About The F-Word

Who Are We?

Want to find out more about the editorial team behind The F-Word? Then read on! If you want to see a full list of contributors, this is the place you need to click.

Editor: Jess McCabe

Founder: Catherine Redfern

Pictures Editor: Jenny Williamson

Events Editor: Helen G

Social Media Officer: Philippa Willitts

Guest Bloggers' Co-ordinator: Laura

Section Editors

Comedy: Chella Quint

Comics: Marina Strinkovsky

Features: Antonia Houghton and Asiya Islam

Fiction: Jolene Tan

Film: Ania Ostrowska

Music: Cazz Blase and Holly Combe

Non-fiction: Josephine Tsui

Theatre and Arts: Megan Stodel

TV: Holly Combe

The F-Word blog is run by a collective, made up of:

Alicia Izharuddin
Carrie Dunn
Catherine Redfern
Helen G
Holly Combe
Laura
Lynne Miles
Jess McCabe
Jolene Tan
Josephine Tsui
Shiha Kaur
Philippa Willitts
zohra moosa

More about the people behind The F-Word:

Alicia Izharuddin

Alicia Izharuddin was known to be a sullen, stubborn and argumentative child. She later grew up to be even more stubborn and argumentative but a lot less sullen.

She found feminism the same way she found religion, and all the perplexing childhood questions about why she must not stay out so late at night and why she must one day 'look after her man' were answered. Qualified as a geneticist, Alicia is now a doctoral candidate in gender studies at SOAS, where she teaches gender and sexuality in Southeast Asian cinema.

Ania Ostrowska

Ania Ostrowska moved to London from post-communist Poland in 2005, enabled by her country’s joining the EU. To sanction her feminist credentials, she got an MA in gender studies from SOAS. She lives in the London borough of Hackney and divides her time between working part-time at the Wellcome Library and reaching a conclusive position on the UK feminist movement.

Antonia Houghton

Originally from Blackpool, spawned from a family of politically minded women, Antonia was thrusted into feminist debates at an early age.

She is a journalism and sociology graduate from Salford University and has recently moved from Manchester to London to see if the streets are really paved with gold. During her time in Manchester she was involved with Manchester International Women's Day and worked as a content editor for arts website Quda.co.uk.

A lifelong feminist with a passion for politics, Antonia loves nothing more than drinking tea with friends and putting the world to rights.

When not putting the world to rights, Antonia enjoys wasting her time playing computer games and dancing around to 1940s swing in her bedroom.

Asiya Islam

Asiya takes pride in being a feminist and is angry with most things most of the time. She moved from India to London in 2009 for a masters in gender, media and culture at the London School of Economics.

Asiya worked at the Fawcett Society briefly while studying for her degree and, after finishing her Master's in 2010, joined the equality and diversity team at LSE, where she continues to work. Asiya has written for The Guardian and Women's Views on News previously. She likes to sporadically blog at Why am I a Feminist when she is especially enraged, frustrated or shocked. Find Asiya on Twitter @asiyaislam.

Carrie Dunn

Carrie Dunn is a journalist. She likes sport, musicals, wrestling, reality TV, karaoke, embroidery, World of Warcraft, three-volume Victorian novels and Veronica Mars.

Catherine Redfern

Catherine Redfern founded The F-Word and was editor from 2001-2007. She is from Tameside, Manchester and has been living in London for about ten years, much to her parents' annoyance. She is co-author, with Kristin Aune, of Reclaiming The F Word: The New Feminist Movement, a book about the resurgence and reclamation of feminism over the last ten years, today's issues and today's feminist activism. The book was published in June 2010 by Zed Books. She hangs out @cathredfern and has various craft obsessions which she blogs about on her infrequently updated, unprofessional, low-key personal blog.

Cazz Blase

Cazz Blase was born in Stockport, UK, in 1979. She wrote the fanzine Aggamengmong Moggie between 1993 and 1999, Real Girlsin 2001, and Harlot’s Progress between 2002 and 2006. She also accrued an impressively large collection of other people’s fanzines during this period, many of which she donated to The Women’s Library in 2007. She has dabbled with DJing, co-owned and co-ran a record label and flirted with music journalism. She has been a contributor to The F-Word for eight years. She was a contributing author to the book Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! and is currently invoking the spirit of the 19th century serial through her fiction blog, Screaming In Public while also rebuilding her fanzine collection and taking her first tentative steps towards turning her punk series into a book. She works as a library assistant at Manchester University.

Charlene Moore

Charlene Moore has just finished her final classes in English, journalism and creative writing at the University of Strathclyde, and still hasn't fully accepted becoming a member of the Real World yet. She discovered The F-Word during her Honours year at university, and can credit the site for giving her the confidence to openly call herself a feminist. Ideally she will have a career in women's charity PR and feminist journalism. She finds that the stress of not being a student any more can be lessened by trash TV shows and sweet rums.

Chella Quint

Chella Quint is a comedy writer and performer, artist, educator and old-school zine-girl from Brooklyn, New York who now lives in Sheffield.

She's pretty sure she learned about equal pay watching an episode of Three's Company at age seven, and she definitely learned about intersectionality while watching Sesame Street.

Chella is most well-known for her adbusting comedy fanzine and performance lecture series, Adventures in Menstruating, which includes the Mobile Menstrual Zine Library, the Stains TM project and her new Period Positive campaign.

Analysis of her menstrual activism has been chronicled by researchers in several different journal articles and in the book New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation by Chris Bobel.

Chella's work was included in two anthologies last year: Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot and Here Come The Brides: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage. She regularly performs on the Sheffield spoken-word scene and is a member of Other Voices at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Helen G

Having spent most of her life in rural North Wales where, in between working for architects, she was a three-chord merchant on a variety of musical instruments, Helen packed her spotted hanky on a stick and moved to London ten years ago as part of a career change into IT work. Currently unemployed, she spends a couple of days a week tinkering with computers in a voluntary capacity at an international aid agency. Music remains an important part of her life and while her listening tastes are eclectic, she has a long-standing penchant for the music of women singer/songwriters across a range of genres.

Helen joined the bloggers' collective at The F-Word in 2008 and took on the role of Events Editor in 2011.

Holly Combe

Holly Combe has been a feminist for as long as she can remember but became active when she joined Feminists Against Censorship (FAC) in 2000. She started reading and contributing to the F-Word in 2002 after receiving an e-mail about the site in a Yahoo group she took part in at the time. She joined the blog in 2005, was appointed as joint music editor with Cazz Blase in 2011 and became editor of the TV section of the site in 2013.

Holly has had writing published in a number of other outlets including Yahoo!, STUDIO magazine, Economic Issues, Scarlet magazine, The Guardian, The Fresh Outlook, The New Statesman, Bookslut, Girlchick and The Oxford Mail. She gained an MA in Applied Social Research in 2008 and, along with this, is a radio pundit and occasional DJ.

You can follow her on Twitter @hollycombe

Jenny Williamson

Jenny is a long-term reader of The F-Word and excited to be given the chance to fill it with pictures. By day, she is a mild-mannered accountant discussing the principles of double-entry book-keeping; but by night she throws caution to the wind, and fights the patriarchy by arguing with people on the internet whilst curled up on the sofa with a good book. She lives in North London with her house-gnome called Alphonse and vast quantities of books.

Jess McCabe

When she's not chipping away at the coal face of feminist media, Jess McCabe is a reporter covering environmental and financial stories. You can also find her on Twitter @jester, theoretically blogging on her own site, being bossed about by two Norwegian Forest cats and consuming more pop culture than can be good for her.

Jolene Tan

Jolene is interested in a wide range of feminist and human rights issues, including penal reform, migrant workers' rights and secularism. She is a core team member of No To Rape, the volunteer-led campaign for the complete abolition of marital immunity for rape in Singapore. She was born and grew up in Singapore, and currently lives in Germany, after spending several years in the UK. She loves novels, bunnies, bouldering, hiking and board games.

Josephine Tsui

Josephine Tsui is a regular ol' 'Jill of all Trades'. She is also the co-creator of Good Girls Marry Doctors, an organisation dedicated to bringing awareness of women in first generation Asian immigrant families and their struggle to bring feminism in culturally sensitive ways.

As an Asian Canadian, she is currently living in Bristol. Her day job is focuses on women's rights and food security. She has lived in multiple countries in Southern and Western Africa working with Engineers Without Borders Canada. She has also dabbled in medical research including neuropsychology, prostate cancer pathology.

Laura

Laura is a 27-year-old hairy-legged, cult-surviving feminist who lives and works in Sheffield, currently as a translator. She was one of the founding members of Sheffield Fems (now Sheffield Feminist Network), and The F-Word was her first introduction to feminism. She likes cakes, guinea pigs, crunchy electro beats and obscure French films, and she is apparently the only feminist on the internet who hates cats.

Lynne Miles

Lynne Miles is 31, and has been blogging for The F-Word since the blog began back in 2005. She has lived in London for the past 10 years (excepting a nine-month stint in New York City), the last five of them with a handsomely bearded technical bloke, and they have just had their first baby. She has a degree in economics and politics, and a masters in public policy. When she's not blogging here, she works for a consulting firm, doing things to do with economic development and regional policy. She's also newly involved in the local Labour party and considering a bid for world domination. She likes to be contrary, and will pretty much always take the opposite side of the argument to you.

You can also find Lynne on Twitter (@LynneMiles) or at her personal blog.

Marina Strinkovsky

Marina Strinkovsky lives in Swindon and blogs intermittently at It’s Not a Zero Sum Game. Never particularly mild mannered or retiring, she has no need for a secret identity and can often be seen sitting at her office desk in traditional superhero spandex. You can find her on Twitter @marstrina.

Mathilda Gregory

Mathilda Gregory is a writer who regularly contributes to The Guardian. She is also a senior reviewer for Fringe Guru and has written short fiction about Doctor Who for Big Finish. She was a winner of the BBC's Laughing Stock competition and is currently working on a sitcom pilot and a thriller.

Megan Stodel

Megan is a recent English graduate and is soon to start a masters in gender and international relations. She was on the committee of the newly-founded University of Bristol Feminist Society, and was a contributing editor for the first issue of their magazine. While at university, she was also the LGBT officer for a year. After graduating, Megan travelled for six months, heading to Australia overland, and then interned at the Fawcett Society. She is a lifelong theatre-lover and is excited to be part of The F-Word.

Philippa Willitts

Philippa Willitts is a 34-year-old, disabled, atheist, pacifist oddity who lives in Sheffield and sometimes makes zines. She has been a feminist all her adult life, and joined The F-Word in November 2009. She has eclectic tastes in blogging but particularly covers issues of disability, domestic violence and rape, social justice and sexuality. She enjoys being in nature and mischief, and has her own blog in her incarnation as incurable hippie, as well as contributing to the group blog Where's the Benefit? She can often be found on twitter, both on her personal account @incurablehippie and running @thefworduk account, especially when she is supposed to be doing other things.

Shiha Kaur

Shiha Kaur comes from a British-Asian background and originally started out as a guest blogger for The F-Word in April 2010. She worries about the apparent lack of feminists from her community and the social pressures and demands often inflicted on young British-Asian women. She enjoys dancing, cooking and starting craft projects which never seem to get finished. If she has three hours to spare she likes to watch old Bollywood films with the subtitles switched on.

zohra moosa

zohra is currently Amsterdam-based, where she works as Director of Programmes at Mama Cash.

Prior to this role she was Women's Rights Advisor at ActionAid UK and Senior Policy & Campaigns Officer at the Fawcett Society.

Twitter follow her on @zohramoosa