside some teen writing superstars, in a fun-filled night celebrating all our favourite shameless women and girls!

She’s Shameless / She’s Writing: June 23rd

She’s Shameless launches June 23rd in Toronto at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto!
SHE’S SHAMELESS / SHE’S WRITING

Shameless magazine, This Is Not A Reading Series and Tightrope Books celebrate the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back
Featuring contributions from Zoe Whittall, Emily Pohl-Weary, Julia Serano, Dianah Smith, Shannon Gerard, and many more.

(more inside…)
She’s Shameless: E.J. MacBain

June 15, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

In the weeks leading up to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we’ll be posting sneak peak excerpts from the book.

E.J. MacBain is a writer and editor living in the Northeast. Her nonfiction has previously appeared in Hip Mama magazine. She is the proud feminist mama of a toddler son and a baby daughter.

I’m Still Here
E.J. MacBain

1982: Roller skates with rainbow knee-highs, braided friendship bracelets wet to the skin, blueberry Slurpees all summer from 7-Eleven, John Cougar cassette tapes of “Jack and Diane,” the secret purple-clad, girls-only club, and threats from the older junior high school girls in the public library, who pretend that Crayola markers are boys’ mini-dicks and suck them to show us: This is what you have to do when you get to seventh grade.

My parents’ divorce, my mother’s suddenly-single freak-out, the parties with her divorcée jet set, and her new boyfriends, boyfriends, boyfriends, while I sat with my friends and wondered about the state of their parents’ love (and sex) lives and why the Girl Scout badges never fit, why I never graduated even from Brownies, and why all the boys loved all the girls who didn’t look a thing like me, Kate, Heather, or Eve with her wicked thoughts and her slumber parties that turned to late-night viewings of the porn channel’s Midnight Blue. What would Prince do? Who was Sheila E., and how could she be so sexy and play the drums? Why was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue so titillating, and why did my Dad hide it? Were we the only ones who had to hunt so hard for soft-core porn?
(more inside…)
She’s Shameless: Amy Saxon-Bosworth

June 9, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

In the weeks leading up to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we’ll be posting sneak peak excerpts from the book.

Amy Saxon Bosworth lives and writes from her home in the mountains outside of Nederland, Colorado. Her essays have been featured in Hearing Loss Magazine, Mamaphonic, and Hands and Voices. Her novella The Mean Time was a 2006 semi-finalist for Tin House’s Summer Literary Seminar, Kenya. Her writing was also included in the anthology My Baby Rides the Short Bus (PM Press, 2009). She is currently at work on her second novel.

I Don’t Wear Cloaks
by Amy Saxon Bosworth

When I was small, an older cousin coaxed me into sprinkling salt onto a slug in our grandfather’s English ivy garden. I watched with shame as the creature suffered and died. I remembered this as I sat against the gray cinder block wall on the cold gym floor of my high school one day after winter break. I could think of only the slug curled in my belly. I was sixteen years old.

I had made an appointment to have the little slug salted but changed my mind after a I saw a tiny tot at the rodeo, dressed in Wranglers and boots, wearing a starched white shirt. The tiny cowboy looked so precarious perched so high on his father’s shoulders, so fragile, so human. I tried to reconcile that with what moved within me. I made up my mind: the little slug would grow.
(more inside…)
She’s Shameless: Catherine Graham

May 31, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

In the weeks leading up to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we’ll be posting sneak peak excerpts from the book. Our first post is Red Bars, by Catherine Graham.

Catherine Graham is the author of The Watch, Pupa, and The Red Element. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto, the Haliburton School of the Arts, and through the City of Burlington. Her work has been anthologized internationally and published in The New Quarterly, Literary Review of Canada, Taddle Creek and The Fiddlehead. You can find out more about her at www.catherinegraham.com

Red Bars
by Catherine Graham

I was sitting in the backseat, fingering the silver seatbelt, half-listening to Mom and her friend Eleanor. We were taking the back route, the safe route, to the mall, instead of the highway, so Mom wouldn’t make those sharp intakes of breath (no transport trucks to pass us). Still, she seemed high-strung, her mouth tight as she nodded in response to Eleanor’s yammering.

Start of another season of swim classes. I was trying for my Bronze Medallion this time round and my green Speedo left indents on my shoulders. Red bars.

With both hands on the wheel, Mom was oblivious to me watching her. I stared at the squiggles congregating on her nose, red like her hair.

Her hair had grown back soft and thin, in opposition to Eleanor’s coarse, black spikes.
(more inside…)
She’s Shameless / She’s Writing: June 23rd

May 21, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

Save the date! She’s Shameless launches June 23rd in Toronto at The Gladstone Hotel! Join the facebook group here!

SHE’S SHAMELESS / SHE’S WRITING
Shameless magazine and This Is Not A Reading Series celebrates the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back

What media event five years ago transformed the lives of teenaged girls across North America? Here’s a clue: it had nothing to do with a boy wizard or the misadventures of trust fund brats. In June of 2004, Shameless, a magazine for “girls who get it”, first appeared on newsstands. We’ve assembled She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back (Tightrope Books). To celebrate the launch of the inaugural Shameless collection, such contributors as Zoe Whittall and Shannon Gerard will perform short pieces. Five teenaged girls will join them on-stage and present monologues from a writing workshop conducted that afternoon by acclaimed writer and teacher Ibi Kaslik. The evening will conclude with an early ‘90s-themed, Sadie Hawkins prom, featuring a noted local DJ. – A This is Not A Reading Series event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Tightrope Books, Shameless, NOW Magazine, Gladstone Hotel and Take Five On CIUT.

Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West, Toronto

Tues June 23; 8pm (doors 7:30pm) $5 (Free with Book Purchase)

(more inside…)
- Bibliothèque
- Event Listings
The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19

May 11, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

A message from our Shameless friends at Coach House Books:

Coach House Books will launch its very first young adult novel with an event at the Toronto Public Library, and we hope you can join us to celebrate.

The Lillian H. Smith branch (239 College Street) will host the launch of author Jocelyn Brown’s The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19. The Mitochondrial Curiosities is a crafty new take on the rites-of-passage novel. It follows fifteen-year-old Dree as she deals with the sudden death of her father, devises renegade craft projects, uncovers a few family mysteries and tries to find a way to pass Biology.

YA Book Launch for The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19
featuring a reading and short craft workshop by author Jocelyn Brown

Thursday, May 21, 2009
Toronto Public Library, Lillian H. Smith Branch
239 College Street
7:00 p.m.
All ages!
- All About Shameless
There’s no better time to support the mags you love.

April 23, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

A brand new issue is being polished up while I type this, so there’s no better time to subscribe to Shameless Magazine! The bonus? We’re discounting our subscriptions for a limited time only. Think of it as a “recessionary tactic,” our way of giving you a little relief during some harder times. So don’t wait! Order online during our limited-time-only $10 sale!

Our $10 sale won’t last much longer so get in on the action right now and enjoy three fantastic issues of Canada’s favourite feminist magazine for teens!

Already a subscriber? Please consider renewing, or making a small donation to help support the work we do. Even something as small as $2, $5 or $10 will go a long way to helping us keep our fresh alternative to typical teen magazines going. If you’ve been reading the headlines, you know that times are really tough for magazines big and small, so there’s no better time to make a small gift to the publications you love to help them survive. Every dollar helps!

Click this convenient Paypal button and support us today!
Shameless is Off to WAM!

March 27, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

A number of Shameless staff members are off to the Women Action Media conference this weekend in Boston. We’re looking forward to meeting up with fantastic feminists from all over North America in a three day media/feminist geek out. Check out the WAM! homepage to see who is liveblogging the conference, or follow the #wam09 hash tag on twitter to get all the updates!
- All About Shameless
- Bibliothèque
A Sneak Peek!

March 23, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

Over a year in the making, Shameless magazine’s very first book is set to launch in Toronto on June 23rd. For now, here’s a sneak peek at the beautiful cover (care of our very talented Art Director Sheila Sampath). You can pre-order the book online here, or ask for it at your local independent book store when spring has sprung. More details to follow!

More details after the jump.

(more inside…)
Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores

February 17, 2009 • Stacey May Fowles

Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores Arrives In Canada!

This Is Not A Reading Series celebrates Freedom To Read Week with the Canadian premiere of Michael Muhammad Knight’s controversial novel about the Muslim-punk movement, The Taqwacores (Soft Skull Press).

Montreal filmmaker Omar Majeed is currently working on Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a feature documentary about the real-life bands who were inspired by Knight’s fictional creation. Majeed and Knight will show footage and discuss the politics of the Muslim-punk scene. Knight will then have an extended Q & A session with the audience, to be included in the documentary-in-progress. – A This Is Not A Reading Series Event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Publishers Group Canada, Eyesteel Films, EYE WEEKLY, Gladstone Hotel and Take Five On CIUT.

Gladstone Hotel Melody Bar, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
Tues Feb 24; 7:30pm (Doors 7pm) $5 (Free With Book Purchase)

(more inside…)