Bitch Media’s Fellowships for Writers program offers a series of three-month intensive writing fellowships whose goal is to develop, support, and amplify emerging, diverse voices in feminist, activist, and pop-culture media. The program is directed by Bitch cofounder Andi Zeisler.
We couldn’t be more proud to introduce you to our cohort of amazing past fellows below. Visit our staff page to learn about our current fellows. Ready to apply yourself? You can find updates and information on the writing fellowships program here.
2020 Writing Fellows
Padmini Parthasarathy | Writing Fellow in Sexual Politics
Padmini is a Bay Area-based journalist. She mostly explores the intersections of gender, identity, labor, and space, most recently in a piece about the New Orleans stripper struggle, but her head will be turned by any storythat involves bravery, vulnerability, andaradical re-imagining of the future.
Read Padmini’s Work as a 2020 Fellow
Trolling in the Deep: Deepfakes Are the Latest Innovation in Online Shaming
Unpopular Demand: Sex Work, the Supreme Court, and a Contentious Anti-Prostitution Pledge
Super Bad: Busting the Myth of Super Bowl Sex Trafficking
A Time to Sing: “Un Violador En Tu Camino” Becomes a Global Protest Anthem
Fighting Chances: Patriarchy, Pain, and Protest in India
Vanessa Taylor | Writing Fellow in Technology
Vanessa Taylor is a writer based in Philadelphia, although Minnesota will always be home. Through articles, essays, fiction, and more, she focuses on Black Muslim womanhood and technology. She is a 2019 Echoing Ida cohort member and the Editor-in-Chief of The Drinking Gourd, a Black Muslim literary magazine.
Read Vanessa’s Work as a 2020 Fellow
Pride and Joy: LGBTQ Muslims and the Power of Online Spaces
Worth of the Cool: The Cachet and Co-optation of Black Muslim Style
Not Your Crisis Daddy: Is Memeing Politicians Critique—or PR?
Lose Yourself: The Complex, Comforting Allure of Not Being Seen
Trimble | Writing Fellow in Pop Culture Criticism
Trimble is a writer who teaches courses in cultural studies and gender studies at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Her first book, Undead Ends: Stories of Apocalypse, is available from Rutgers University Press. Trimble is a puppy parent, horror nerd, and big-time NBA fan.
Read Trimble’s Work as a 2020 Fellow
Subject to Change: The Pronoun Discourse Has Always Been Versatile
Suspicious Minds: The Conspiracy Theories That Shaped America’s Paranoid Politics
Haunted Housewife: The Horror—and the Humor—of Shirley Jackson
The Fires This Time: “Little Fires Everywhere” Is an Indictment of Colorblind Whiteness
Nora Salem | Writing Fellow in Global Feminism
Nora Salem is a writer and teacher. A graduate of Virginia Tech’s MFA program, she completed a Fulbright research program in Kuala Lumpur and an Open City Fellowship at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York. She is lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two cats.
Read Nora’s Work as a 2020 Fellow
To Well and Back: The Bleak Future of Positive Thinking
Cancel Check: “Cancel Culture,” Abolition, and the Meaning of Accountability
2019 Writing Fellows
Adwoa-Atta Afful | Writing Fellow in Technology
Adwoa-Atta Afful was born in Toronto, ON, Canada and, except for a short stint in Montreal, has lived there for most of her life. She earned her bachelor’s degree at McGill University and recently completed a master’s program in urban planning. Her writing often explores the intersections of technology, pop culture, gender, and race. She has written pieces for OkayAfrica and The Awl, as well as for the Toronto-based blog The Ethnic Aisle.
Over the course of her education, she has developed a strong interest in cities and technology. She is especially interested in examining the implications of the growing role that tech companies are playing in city building for Black communities, women, and gender nonbinary people across Toronto and other major cities in North America.
Read Adwoa’s Work as a 2019 Fellow
Ghosts in the Machine: Have We Entrusted Too Much to the Internet?
Here For a Black Planet: Solange’s New Album Sparks Nostalgia for a Pioneering Social-Media Platform
From Information Superhighway to Digital Runway: The Complicated Legacy of Fashion Blogging
Unzuck Your Life: A Post-Facebook Vision for Online Organizing
Inside Job: Can We Achieve Social Justice on a Platform Built to Exploit?
Whoa, Canada: Toronto Can’t Be Tech’s City of the Future until It Reckons with Its Past
Aline Dolinh | Writing Fellow in Pop Culture Criticism
Aline Dolinh is a Vietnamese-American writer, former teen, and current undergraduate at the University of Virginia. She loves watching 1980s horror movies, teen soaps, and all period dramas starring Keira Knightley. In addition to cultural criticism, she also writes poetry and creative nonfiction. In the past, she’s served as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal, and her recent writing on pop culture can be found online at Film School Rejects and Vinyl Me, Please.
Read Aline’s Work as a 2019 Fellow
Guilty Parties: “Big Little Lies’” Glorious Reflections on Female Penitence
Teenage Kicks: “Booksmart” is an Earnest, Affirming Fantasy of Feelings
Boss Butch: “Gentleman Jack’s” Warm, Irreverent Take on 19th-Century Lesbian Desire
What’s Our Damage?: Revisiting the Legacy of the Teenage Alpha Bitch
Mallika Khanna | Writing Fellow in Global Feminism
Mallika Khanna is an aspiring academic from New Delhi, India. She majored in English and International Studies at Trinity College in the United States. Her move across the world is reflected in her work, which grapples with the immigrant identity, postcolonial complexes, and global and transnational feminisms. Her writing has been published in Himal magazine, Kajal magazine and The Establishment.
Having experienced the exclusivity of siloes in academia firsthand, Mallika is invested in a fundamental rethinking of how academic thought is disseminated. By writing for multiple platforms, she hopes to contribute to the larger project of democratizing academia and making scholarly thought more accessible. To this end, she is currently interning for The Wire, an independently funded, analytical media publication based in India. Find her at mallikakhanna.com and @mangomallika
Read Mallika’s Work as a 2019 Fellow
Fashion Victims: Can Creativity Survive If the Hustle Never Stops?
Burning Issue: “Embrace of the Serpent“ Sees Capitalist Destruction through Indigenous Eyes
Hot Mic: Priyanka Chopra’s Selectively Woke Stardom Is a Strategic—and Risky—Decision
Work in Progress: The Indian Directors Highlighting Depictions of Household Labor
Pure Heart: How “Jane the Virgin” Turned Empathy into Power
Gazed and Confused: How Do We Define the “Female Gaze” in Film?
Noa Azulai | Writing Fellow in Sexual Politics
Noa Azulai is a writer, dancer, and sex-positive feminist activist from Brooklyn, New York, where her family has owned a café for more than 25 years. Because of this, she cherishes vibrant community and excellent latte art. She currently attends Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she studies political science, manages a student-run café-meets-art-space, and directs the WesBurlesque body-positive dance show. She has previously written for Broadly, focusing mostly on feminist culture critique. She also writes about toxic masculinity, Judaism, decolonizing college campuses, and being wary of $30 “Feminist!” tote bags. Excite her with songs on a mandolin and/or a local t-shirt shop.
Read Noa’s Work as a 2019 Fellow
Sticky Fingers: What Have We Learned from a Decade of Sexting?
Dirty Minds: The Evolution—and Queering—of Sex-Advice Columns
Scared Silly: Jenny Slate’s “Stage Fright” Gives New Meaning to the Phrase “Standing up to Fear”
Dicks in a Box: The Enduring Fear of Penis-Snatching Witches
Me Who?: Debbie Harry’s “Face It” and the Challenge of Addressing Outmoded Rape Narratives
2018 Writing Fellows
Jamila Brown | Global Feminism
Jamila Aisha Brown is an Afro-Latina womanist and mujercista who is a child of the Americas and a global citizen of the African diaspora. She is a writer, albeit reluctant, who is passionate about amplifying voices from the global South and challenging white supremacy and imperialism. Jamila is a digital strategist by day, an Assistant Adjunct professor at NYU by night, and radical fashionista 24/7/365… and sometimes 366.
Read Jamila’s Work as a 2018 Fellow
Amara Y Mas: Race, Ethnicity, and Afro-Latinx Womanhood
Beyond Resistance: Our new Global Feminism Fellow Considers What’s Next
Naseem Jamnia | Technology
A former scientist, Naseem Jamnia is a current MFA fiction student at the University of Nevada, Reno. They’ve written for The Rumpus, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, and other sites, and they’re the coauthor of Positive Interactions with At-Risk Children (Routledge, 2019). You can follow their misadventures on Twitter and find out more on their website.
Read Naseem’s Work as a 2018 Fellow
Love Removal Machine: The Future of Outsourcing Sex
Access (Sm)all Areas: Disabled Gamers vs. the Industry’s Status Quo
Of Mice and Men: When Research Excludes Female Rodents, Human Women Lose
Rise of the Machines: Robot Replacement Is a Labor Issue
Polarizing Science: How Denialism—on Both Sides of the Aisle—Puts the Work of Science in Jeopardy
The Grant Tour: Following the Money in Science Research
The Lab is Not Neutral: Why We Need Scientific Literacy
Jourdain Searles | Pop Culture Criticism
Jourdain Natasha Searles hails from Augusta, Georgia. She has a B.A. in Communications: TV & Cinema from Augusta University and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She writes cultural criticism, screenplays, plays and creative nonfiction. She cohosts the weekly Bad Romance podcast with fellow comedian and writer Bronwyn Isaac. Each week, they analyze a bad romantic film as well as provide criticism for the genre as a whole.
Jourdain is a life-long student of film. She created the media criticism website, fishnet cinema. Jourdain is the primary contributor, with guest pieces written exclusively by women and femmes. She performs stand-up comedy all over New York City. Her monthly stand-up show Madams of the Universe has been at QED Astoria since 2016. She has also performed at Union Hall, Broadway Comedy Club, the PIT, Under St. Marks, the Creek and the Cave and the Footlight among many other venues.
Jourdain is a queer feminist and leftist. She is also visually disabled, which is a subject she discusses frequently within her work. With her writing and comedy, she strives to represent women of color in all their complexities.
Read Jourdain’s Work as a 2018 Fellow
Her Neck, Her Back: The Past and Future of Women’s Orgasms Onscreen
Time Bombs: “Her Smell” and “Vox Lux” Let Viewers Fill in the Blanks
You’ve Heard This One Before: The Zero-Sum Legacy of “A Star Is Born”
Drawing the Line: TV Animation Beyond the Boys’ Club
What it Feels Like for a Girl: “Eighth Grade” Rewrites Tired Social-Media Stereotyping
Searching for Detroit: “Sorry to Bother You’s” Female Lead Is More Symbol Than Person
Inconvenient Women: “Disobedience” Tests Religion, Passion, and Choice
Abby Minor | Sexual Politics
Abby Minor works on poems, essays, quilts, and community art projects in Pennsylvania’s ridge-and-valley region, occupied Lenape territory, where she was raised and lives still. She is the founding director of Being Heard, a creative writing program that honors the voices and imaginations of her region’s elders, and also serves on the Board of Abortion Conversation Projects. In 2016 she was awarded first place in the Abortion Rights Poetry Contest, co-sponsored by The Abortion Care Network and Split This Rock. She’s the author of the poetry chapbook Plant Light, Dress Light, published in 2016 by dancing girl press, as well as an alumna of Smith College, the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Penn State, The Penland School of Crafts, and The Rensing Center’s Artist-in-Residence Program. Abby writes, teaches, and collaborates around issues of environment, gender, race, region, beauty, and reproductive freedom.
Read Abby’s Work as a 2018 Fellow
Mothers of Contention: For Female Authors, Parenthood and Legitimacy Are Still Linked
Reframing Abortion to Breathe Life into a “Culture of Death”
When It Comes to Reproductive Rights, We Need More Than Science on Our Side
Undecided: The Reliable Romanticizing of Unplanned Parenthood
Ray of Light: Amy Ray’s New Album Gives Voice to a Rural Resistance
Kin in the Game: Social Change Can’t Just Be For “Families”
Controlling Interest: Revisioning the Binary of Abortion and Contraception
2017 Writing Fellows
Aqdas Aftab | Global Feminism
Aqdas was born in Lahore, and grew up in Islamabad, two cities where she first learned different—and at times conflicting—forms of feminisms from her mother, grandmothers, aunts, and teachers. She came to the United States to study literature at Smith College, where she continued to be around many conflicting feminisms, ranging from liberal white feminism to women-of-color feminism with ideologies inspired by Audre Lorde. After participating in activist groups in Pakistan and feminist PoC spaces in the United States, Aqdas’s gender politics became strongly intersectional and anti-colonial.
Interested in decolonizing mainstream gender movements, Aqdas believes in centering the voices of trans and queer people of color in global feminist movements. She also believes in the importance of critically exploring how feminism gets co-opted for imperialistic, islamophobic, and racist purposes. Aqdas is currently a graduate student in English Literature at the University of Maryland, where she is working on representations of non-normative bodies in postcolonial fiction. When she is not reading or writing, Aqdas can be found biking, listening to old Urdu ghazals, and cooking experimentally.
Read Aqdas’s Work as a 2017 Fellow
Visibility or Complicity?: Western Capitalism Gets Its Hands on the Hijab
The Trouble With the Model Muslim: Islamophobic Muslims and the War on Terror
Reading Chimamanda Adichie Today: On Racism and Transphobia in Feminism
Appropriating Audre: On the Need to Locate the Oppressor within Us
Queering Islamophobia: The Homonationalism of the Muslim Ban
Invisibilized Resistance: Our 2017 Writing Fellow in Global Feminism Introduces Herself
Vanessa Borjon | Reproductive Rights and Justice
Vanessa Borjon is the daughter of a Zacatecano immigrant and a southwest side of Chicago Chicana. She received her BA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Columbia College Chicago in 2015. Her writing explores themes of sexuality, xicanisma, and growing up in rural Illinois. Since 2015 she has been working as a teaching artist in various alternative high schools in Chicago where she facilitates youth dialogue around poetry and literature to build social-emotional skills. Her poetry has been previously published in the Columbia Poetry Review, Corazónland Review, Quaint Magazine, Nepantla, and the Shade Journal, among others.
Read Vanessa’s Work as a 2017 Fellow
I Learned It on YouTube: What Online Beauty Gurus Can—or Can’t—Teach Us About Sex
Four Solaces: Reflections on Hope, Change, and Reproductive Justice
Jane, Aired: An Underground Abortion Collective Becomes a Hot Media Property
Abuelita Knows Best: La Loba Loca Offers an Alternative to Westernized Reproductive-Health Knowledge
Monuments and Monstrosities: Confronting the Racism behind Reproductive Research
Okay, Flow: Evolving the Identity of the Menstrual-Product Market
No More “Good Girls”: YA Needs to Get Real about Reproduction
Bemnet Gebrechirstos | Pop Culture Criticism
Bemnet Gebrechirstos was born in Ethiopia, raised in D.C., sometimes lives in Maryland, and is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree from Scripps College in California. They write both fiction and nonfiction that is always about womanism, radical love, accountability, and resistance narratives. They spend most of her time involved in community organizing, doing activist work and zine making as an editor for Our Sound (based out of Scripps). As a community organizer, they are a part of student mobilization towards decolonization and has worked with various nonprofit organizations in helping high-potential youth from intersectional backgrounds. They are incredibly excited to share a number of her thoughts on pop culture criticism!
When not reading, writing, or working towards societal liberation, they are watching Steven Universe, listening to their favorite podcast The Read, collecting existentialist memes, or exploring various forms of art.
Read Bemnet’s Work as a 2017 Fellow
We Need More Than Just Crumbs: In Search of Africa’s Afrofuturist Narratives
Don’t Get Comfortable: Culture-Jamming Cardi B and “Bodak Yellow”
Black Queerness Is Peak Blackness: Mykki Blanco’s Journey out of This World
An Old Story in a Neo Hat: In “Neo Yokio,” Futuristic Capitalism Looks Very Familiar
This World Looks Familiar: “Steven Universe’s” Anticolonial Critique
Fear of a Black Future: How Hollywood Co-Opts the Revolution
Mailee Hung | Technology
Mailee Hung is a writer, editor, and cultural critic based out of San Francisco, California. She earned her MA in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in 2016, where she wrote her thesis on prosthetics in Western contemporary pop culture. Her work focuses on the discursive and material intersections of technology and the human body. She is especially interested in the ways in which technologies define sociobiological norms and render only certain bodies culturally and scientifically intelligible.
An avid outdoor enthusiast, Mailee also writes about environmental conservation, rock climbing, and reclaiming adventure narratives and mountain literature for marginalized perspectives. When she’s not reading or watching sci-fi, she can usually be found somewhere in or near the Sierras, chuffing up trad routes or heckling other boulderers from a crashpad. She is easily bribed with dumplings or gummy candy.
Read Mailee’s Work as a 2017 Fellow
Biopower to the People: Fitness Trackers Are Redefining What It Means to Be a Human Subject
Raw Materials: Will Teched-Up Clothing Change Fashion’s Gendered Image?
More Than Our Machines: Aesthetics and Prosthetics in Sci-Fi Film
Human Subjects: Should We Rely on Technology for Transcendence?
Body Conscious: Who Gets to Be a Cyborg?
There’s a Hack for That: Breaking down the Epistemology of a Technocult
Better, Fitter, Feminist: Can the Optimized Body Be Intersectional Too?
2016 Writing Fellows
Catherine Young | Pop Culture Criticism
Catherine Young is a Trinidadian writer currently based in Tobago, and the creator of the feminist pop culture blog BattyMamzelle. After graduating from Boston University in 2012 with a BA in Photojournalism, she returned home, abandoned her camera, and focused on writing with a focus on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and media representation. In 2013, her essay “Solidarity is for Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications of her VMA Performance” (originally published on Jezebel’s Groupthink) went viral, garnering more than one million unique views. Another essay, “This Is What I Mean When I Say White Feminism,” continues to be cited as an explainer on intersectionality. Her work has also appeared on Persephone Magazine and Bitch Flicks. She is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications at the University of Leicester (by distance learning), and hopes to continue writing about media representation, its effects on larger culture, and its power to change social attitudes.
Read Catherine’s Work as a 2016 Fellow
Male Tears for Fears: Embracing the Ironic Performance of Misandry
Bwitch, Please: An Interview with Johanna Middleton and Martine Moore
Reboot and Rally: The Revolutionary Opportunities Inherent in Reupping Franchise Favorites
Performance Anxiety: Why I’m Here to Watch Drake Worship Rihanna
On “Orange is the New Black” and the Destruction of Black Bodies
When Visibility Isn’t Enough: Abigail Mills and the Failed Promise of “Sleepy Hollow”
Sarita Santoshini | Reproductive Rights and Justice
Sarita Santoshini was born in the state of Assam in Northeast India and spent the first 10 years of her life waking up to see monkeys and elephants in her backyard and cycling through the lanes of a former British tea garden that she called home. School and college took her to different parts of India, and she studied Mass Media in the Hogwarts-like compounds of St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. Her work has combined her passion for travel and writing: She wrote for Travel Secrets magazine, interned with Condé Nast Traveller India, and was the content editor for the travel startup SaffronStays. In June 2015, she moved back to Assam to focus her writing on the Northeast region, where she reports on human rights, including child trafficking and witch hunting. Her work has been published in Al Jazeera, Roads & Kingdoms, and National Geographic Traveller India. When not traveling or writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and 20-year-old pet parrot.
Read Sarita’s Work as a 2016 Fellow
Birds, Bees, and Beyond: Toward More Inclusive Sex Ed In India
All in the Family: Men’s Crucial Role in The Fight For Reproductive Health In India
Access Denied: The Impact of Child Marriages on Healthcare for Young Girls in India
Right to Work: Sex Workers in India Organize to Fight Discrimination
Safe Passage: Access to Abortion in India
A Fate Better Than Death: Communities Unite to Fight Maternal Mortality in Assam
Agents of Ishq Gives Sex Ed a Good Name
Felicia L. Montalvo | Technology
Felicia L. Montalvo is excited to have the opportunity to write about how humans interact—and co-evolve—with technology. After graduating with a degree in Sociology from Barnard College, Felicia began her post-college journey into the digital marketing world, where she wrote ad copy for clients ranging from cable TV networks to software companies. In between copywriting and mastering the art of PowerPoint formatting, she trained in improv at the UCB and Magnet theaters in New York, performing in several shows around the city. In 2013, she decided to stuff her belongings into a pink suitcase and jump across the pond to the United Kingdom, where she worked at a synthetic biology company, creating software to edit the human genome and contemplating the ways next-gen tech will affect our collective values and ethics.
When she’s not pondering the fate of humanity, Felicia enjoys subjecting her roommates to impromptu puppet shows and lecturing Londoners on the merits of New York bagels.
Read Felicia’s Work as a 2016 Fellow
Breaking out of the Brexit Binary
Debugging Bias: Busting the Myth of Neutral Technology
Access, Not Just Google: Are Infosystems Erasing Women’s Work?
Bioliteracy Sounds Awesome, but It Needs to Be Inclusive, Too
Chariots of Feminist Fire: A New Ride Share App Aims to Serve Only Women
These Aren’t the AIs We’re Looking For: Why We Need to Be Smarter about Intelligent Design
Who Disrupts the Disruptors? We Need to Change the Way We Talk about Innovation
SXSW Interactive: The Ultimate Experience in Branded Reality
Maneo Refiloe | Global Feminism
Maneo Refiloe Mohale is a queer, Black feminist writer, poet, and performer born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She writes about race, media, queerness, survivorship, language, history, and silliness, and her work has appeared in print and online publications including Jalada, the Beautiful Project, From the Root Zine, Ignite!, and Expound. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in History and International Relations from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where her undergraduate thesis was on race, resistance, and media in early-apartheid South Africa—a great excuse to watch as many 1950s South African films and listen to as many old jazz recordings of Dolly Rathebe as she could find.
When she’s not writing, Maneo is either baking, learning how to play the mbira (a traditional Zimbabwean thumb piano), hanging out with her amazing family, or generally flourishing among all the Black-womxn, non-binary magic around her.
Read Maneo’s Work as a 2016 Fellow
Black Feminist Joy: A Photo Essay
Ones to Watch: Five African Webseries Created by Black Feminists
On #Magic: The Contradictions, Resilience, and Creativity of Black Feminism in South Africa
Backtalk: White Fragility and South Africa’s Queer Femme Web Series
Back to Writing Fellows Application
