As women and feminists, zine writing has been a crucial part of documenting our personal and political history for almost two decades. So, how excited were we at For The Birds Collective to hear that Kathleen Hanna donated her papers and zines to NYU’s Riot Grrl Archive at Fales Library! Immediately following my reaction “how fucking cool” was “how do I sneak into NYU”?
This scholarly attention is a giant step forward for Riot Grrrl as a movement, and to read about this news on The New Yorker’s blog The Book Bench was a real brain bomb. Author of the blog entry, Macy Halford, posits that archiving these papers means Riot Grrrl has passed into history, bringing sad news with the good news. I beg to differ! Something’s been aflutter in the girl punk scene, especially in our very own Brooklyn, NY, for sometime now, as collective bird Kate writes in her article Girls Germs: A Brooklyn Scene Report, printed in the October Issue of Maximum Rocknroll.
As if NYU hadn’t already won our (speed) hearts with this important archival, NYU Press also recently published Alison Piepmeier’s book, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. The book is the first of its kind to fully explore the connection between zines and feminism for the past two decades as well as their joint role in our future. Piepmeier is the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.
IN BIRD NEWS: We will be tabling with our distro at the Anti-Valentines Riot Grrl Cover Band Show!
No, seriously, we’re not going anywhere.