Staff

Stephanie Rogers
Co-Founder and Managing Editor
Stephanie grew up in Middletown, Ohio, one of America’s top ten fastest dying towns, according to Forbes Magazine. In 2003, she received a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies from The Ohio State University, where she also won the Citino Undergraduate Poetry Prize. She completed her Master’s in English and Comparative Literature in 2005 from the University of Cincinnati, and in 2007, she received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Three of her poems have been selected for inclusion in the emerging writers anthology Best New Poets (2013, 2009, and 2006). Her poetry has also appeared in journals such as Southern Review, Pleiades, and Third Coast, among others. Her feminist commentary has been published online at Women and Hollywood, Ms. Magazine, Shakesville, and The Good Men Project. She lives in a very tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn where she occasionally tweets under @veace and @womenoccupy.

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Amber Leab
Co-Founder and Contributor
Amber now lives in near-utopian Asheville, North Carolina, and has previously lived in Ohio, Indiana, and South Carolina. She has a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, as a finalist for their annual fiction award; on the web at Shakesville, The Opinioness of the World, Not Another Wave, and I Will Not Diet; and onstage at True Theatre. Her current obsessions include Southern identity, finding movies she unequivocally loves, local food, making Bitch Flicks an easily-navigable website, and her two dogs–Kahlo and Rivera. You can find her on Twitter, especially when she has more important things to do.

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Megan Kearns
Managing Editor
Megan is a feminist vegan, film critic, and freelance writer living in Boston. Her work has been published at Bitch Media, Women and Hollywood, Fem2pt0, Everyday Feminism, and Feminist Magazine on KPFK radio. Megan writes for Silver Century Foundation and is the Social Media Manager of the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA). She founded the feminist vegan site, The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from UMass Amherst and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy from UMass Boston. You can follow all of Megan’s thoughts — Leslie Knope’s awesomeness, rage-inducing anti-abortion legislation, and where to find the best vegan doughnuts — on Twitter @OpinionessWorld

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Leigh Kolb
Editor and Staff Writer
Leigh is an instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She teaches composition, literature, and journalism courses. While working on her MFA in creative nonfiction writing, Leigh was the editor of a small-town newspaper. In her academic and professional life, she’s always gravitated toward the history and literature of the oppressed, and wants to see their stories properly inserted into our cultural dialogue. She believes that critically analyzing popular media is an important step in starting and continuing those conversations. She writes about film and television through a feminist and anti-racist lens, and has spoken about using the rhetoric of social change in the composition classroom and the vital importance of teaching Women’s Literature and African American Literature where they are least likely to be taught. Leigh is currently also writing for Vulture. She wrote “Mothers of Anarchy: Power, Control, and Care in the Feminist Sphere” in Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy and her creative nonfiction and media criticism have been published at xoJane, Women and Hollywood, Shadow and Act, and fem2pt0. Leigh lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, cat and chickens. You can find her on Twitter.

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Amanda Rodriguez
Assistant Editor and Staff Writer
Amanda is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her work has also appeared in The Asheville Post and Girl Named Boo. She writes about food and drinking games on her site Booze & Baking. Amanda is obsessed with bicycles and enjoys road biking, swimming, weight lifting, and teaching her indoor cycling class. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and Instagram.

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Jackson Adler
Staff Writer
Jackson Adler is a transguy with a BA in Theatre, and is a writer, activist, director, teacher, dramaturge, cartoon lover, vegan boba drinker, and proud Gryffindor. His day job is at a theatre (live, not movie), and he uses a pen name as a precaution, since he’d rather not risk getting fired. He is white and middle class, and has to remember his privileges. He is also aromantic bi/pansexual, and has an Auditory Processing Disorder and a Weak Working Memory (which does not excuse when he forgets that he has lots of privileges). You can follow him on twitter @JacksonAdler, and see more of his writing on representation and discrimination in the media at the blog The Windowsill.

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Lisa Bolekaja
Staff Writer
Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop and was named an Octavia E. Butler Scholar by the Carl Brandon Society. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” (available on Itunes and Stitcher) and her work has appeared in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (Crossed Genres Publishing), The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8 (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens (Upper Rubber Boot Books). An associate member of the Horror Writers Association, and a former Film Independent Fellow, Lisa divides her writing time between San Diego, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Italy. She can be found on any decent beach with a boogie board or curled up in a lawn chair at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery during the summer watching classic movies on the side of a mausoleum wall. You can find her on Twitter @LisaBolekaja.

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Heather Brown
Staff Writer
Heather Brown grew up in Connecticut but hopes that having lived in Virginia and North Carolina—and being married to an Arkansan—gives her occasional license to have a Southern accent. She recently fled a full-time job as a professor in central New Jersey, where she taught classes in gender studies, feminist theory, linguistics, and rhetoric. Long story short, she decided to leave the ivory tower to have more fun on the outside. Now she teaches online part-time, works as a freelance writer and instructional designer, and is currently pursuing professional coach certification training in Chicago, Ill., where she moved at the end of 2013 with her partner and cat, Edie. She lives for live music, road trips, and good movies. She blogs sporadically at PhDilettante.

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Colleen Clemens
Staff Writer
Colleen Lutz Clemens, Ph.D., assistant professor of Non-Western Literatures at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, earned her Ph.D. in Post-Colonial Literature at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on issues of veiling in literature and studies the intersection of women’s issues in art and politics. Her academic work has been published in Feminist Formations and Journal of Postcolonial Writing. She is the editor of several books of non-fiction including Philadelphia Reflections: Stories from the Delaware to the Schuylkill and has published short essays in various collections including Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her work on miscarriage and infertility has been published in many outlets including here at TRIVIA and in the collection Three Minus One. She reviews novels by postcolonial authors for Mosaic Magazine and World Literature Today and scholarly texts about world issues and American culture for The Journal of American Culture. Colleen has been invited to several venues to talk about the depictions of Islamic veiling in literature and culture and is available for lectures and talks. She can be reached at clemens@kutztown.edu or via her blog kupoco.wordpress.com. Her professional editing, writing, and tutoring site is clemensphd.weebly.com.

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Mychael Elaine
Staff Writer
Mychael received her Bachelor’s degree from UCLA, where she majored in English Literature and minored in Latin. Her name is pronounced “Michael.” She loves critical analyses and cute animal pictures, and blogs about representations of gender in popular culture at Vagina Dentwata. You can find her on Twitter @MychaelElaine.

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Robin Hitchcock
Staff Writer
Robin is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. She has a BA in history and political science and a JD from the University of Pittsburgh, neither of which prepared her for the actual life she is trying to live. Robin is one of the founding members of the Pittsburgh-based all-female comedy troupe Frankly Scarlett (and she knows that is a misquote of Gone With the Wind. Her objections were overruled). You can also find Robin’s personal writing and podcasts at HitchDied.com and her barely edited ramblings about pop culture at hitchdied.tumblr.com, and her under-140 character musings @HitchDied.

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Ren Jender
Staff Writer
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer and producer putting a film together. Her writing has previously appeared in The Toast, xoJane, Bitch Magazine and Autostraddle. She also occasionally projects “radical” phrases on the sides of buildings. For the past 18 years she has produced many, many performance events featuring writer/performers who are women, queers or both. She was the host and founder of– plus a regular writer-performer in–The Amazon Slam, an all-woman poetry slam that won “The Best Poll” of The Boston Phoenix from 1998-2003 and was named “Best of Boston” in Boston Magazine in 1999. She is the recipient of several Cambridge Poetry Awards. She has been profiled in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Boston Metro, The Boston Phoenix, Curve and Teen Voices.

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Rachael Johnson
Staff Writer
Rachael Johnson has contributed articles on film to CINEACTION, Objectif Cinéma, and JGCinema.com. She has also reviewed film-related books for the online film journal Scope and literary works for the online literary magazine Warscapes. Her other writing interests include personal essay writing and other kinds of cultural criticism. Rachael holds a Master of Arts in French and Theory of Literature from University College London. A British national, she grew up in Uganda, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Northern Cyprus. A teacher and lecturer of English and EFL, as well as tutor of creative writing, she has also lived in France, Italy, Malaysia, Burma, and England. She is currently based in beautiful Cornwall. Other interests and passions include modern history, world politics, Siamese cats, and cocktails.

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Elizabeth Kiy
Staff Writer
Liz is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.
She particularly enjoys marathoning TV show and talking about book adaptations (she has usually read the book years ago), coming of age films, good screenwriting, queer characters and the darkest of dark comedies. In her free time she writes a lot of bad poetry, twisted fairytales, and punk diatribes. A few years ago she set out to write a simple novel which has since morphed into a crazy sci-fi/fantasy/coming of age epic which at this point she may never finish. Any day now she plans to start blogging at Purple Submersible and twittering @Liz_Kiy.

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Jenny Lapekas
Staff Writer
Jenny received her Master of Arts degree in English at Kutztown University and her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Communications with a minor in Women’s Studies at Alvernia University, where she is now a part-time instructor. Her work has appeared in Jump Cut and BROAD magazine. Her interests include menstrual studies, including literacy, activism, and capitalism. She is hopelessly in love with her two chihuahuas, Lola and Gatsby.

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Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman
Staff Writer
Cheyenne is a writer and digital content manager who builds websites and other nerdy computer stuff. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014, majoring in Multimedia Journalism and minoring in American Sign Language. She loves researching and writing about race in the media, especially in pop culture and video games. She also writes at Creators Co and on her own website here: www.cheyennecheyenne.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @heycheyennehey.

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Colleen Martell
Staff Writer
Colleen’s first foray into professional writing was the publication of an acrostic poem in Otterwise, a zine for vegetarian kids, when she was in the third grade. Since then, her writing has appeared in Feminist Teacher, Feminist Formations, Defiant Daughters: 21 Women on Art, Activism, Animals, and The Sexual Politics of Meat, and The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal. She received her Ph.D. from the English Department at Lehigh University, with a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is especially excited about: all things bodies, theories & practices of political resistance, vegan ice cream, and tweeting @elsiematz.

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Brigit McCone
Staff Writer
Brigit McCone is an Irish writer/director and occasional cabaret performer. She trained in Russian and drama, worked on a PhD on the literary closeting of Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde, and published Ebook ‘The Erotic Adventures of Vivica’ under cabaret pseudonym Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. She’s currently developing a radio drama and a soulful bellydance-drama about seals.

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Andrea Morgan
Staff Writer
Andrea Morgan is a Baltimorean currently living in Denver. They write about film and television. Andrea is a queer person of color, and their perspective stems from a life spent on the boundaries of race, class, and gender. Andrea’s writing has appeared on Bitch Flicks, The Bilerico Project, and The Rainbow Hub.

Andrea is one of the chosen few who experiences autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), and can only fall asleep to softly played Mr. Wizard clips! Follow Andé on Twitter for more fun facts!

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Amanda Morris
Staff Writer
Dr. Amanda Morris is a writer, scholar, photographer and traveler who has lived in Pennsylvania and Alabama and is working on visiting all 50 states (she’s currently achieved 41). She teaches writing and rhetoric at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, loves teaching students creative nonfiction and Indigenous Rhetorics, and recently spent three years as the University Writing Center Director. Her academic writing can be found in Rhetoric Review, Epiphany, WSQ, Journal of American Culture, South Atlantic Review, and The Literary Encyclopedia. In her pre-academic life, Amanda spent a decade as a journalist with extensive and varied publication experience, and another decade as a media buyer for various advertising agencies. Amanda spends her free time cooking, fishing, gardening, and dreaming up new writing projects to tackle. Fun fact: Amanda finished her doctorate in four years, defending her dissertation on her 40th birthday, thus proving that you are never too old to go back to school.

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Katherine Murray
Staff Writer
Katherine Murray has real degrees in psychology, English and creative writing, as well as an honorary doctorate she gave herself in watching TV from the couch. In addition to Bitch Flicks and the weird diary she keeps of all the media she interacts with, she’s also written for sites like PopMatters, Cinefilles, and Bright Lights Film Journal. She currently lives in Toronto, where she routinely misjudges the commute time and arrives an hour early for most things.

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Gaayathri Nair
Staff Writer
Gaayathri is a writer currently located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, although this is set to change soon. She is the child of diaspora two times over and is passionate about all forms of social justice. She likes to travel and prefers television to movies; however, she feels a strange compulsion to watch all movies that have fish-eating people in them, no matter how terrible they are. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Studies from the University of Auckland and she has spent her formative years working at various types of feminist organisations from the community to the regional in both New Zealand and around Asia. Her work has been featured around the feminist blogosphere including Flyover Feminism, Feministe, and Leftstream as well as in United Nations and NGO publications. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

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Rachel Redfern
Staff Writer
Rachel is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. While a big fan of campy 80s movies and eccentric sci-fi, she’s become a cable acolyte, spending most of her time watching HBO, AMC, and Showtime. For good stories about food-poisoning and bungee jumping, as well as rants about sexism and slow drivers, follow her on Twitter at @RachelRedfern2, on Facebook, or at http://30minutesbeforeeating.policymic.com/.

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Josh Ralske
Staff Writer
Josh Ralske was born in New York City and grew up in Rockville Centre, Long Island. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, Bard College, and Fordham University. Josh has been writing about film and television for nearly twenty years. He has also programmed film series and judged festivals. He was raised by creative, erudite parents who encouraged him to appreciate the arts. Instead, he became a film critic.

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Sarah Smyth
Staff Writer
Sarah Smyth is currently studying for a PhD in film at the University of Southampton, UK. Her PhD focuses on contemporary British female filmmakers, and is part of a larger project called Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK, 2000-2015, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Sarah received her Master’s degree in Critical Theory from the University of Sussex in 2014, which was funded by the Chancellor’s Masters Scholarship after her application focused on Kim Kardashian, to whom she now owes her entire academic career. She also has a BA degree in English from the University of Southampton, UK, where she won an award for Outstanding Dissertation. Sarah is interested in all aspects of female filmmaking and representation, as well as issues of sexuality, nationality, race, stardom and celebrity culture. She also writes for lifestyle and homeware store, The Good Times Homestore. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahsmyth91, and keep up-to-date on the Calling the Shots project either on Twitter @WomenCallShots or through their website.

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Erin Tatum
Staff Writer
Erin Tatum is a social media marketer and writer. She lives in Pennsylvania with her numerous dogs and birds. Her passions include animals, intersectional feminism, and baking. She is a diehard foodie with a weakness for bad reality TV.

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Max Thornton
Staff Writer
Max is a queer Ph.D. student who grew up on three different continents. UK is passport country; New Jersey is currently home. He likes theology, intersectional feminism, and pop culture, and blogs about these things at Gay Christian Geek.