Not sure what to get that sassy, Shameless girl in your life this holiday season? We make it easy for you. Give her a meaningful, informative, entertaining gift that she actually wants — a whole year of Shameless for only $10!

You can give Shameless as a gift for only $10! That’s right, for only $10 a strong young woman in your life will receive Shameless for a full year (three issues). You can buy and give as many subscriptions as you like for only $10 each ($20 in the US) and we’ll send the lucky recipients their gift on your behalf!

$10 SHAMELESS SUBSCRIPTIONS MAKE THE PERFECT GIFT FOR EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST!

Giving the gift of Shameless is a great way to support vital independent media. Shameless is Canada’s award-winning independent voice for smart, strong, sassy young women. It’s a fresh alternative to typical teen magazines, for girls who know there’s more to life than makeup and diet tips. Packed with articles about arts, culture and current events, Shameless reaches out to readers who are often ignored by mainstream media: freethinkers, queer youth, young women of colour, punk rockers, feminists, intellectuals, artists, activists.

You can even take advantage of this holiday offer and give yourself a well-deserved gift! You’ll get a whole year of smart, well-written, thought-provoking reading material. What better way to start the New Year off right? (Or, if you’re already a subscriber, for the same price, we’ll be happy to extend your subscription for one more year.)

Subscriptions are available through PayPal right now! All prices are in Canadian Dollars (CAD).

Our latest issue, on newsstands now!

The 2009 Scream Literary Festival Presents
Youth These Days: The Scream Youth Workshop
Sunday, July 12th, 2009 – 1 pm
The Loop Studio at Wychwood Barns
601 Christie Street, Toronto
Cost: PWYC

The book may be dead, but words aren’t. What’s old is new again —
narrative hip hop music is a dynamic occurrence of a thriving oral
literary tradition. Led by hip hop artist Paul Sackichand and professional
storyteller Rico Rodriguez, the Scream’s youth workshop provides an
opportunity to learn how to add suspense to your rhymes and rhythm to your
stories—participants will get to create, as well as perform, their own
narrative raps.

Check out this rad retreat happening in Manitoba this summer!

The Youth Activist Retreat is a free, five-day overnight camp that brings together activists aged 16-20. YAR is a great place to meet other young folks who are interested in social change and to learn new skills and ideas.

YAR 2009 is being held August 10th to 14th in Clearwater, Manitoba.

During the week of the retreat, participants will take part in workshops and other events to learn from other experienced activists about different political struggles and issues.

The retreat offers a variety of workshops to accommodate all levels of experience. Whether you just want to sit back and listen, or work with others to develop strategies for organizing, YAR is a great place to meet other youth who care about similar issues.

Workshops are taught by people who have experience working for social change, including organizers, activists, and artists.

Some of this year’s workshops will include Worker’s Rights and Unions, Anti-Racism, Colonization in Canada, Ecological Justice, Gender Oppression and Heterosexism, Direct Action, and many others. There will also be creative workshops offered on silk-screening, radio, puppet-making, and zines!

The retreat is completely free; all that is asked for is your time and commitment. Some travel subsidies are available for people who live outside of Winnipeg.

YAR is an anti-racist, LGBT*-positive event, and is wheelchair accessible.

Register early, because spots are filling up fast!

VISIT YAR’S WEBSITE FOR MORE INFO: http://youthactivistretreat.ca

There’s a great write-up of the She’s Shameless launch and an interview with editor Megan Griffith-Greene, posted on BlogTO:

When I was a kid there was Chickadee magazine and then Owl, and then the thinking girl was unceremoniously dumped off the science train of the Mighty Mites, and into the world of Tiger Beat.

“Maybe you can think big thoughts again when you’re older,” the magazine rack seemed to say. “But the teen and pre-teen magazines that tide you over until then will be wholly populated by doe-eyed boys, glossy ads for lip gloss, and vanilla-flavoured sex tips. Be prepared for a solid decade where your interests are presumed limited to bangles and boyfriends.”

Then 2004 rolled around, and a Canadian upstart broke through these piles and piles of flippant frou frou and frizz — Shameless, a magazine “for girls who get it.”

Read the entire post here.

(L-R) She’s Shameless on sale now, Teen Workshop Leader and celebrated author Ibi Kaslik, Megan signs books. Image via BlogTO.

Also, check out coverage and a great photoset of the event on Newsfix:

She’s Shameless, a compilation from emerging and established female writers, shares honest, intimate, sometimes embarrassing stories about growing up. Edited by Stacey May Fowles and Megan Griffith-Greene, the magazine’s publisher and editor-in-chief, this book talks about things most people experienced in their teenage lives but were too ashamed to speak up about.

The anthology is in bookstores now, so you can order or buy it from your local independent, ask for it at your local library, or get it online here or here.

She’s Shameless launches TONIGHT in Toronto!

SHE’S SHAMELESS / SHE’S WRITING
Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West, Toronto
Tues June 23; 8pm (doors 7:30pm) $5 (or free with book purchase)
With readings from Dianah Smith, Shannon Gerard, Zoe Whittall and Shannon Webb-Campbell.

Prom and anti-prom attire encouraged!

Here’s what people are already saying about She’s Shameles:

“An offshoot of the self-described, ‘fiercely independent’ Shameless magazine, She’s Shameless is an anthology that boasts an array of autobiographical accounts taken from the lives of female writers, thinkers, and activists who have learned to be unashamed of themselves and the paths their lives have taken. Body image, teen pregnancy, sexual discovery and creative pursuits are all fair game for conversation in these poignantly honest firsthand narrations of PoMo coming-of-age.”
-Kelli Korducki, This Magazine

“Cautionary tales abound — a pregnant 16-year-old contemplates, then rejects, abortion; a fourth-grader’s French teacher peers down her shirt; a virginity is lost to a slimy married father twice her age — but that’s not the point….Young women are rarely ever heard from in society. It’s adults, often men, that are invited on TV to wring their hands about teen-girl crises (pregnancy, anorexia, depression, promiscuity) and asked how to ‘fix’ these problems…Grow up, be smart, take responsibility, teens are told — but in practice they’re not often given that agency, which is what makes She’s Shameless remarkable. The essays neither condone nor condemn; some are full of regret, but the contributors’ bios tell of eventual successes — writers are ‘proud feminist mamas,’ university graduates, artists.”
-Canice Leung, Metro

Read an interview with Stacey May Fowles at Open Book Toronto, an interview with Megan Griffith-Greene at Masthead Online, and an interview with Ibi Kaslik at Pages Books and Magazines.

Many thanks to Tightrope Books, NOW Magazine, and Pages Books and Magazines.

See you tonight!

The lovely Canice Leung gives She’s Shameless some love in today’s edition of Metro:

As a high-schooler, I spewed my emotions into a well-guarded journal. In English class, I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. (Her theory: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.”) I wondered if self-reflection was my own rite of passage — a notion explored in She’s Shameless, an anthology to be released next week by Shameless, a Toronto-based alt-magazine for young women.

The essays are honest, but as co-editors Stacey May Fowles and Megan Griffith-Greene wrote in the book’s introduction, “This is not an after-school special.”

The voices of young women are rarely heard. Adults, often men, are invited on TV to wring their hands about teen-girl crises and asked how to “fix” these problems. This is what makes She’s Shameless remarkable. The essays neither condone nor condemn; some contributors display regret, but their bios tell of eventual successes as “proud feminist mamas,” university graduates, artists.

Canice Leung is a former editor of Ryerson University feminist magazine McClung’s, copy editor at Metro, ardent feminist and loudmouth.

Read the entire review here.

She’s Shameless is fresh off the printer and will be across Canada in bookstores shortly. We’d like to take this moment to sincerely thank all of our wonderful contributors who made this book such a fantastic project. We hope you’ll enjoy reading their courageous and exciting contributions as much as we enjoyed working with them! We’d also like to thank the wonderful folks at Tightrope Books for being supportive of the project from day one.

If you’re in Toronto, you can already pick up your very own advance copy from Pages Books and Magazines. (We also encourage you to order the book from your local independent book store.)

And don’t forget the official launch, our first ever Prom/Anti-Prom, next Tuesday at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. We’ll be featuring contributors from the book, alongside some teen writing superstars, in a fun-filled night celebrating all our favourite shameless women and girls!

She’s Shameless / She’s Writing: June 23rd

She’s Shameless launches June 23rd in Toronto at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto!
SHE’S SHAMELESS / SHE’S WRITING

Shameless magazine, This Is Not A Reading Series and Tightrope Books celebrate the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back
Featuring contributions from Zoe Whittall, Emily Pohl-Weary, Julia Serano, Dianah Smith, Shannon Gerard, and many more.

(more inside…)

In the weeks leading up to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we’ll be posting sneak peak excerpts from the book.

E.J. MacBain is a writer and editor living in the Northeast. Her nonfiction has previously appeared in Hip Mama magazine. She is the proud feminist mama of a toddler son and a baby daughter.

I’m Still Here
E.J. MacBain

1982: Roller skates with rainbow knee-highs, braided friendship bracelets wet to the skin, blueberry Slurpees all summer from 7-Eleven, John Cougar cassette tapes of “Jack and Diane,” the secret purple-clad, girls-only club, and threats from the older junior high school girls in the public library, who pretend that Crayola markers are boys’ mini-dicks and suck them to show us: This is what you have to do when you get to seventh grade.

My parents’ divorce, my mother’s suddenly-single freak-out, the parties with her divorcée jet set, and her new boyfriends, boyfriends, boyfriends, while I sat with my friends and wondered about the state of their parents’ love (and sex) lives and why the Girl Scout badges never fit, why I never graduated even from Brownies, and why all the boys loved all the girls who didn’t look a thing like me, Kate, Heather, or Eve with her wicked thoughts and her slumber parties that turned to late-night viewings of the porn channel’s Midnight Blue. What would Prince do? Who was Sheila E., and how could she be so sexy and play the drums? Why was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue so titillating, and why did my Dad hide it? Were we the only ones who had to hunt so hard for soft-core porn?
(more inside…)

In the weeks leading up to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we’ll be posting sneak peak excerpts from the book.

Amy Saxon Bosworth lives and writes from her home in the mountains outside of Nederland, Colorado. Her essays have been featured in Hearing Loss Magazine, Mamaphonic, and Hands and Voices. Her novella The Mean Time was a 2006 semi-finalist for Tin House’s Summer Literary Seminar, Kenya. Her writing was also included in the anthology My Baby Rides the Short Bus (PM Press, 2009). She is currently at work on her second novel.

I Don’t Wear Cloaks
by Amy Saxon Bosworth

When I was small, an older cousin coaxed me into sprinkling salt onto a slug in our grandfather’s English ivy garden. I watched with shame as the creature suffered and died. I remembered this as I sat against the gray cinder block wall on the cold gym floor of my high school one day after winter break. I could think of only the slug curled in my belly. I was sixteen years old.

I had made an appointment to have the little slug salted but changed my mind after a I saw a tiny tot at the rodeo, dressed in Wranglers and boots, wearing a starched white shirt. The tiny cowboy looked so precarious perched so high on his father’s shoulders, so fragile, so human. I tried to reconcile that with what moved within me. I made up my mind: the little slug would grow.
(more inside…)