Shameless blog
The Shameless blogging team
Jennifer Best is a freelance writer based out of Montreal. Her writing has appeared in various magazines and websites including 3AM Magazine and Cyrano’s Journal and currently writes for Nerve.com. She is active in promoting reproductive rights and the importance of a pro-choice community. She has been a feminist since the age of 8 when she boldly shouted in the schoolyard that girls rule and boys drool. Her opinion hasn’t changed much along the way. She briefly studied journalism but quickly tossed it aside for greener pastures. She is currently working on her first non-fiction book.
Nicole is the co-founder and former co-editor of Shameless and a PhD student in the graduate program in communication and culture at York University. She has written for a variety of independent and alternative Canadian media, and her academic work has been published in Democratic Communique and Feminist Media Studies. She is involved in several media-related projects, including Media Action and Upping The Anti: A Theory of Journal and Action. Nicole writes the Media Savvy column for Shameless.
Zoe is a freelance journalist from Toronto, Canada and now based in London, England. She is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail, where she publishes a column on environmental issues twice monthly. Her work has also been featured in The Toronto Star, This Magazine, Plenty Magazine, The Ecologist, and (of course) Shameless. She has been shortlisted twice for the National Magazine Awards, the first time in 2005 for her cover story for Shameless on vaginal plastic surgery. She has a zoology degree from the University of Toronto and is tired of people pointing out that she is a Zoe who studied zoology. She works hard and she plays hard, and she wants young women everywhere to be grateful for the opportunity to do both.
I’m a live-in-uncle, a recovering athlete, a music-loving, hate hating, love lover. I work in the gender violence prevention field and have worked with youth all of my adult life. I want to continue to be challenged and challenge my own privelege as a male-identified, whiteish looking, hetero-relationship having human. My big dream is to support and challenge young men and boys to question their own place in this misogynist, sexist, power-crazy world and to be influenced more by their own humanity than the culture of masculinity that surrounds them.
Erin will spend the fall drinking warm, sugary teas and taking pictures of cute, puffed-up birds. By night she plays with papertag, her experimental ezine, and by day she is an editor for an environmental charity in Toronto. She has an MA in literature and performance with an ecofeminist twist. Her writing has appeared in make/shift and the Canadian Theatre Review, and she was previously an editor at Alternatives Journal.
As the webmaster for Shameless, Wesley painstakingly created this website for your consumption by carefully gluing together the individual pixels on your screen using a very small glue stick. The pixels were sourced from a unionized fabrication plant in Louisiana and are made of equal parts light and magic.
Stacey May Fowles is a writer and magazine enthusiast based in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Fireweed, Misunderstandings, subTERRAIN, and Kiss Machine, and she has assisted in circulation and business development projects for Descant: A Journal of Arts and letters and Hive Magazine. Her first book is out with Tightrope Books, and her second book is out with Invisible Publishing. You can find her at www.staceymayfowles.com.
Megan Griffith-Greene’s experience spans activism, arts and journalism. Raised in Toronto, Megan became an active advocate on youth rights, social justice and education issues while in high school. Megan studied cultural studies and fine arts at York University, and journalism at Ryerson, where she was editor of the Ryerson Review of Journalism (Spring 2004). She is also a founding editor and designer of The New Pollution new music review, a web-based magazine and podcast on indie music that launched in February 2006.
After finishing a degree in philosophy (and some other stuff), Catherine left the happy womb of academia to put in some time under the soul-sucking flicker of fluorescent light bulbs, which nicely illuminated her drab grey (sometimes light blue!) cube walls. Somehow she’s translated that into working from home (in her jammies? maybe? sometimes? yes!) running her own business as a freelance writer and analyst. She had to learn how to fill out a GST remittance form (worst. instructions. ever.) but found it was a small price to pay for freedom.
Tiina Johns lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she plays music with
the Stolen Minks and sells comic books at Strange Adventures Comic Shop. She has given talks about ladies, queer folks and comics at the Anchor Archive Zine Library, on Halifax’s campus and community radio station, CKDU, and at Dalhousie and St. Mary’s Universities. Tiina is currently conducting a scientific experiment to see how many projects she can take on before her head explodes.
Diandra is a crafter, writer, do-er, and general stick-it-to-the-man-ist. She grew up in the wilds of Northern British Columbia and has knitted and sewn her way out to a variety of urban learning experiences. Currently based in Prince George, Diandra can be found organizing the Rated PG RollerGirls, working on her MA/zine-this, riding her bike, and knitting up a storm.
Stark is an accidental cybergeek with a Luddite’s heart, a part-time recluse and full-time freelance writer and editor living in the most densely populated census tract in Canada. Her work has appeared in a variety of places via a variety of media, from academic journals to bathroom walls. Currently she mostly focuses on armchair travel, queer theory, immigration activism and making feminist critiques of her favourite TV shows.
Pike Krpan is a queer community and anti-racist activist, graduate
student, and performance poet. Originally from Alberta, she now lives in
Toronto. She studied women’s studies and international development studies
at Trent University in Peterborough, where she also was a member of the
Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty (PCAP) and Arthur Student and
Community Newspaper. She wrote literary review and queer culture columns for
that newspaper for 2 years before organizing and editing a special 16-page
Queer Lines supplement in March 2004. She now lives in Toronto and works as
a researcher, editor and writer. You can find her writing in Shameless,
This! Magazine, Eye Weekly, and in the office-vaults of her professors. She
is also a co-editor at Descant Magazine. A firm believer in the power of
words to create freedom, she has also worked for PEN Canada.
Anna lives in Montreal, where she writes, performs, hosts a radio show, runs a zine library, and wrangles commas. She has a Masters in Communications from McGill University. Her work has appeared in Geist and Matrix, and she is the contributing editor of The Art of Trespassing, an anthology of short stories from Invisible Publishing. She was nominated for the 2008 Journey Prize for short fiction. Her work has also been featured on CBC Radio One, the NFB’s CitizenShift, and at performance festivals across Canada and the US, including Edgy Women in Montreal and Hysteria in Toronto. She hopes she will soon be invited to the Totally Sane And Well Adjusted Festival, but isn’t holding her breath.
Allison studies economics and international relations at the University of Toronto, but she spends more time writing for The Varsity, U of T’s main student newspaper. She writes part of a column on internet video at The Tyee, and blogs about economics and feminism at Economic Woman.
Melinda is the co-founder and former co-editor of Shameless. When Melinda was a teenager, the media tried to convince her that her breasts were too small, her brain was too big and her life would be incomplete if she didn’t have a boyfriend. When she got a bit older, she fought back by starting her own teen mag. Melinda has a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University and has worked at The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, TVOntario, Magazines Canada and Eye Weekly. She writes The Last Word, a column about language, for Shameless.
D. Cole Ossandon is a writer, artist, and musician currently based in Toronto. Raised to believe she could, should, and would change the world through art and activism, D. Cole was attending independent films and protests before she could walk. Soon finding her own voice in the arts/activism community, D. Cole has been (and continues to be) involved with many organizations and events working to make the planet a better place. D. Cole’s work is featured on her website www.desireeo.com as well as on her blog Perpetual Existence. She also creates music with her band Boom Epic.
Michelle is a librarian, freelancer, and kvetch extraordinaire from Brooklyn, New York. She was recently transplanted to Toronto, a city that has won her heart with the triple threat of queer marriage, excellent running paths, and a vast selection of toppings available at every hotdog cart. Michelle is a photographer, writer, and Internet addict. In her free time, she watches copious amounts of television and reads books and magazines that offend her, just so that she can complain.
Cate grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, where last year she finished a degree in Philosophy before moving to Toronto to make her fortune in freelance journalism. She spent most of her adolescence on the internet, and very little has changed except that now sometimes being on the internet qualifies as “working.” She writes for Xtra, The List, and anyone else who will answer her emails.
Miriam Verburg is a web designer, coordinator of the Digital Literacy Project at Atwater Library in Montreal and an MA student in Media studies at Concordia University.She is looking forward to writing for Shameless this summer and will probably write about such amusing topics as;
Technology and Social Justice;
Cooking for your friends and loved ones;
Science, nature, and cool-looking animals;
Exercise for the Athletically Challenged;
Emotional health, personal life management etc..
When not writing for Shameless she keeps a personal blog: http://www.flinkdesign.net/blog/mir
Jessica Yee is a multiracial youth of Native descent who was called to the line of action by raising controversy in her Catholic school and began volunteering at Homeward Family Shelter at the age of 12. Now at 22, she is a proud Indigenous Chinese-Mohawk woman whose work is nationally focused on sexual health initiatives for Aboriginal youth and cultural competency. She also does anti-racism work with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, is a forum facilitator for the Highway of Tears Initiative in British Columbia, and serves on the Board of Directors for Maggie’s Toronto: Sex Workers Organizing. She has written for the Globe and Mail, Feministing, and is currently a columnist at rabble.ca, Turtle Island Native News, and the Kahnawake Eastern Door. Jessica is a Canadian for Choice and is constantly looking for new ways to be a kick-ass activist!
