Kickass Women

History is filled with women doing all kinds of kickass stuff.

Smart Girls

Watch these girls... they're going places!

Inspiration

Need a dose of inspiration? Here you go.

SRPS Entertainment

Some of my entertainment recommendations with awesome female characters and stars.

She's Crafty!

Some of the awesome items made by kickass women!

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

She's a Genius - The Women of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program

The Class of 2015 MacArthur Fellows has been announced and, again, it's an exclusive club of brilliant minds -- scientists, artists, and thinkers -- who are challenging what we already know and leading us in new directions. This program is nicknamed the "Genius Grant" for good reason: each recipient is being honored for their ability to think in a completely new way, applying their particular brand of "genius" to whatever passion they pursue.
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer
This year nine remarkable women are being recognized for their efforts to share new discoveries, show us new ways of interacting, and bring us closer to the truth about what it is to be human.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Kickstart This! The A to Z Guide to Jobs for Girls

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but have been super busy with other stuff and let it slip. And that's really too bad, because I very much love this project and want to see it succeed.



The A to Z Guide to Jobs for Girls ABC Board Book, by Charles Dowd is a fantastic book featuring his adorable illustrations showing girls doing all kinds of amazing jobs. It's got kung fu champions and jackhammer operators and astronauts.

You may already know Charles C. Dowd from his other awesomely geeky projects such as Lilith Dark and Kidthulhu. Both are excellent and worth reading. For this new project, he teamed up with his kids to create a book showing little girls doing things that might not be traditionally thought of as "for girls."

I was able to chat with Charles about this project and am happy to share some of his comments with you all, in the hope that it will encourage you to back this project. What may have started out as a kind of ironic project aimed more at older geeks has instead turned into a book with a wide appeal. Of course, with few little kids in my world right now, I don't generally buy many board books, but you can be certain this one will be on my coffee table. But it's also an excellent board book in its own right, and deserves a place on the bookshelves of even the tiniest little book-chewer... er... reader.

SRPS: What was your inspiration for creating The A to Z Guide to Jobs for Girls?

CD: Well, I was discussing careers with my son who's sixteen now and already taking college credit courses in high school, and my daughter got into the conversation with us, and inevitably asked why boys can have some jobs that girls can't have. That question got my mind racing, and we talked about traditional gender roles at home and at work, and how it's silly to think that girls can't do certain things solely based on gender. So being an illustrator, I decided to make a sort of ironically gendered book for girls about careers. It started out as a side project but quickly turned into a whole thing!

SRPS: I love seeing your daughter in the video! How awesome was it to work with your kids on this project?

CD: It was great! They each helped me brainstorm the careers featured. My son helped out with the coloring process, and my daughter helped by narrating and starring in the campaign video. She's going to be a YouTube star one day very soon!

SRPS: How did you come up with an entry for each letter of the alphabet? Or, more accurately, how'd you pare it down to just one for each letter?

CD: Originally we were throwing out some really wild ideas like 'N is for Ninja' and 'E is for Evil Villain,' but as the project progressed I thought it might be better to stick with actual attainable professions. The other criteria was that it had to be fun to draw, so we stayed away from less visually exciting things. In order for kids to want to read it we tried to make the art fun and memorable.

We also made it a point to feature more than a few careers that are traditionally or stereotypically considered inappropriate for women, like Chef. That one always perplexed me, because traditionally, women stayed at home and did all of the cooking, but professionally men would be considered the best cooks. I mean, that's just crazy to me! In my mind that's a perfect example of what we're trying to call out with this book.

SRPS: You've had several Kickstarter projects in the past. Have you noticed any differences in how this one has gone? What has been the reception you've received so far?

CD: The reception so far has been great! The people that have supported the book have been very enthusiastic. I don't think I've ever had a project shared as widely as this one, so that's a great feeling. For whatever reason we haven't received much if any media support, so as a result we're kind of limping towards the finish, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel quite yet.

I did receive some nasty-grams when we first launched the campaign from some folks who disagree with the radical idea that women can do things, but I figure if I get hate mail it just means I'm onto something good. We chose Quarterback for Q, and some people just couldn't handle that one!

SRPS: Yes. Exactly! In this world, that kind of hate mail often means you're doing something right! I love that it's a board book. What was the inspiration for that decision?

CD: I made it an alphabet board book for toddlers so that kids could learn from the get-go that it's OK for girls to want to do things, even things that aren't traditionally considered "girl-things." I feel like biases are taught to children from a very young age, deliberately or otherwise, so I wanted this book to act as sort of a balance to that.

SRPS: What do you hope readers young and old will get out of The A to Z Guide to Jobs for Girls?

CD: I want them to learn right off the bat that regardless of gender, if a person has the drive, determination and the talent, they can pretty much pursue any career path they choose. Telling someone "You can't do that because you're a girl" is a crummy thing to say, and isn't based in anything but outdated attitudes about gender.

I couldn't agree more. I hope you'll all check it out and consider backing this project. There's less than a week left to help make this book a reality. Go get it!

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
please check out my Patreon.



You may also be interested in:

Samantha Smith, Cold War Princess
In 1982, the US and USSR were still quite deep in the cold war. It may be hard to remember now, but we were still worried about nuclear attacks. Not in the naive way the folks in the 50s and 60s were ducking under desks or building bunkers. By the late-70s and early-80s, we were pretty much aware that any nuclear attack would be the end of civilization as we know it, and survival was unlikely.


In case you need a reminder... you are amazing!
I just love this poem. I revisit it whenever I'm feeling a down or frustrated or a little powerless. You are amazing. As.you.are. Stronger than you know. More beautiful than you think. Worthier than you believe. More loved that you can ever imagine. Passionate about making a difference. Fiery when protecting those you love. Learning. Growing.
Happy Birthday - Geraldine Doyle
Today would have been the 90th birthday of Geraldine Hoff Doyle. If you don't know who she was, don't feel too bad. I only heard of her recently myself. If she looks familiar, it's because she was very likely the model for the "We Can Do It!" poster. But little information is available about her life.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Charlotte Moore Sitterly - Astrophysicist

Charlotte Moore Sitterly (September 24, 1898 – March 3, 1990)



This humble daughter of Quaker teachers went on to become one of the most important researchers in astronomy, with her works continuing to benefit science even now.

As a student at Swathmore College, she took a wide range of classes to expose herself to as much knowledge as possible. When it came time to pick a major, though, she went with the department in which she'd taken the most classes, which was Mathematics. And it's lucky for us that she did.

Upon graduation, her adviser recommended she apply to become a "mathematics computer" for astronomer Henry Norris Russell at the Princeton University Observatory. Whether her adviser knew how perfect a match this was or not is unknown, but history has proven that it was. She had only taken an introductory course in astronomy at Swathmore, but she was able to get up to speed very quickly working with Dr. Russell, a fast-thinking astrophysicist. Initially, her job was to carry out the mathematical calculations needed for his research, but soon she was also using the equipment to make readings.

Music Break - Flint Eastwood

I just heard this new song by Flint Eastwood for the first time earlier this week, and it has pretty much got me enthralled. It's beautiful and touching and gives me chills every time I listen to it.

And I've listened to it a dozen times or more.

It's haunting, but in a bittersweet way. Jax's voice is perfectly ethereal and sweet. And the acoustics are amazing. It turns out that it was recorded in a church. According to her website, the song is based on the final words her mother had for her. In fact, the whole EP is the creative product of her dealing with her mother's death.
"As the listener makes their way through the EP, they experience Jax making her way through her mother's illness and passing, railing against it, dealing with the aftermath associated with such a loss, eventually accepting it, and using it as a driving force to continue to create."
This sense of learning to carry on comes through loud and clear in "Find What You're Looking For." Her mother's words of advice for living a productive and happy life are inspirational in themselves. But to have turned them into a song that she can share with others, to share the burden of the pain of loss as well as the gift of love, that is what makes this song so beautiful. And, I'll wager the entire album Small Victories follows in the same vein.
"Small Victories comes from the idea that doing anything creative in life takes a lot of persistence, struggle, and hustle. It's easy to expect that the spoils will come easily and be immediately fruitful. But if you focus on the little things, the 'small victories,' you realize that it's those things that are the most rewarding. That's what keeps me going."


Jerilyn Jordan's review on AudioFemme is what brought it to my attention. If you love music and want to support women who make music or write about music, I highly recommend following their blog.

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
please check out my Patreon.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Google Science Fair Winner Olivia Hallisey!

Congratulations to Olivia Hallisey, the Grand Prize winner in the 2015 Google Science Fair!


Her project was an amazingly simple invention that will save countless lives around the world -- an Ebola Assay Card that allows fast detection of Ebola in remote locations, and can carry life-saving antibodies to the right places as quickly as possible. Her simple silk protein assay sets up in 30 minutes, costs less than $25, and can go for a week without refrigeration.

Winning the Grand Prize $50,000 scholarship will give her the financial support needed to make her card a multi-disease diagnostic assay, meaning it can save even more lives!

Brava Olivia! I can't wait to see what you do next!

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
please consider donating to my Patreon.



You may also be interested in:

Science Fair Rock Star - Lauren Rojas
Twelve year old Lauren Rojas's science project for school wasn't your typical science fair fare. Instead of building the ubiquitous baking soda volcano, she wanted to test the effects of altitude on air pressure and temperature. So she built a weather balloon, attached several cameras to record the view, and a high altitude computer to track the changes in temperature, air pressure and altitude.


Samantha Smith, Cold War Princess
In 1982, the US and USSR were still quite deep in the cold war. It may be hard to remember now, but we were still worried about nuclear attacks. Not in the naive way the folks in the 50s and 60s were ducking under desks or building bunkers. By the late-70s and early-80s, we were pretty much aware that any nuclear attack would be the end of civilization as we know it, and survival was unlikely.


Happy Birthday - Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit
During World War II, she went to work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground ballistics laboratory in Maryland. Not unlike many women working for the war effort, she was forced to take a position below her status while she watched men who had less experience take higher level jobs. Frustrated that women weren't getting the training they needed and the promotions they deserved...

Frances Mary Albrier - union organizer & civil rights activist

Frances Mary Albrier (September 21, 1898 – August 21, 1987)

Frances Mary Albrier is someone whose story took me completely by surprise. In my Women to Write About spreadsheet I had her name listed with "civil rights activist, union organizer" next to it. See, I've been on a kick about including the names and a short note for all the women I encounter in my other research, as a kind of reminder to look into them when I have the time. Or when I'm stumped on what to blog about for a specific date.

So, armed with the barest of notes, I went looking for info about her online. I found a couple of decent, if short, biographies, and only a couple of photos. I also pulled out my copy of Notable American Women: Completing the Twentieth Century and that's when things got really interesting. As it turns out, the note to myself was from her entry there, and while it's true that she was both of those things, that doesn't even begin to cover what this truly amazing and inspirational woman accomplished in her life.
"It was just automatic for me to stand up and tell a person, 'You're wrong. You're mistreating me. You're discriminatory. Why don't you give us a chance?'"

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Deepika Kurup

This is the last in an eight part series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifthsixth and seventh posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced tomorrow, September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!



Deepika Kurup is a bold young woman who is already making a difference in the world. She is another of that new breed of scientist using their knowledge to improve the environment for all. On a trip to India three years ago she was struck by the conditions of many water sources. Since then, she has become an advocate for social justice and an environmental steward. She has been tirelessly researching ways to improve drinking water as well as reaching out to educate others on this important issue.

Her goal seems deceptively simple: develop an environmentally friendly and economically viable technique for water purification. Her method involves both a filtration and photocatalytic process. The two are integrated into one unit, covering a wider variety of purification than each could achieve as separate units. The filtration removes particulate matter, while the photocatalytic composite disc -- a porous disc made from a combination of materials that are readily available -- removes bacteria.

The time to go from dirty to clean water is around 15 minutes, and the cost is well within reach of the poorest people it was intended for. The technology can be used to benefit anyone caught in the midst of an environmental crisis, from people in the most remote villages, as well as those in developed countries suffering from drought or other natural disasters.

It's no surprise that Deepika has already received numerous awards. Earlier this year she was presented with the President's Environmental Youth Award, and named one of Forbe's 30 Under 30. She's currently enrolled as a Freshman at Harvard, and I fully expect to see more of this amazing young woman in the future.

True to form, when asked what advice she would give to others, she replied with more science as a tool for social justice, saying, "We need young scientists to solve these grand challenges, as science has the power to help people find solutions to problems we never thought could be solved."

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Deepika Kurup.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Isabella O’Brien

This is the seventh in an eight part series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!



Isabella O’Brien is one of the fantastic new breed of scientists who are working to use science to improve the environment for everyone. Isabella was on a diving trip in Mexico when she saw first hand the devastation climate change is having on sea life, and especially on coral reefs. She was inspired to learn more about ocean acidification -- the process where the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide which lowers the pH balance, making it more acidic, which in turn weakens the shells of coral and other organisms.

She wondered if these waste shells, which are mostly calcium carbonate, were pulverized and added back into the water, would they create an alkaline buffer, effectively balancing out the pH and reducing further damage to these organisms? She was right: it did.

Fortunately, waste shells are somewhat easy to find as a byproduct of the seafood industry. Some are used in agriculture, but most waste shells are disposed of without being used. By grinding them up and returning them to the ocean somehow, we could dramatically reduce and perhaps even reverse ocean acidification.

This brilliant young woman seems to have already mastered the important advice she now offers to others: "My advice to other young scientists would be to be curious, ask questions and work on any subject you find interesting. Sometimes it will be difficult, and sometimes things go wrong and you may have to start again, but do not give up. Have fun and help change the world!" Hear hear!

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Isabella O’Brien.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Anika Cheerla

This is the sixth in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second, third, fourth and fifth posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!


Anika Cheerla (second from left in the photo above) is one of those amazingly well-rounded young adults you know you'll see more of as she grows up and into whatever amazing career she pursues. She's only 13 years old, but already she's an athlete, a musician, a coder, a philanthropist, a teacher, and a scientist and engineer. When her great-aunt was diagnosed with Alzheimer's she was inspired to set her sights on finding a way to improve existing diagnostic tools with the hope that earlier treatment could help delay onset and deterioration.

She set out to create an automated tool that could accurately diagnose Alzheimer's, using neural networks to train itself to diagnose Alzheimer's. Existing diagnostics include outdated mental tests and often results in doctors taking a "wait and see" approach, wasting valuable time when a patient could use beneficial medicine and other techniques to slow down the disease's progression.

Anika used her coding skills to create different neural net structures -- a single stage neural network, chained neural networks, and hierarchical neural networks -- to test each one on the ability to detect brain damage when presented with MRI scans and clinical features. She included fractal dimension, entropy and other information to boost the effectiveness, and proved that while MRI scans are important, they are not conclusive without mental examinations as well.

Amazingly, her classifier has a 95% accuracy!  She then used her coding skills to create a simplified user interface to make it easier for doctors to input the information.

Her takeaway on what she learned from this project? "What I took from this project, and what people should always remember is that you can stand on the shoulders of giants when you want to touch the stars."

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Anika Cheerla.

Photo source: California State Science Fair

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili

This is the fifth in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second, third and fourth posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!



Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili are two bright minds working to make the world a better place. Both of these brilliant 11th grade students at the International High School of Tuzla, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were inspired to follow a career in science after learning about Rosalind Franklin. The Google Science Fair is not their first event. Both have competed in chemistry and physics competitions in the past, which they credit for helping them hone the problem-solving skills they needed to tackle their latest research project.

These girls set out with the heady goal of finding an alternative energy source that would help achieve energy-efficiency, remain cost-effective, uphold standards of quality, and reduce pollution. Their source for this miracle biofuel? Chickens! Well, more precisely, their feathers.

The town where they live has a large poultry processing plant, so getting enough waste fathers to test their hypothesis was not a problem. The girls designed a two-reactor system (a pyrolysis reactor with an afterburner chamber) that would produce both by using the same process. They found that with minimal pre-processing the fat that occurs naturally in the feathers and is often a byproduct of chicken feather meal (a common livestock feed and fertilizer) is an excellent source of energy once it is removed, while the feathers themselves are remarkably good at storing hydrogen.

These brilliant young women are looking forward with the awareness that fossil fuels will be increasingly difficult and dangerous to come by and instead looked for ways to use existing waste to create a somewhat more sustainable source for fuel, as well as reducing pollution and providing local jobs.

When asked what she likes the most about studying science, Anela responded, "I just love the feeling of getting the right solution after thinking and rethinking." I couldn't agree more!

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Laura Steponavičiūtė

This is the fourth in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second and third posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!

Laura Steponavičiūtė is a remarkable young scientist with a bright future ahead of her in nano-technology, or whatever else she decides to pursue. Her mother, herself a sciences teacher, fostered a sense of curiosity and exploration in her young daughter, providing her with a wide variety of books and creative pursuits.

Recently, Laura became interested in learning more about nanotechnology, and more specifically, how these innovative nanoparticles actually interact with the environment and the various organisms they come into contact with. She was inspired to do more research when she learned that the titanium oxide nanoparticles that make sunscreen work tend to have a detrimental effect on coral reefs. As a swimmer applies sunscreen to her face, she may not realize that the minute particles that wash off are being carried away to where they can actually damage the environment they came to the ocean to enjoy.

In her research, she looked at gold nanoparticles and how they influenced the health of plants. She compared the effect these particles had on the growth of beans and algae, and how these could lead to both helpful and harmful consequences -- faster plant growth is good for crops, but terrible for fresh water in that it encourages algae blooms, which can lead to eutrophication and the death of the animal life in the water.

When asked why she wants to be a scientist, she answered, "I want to know answers to the questions that pop in my head while reading articles or discussing various topics. I want to help to improve our environment and help people. I see science as a way to do that." It's true.

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Laura Steponavičiūtė.

Photo source: Kauno diena

Monday, September 14, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Olivia Hallisey

This is the third in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here's the first and second posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!

Olivia Hallisey is a brilliant and determined young woman. I expect to see great things from her in the future. She's only a sophomore in high school, and already she has earned major science fair cred for her project to create a diagnostic tool for fighting Ebola and other highly infectious diseases. The picture above is from her win at the International Science and Engineering Fair, held earlier this year.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida

This is the second in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here's the first one.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!





Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida is a smart, environmentally-minded young scientist who lives in Delhi, but spends a fair amount of time traveling around the countryside, visiting with local farmers. It was on one of these trips where she learned about the different ways farmers were disposing of dried corn cobs once the kernels had been removed. The common methods of burning them, burying them or dumping them seemed wasteful to her, so she decided to look for ways to reuse them in a more productive manner.

Another pressing concern of rural communities is water safety. Lalita wondered if there was a way she could combine these two concerns and come up with a way to use corn cobs to purify water. Initially she tried making a hole into the center of a corn cob and pouring dirty water into it and measuring the quality of the water that came out. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the particles in the water had been trapped inside the cob.

As it turns out, they make an excellent and simple filtration system, absorbing as much as 80% of common contaminants. Their high mechanical strength, rigidity and porosity combined with their easy availability make them a ideal option for rural communities.
Hence, contaminants like oxides of salts, detergents, suspended particles, coloured dyes, oil and grease get adsorbed in the surface of the corn cobs. Some of the heavy metals are also adsorbed by corn cobs. If the drain pipe of the household is connected to a chamber having different layers of corn cobs in partition layers or to an S-trap pipe having corn cobs, it will separate about more than 70-80 % of contaminants including suspended particles from the waste water. Similarly the factory out let pipes carrying effluents must be opened to five inter-connected chambers having long slices of corn cobs, pieces of corn cobs, powder of corn cobs, activated charcoal of corn cobs and fine sand for the easy adsorption of TSS and chemical toxicants both organic and inorganic. Corn cobs fitted to bamboos buried on the ground floor of the ponds and allowed two to three weeks to stand can be useful for cleaning of water in ponds, tanks and rivers. This is also useful to clean overhead water tanks of individual households and community tanks.
As a bonus, as the corn cobs absorb the suspended particles, this also helps to reduce the temperature of the water, as well as acting as a flow regulator during high rains.

When asked what advice she'd give others, she reminds us discovery is only possible by observation. "Always observe your surroundings keenly. You never know what scientific breakthrough you may stumble upon."

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida.

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
please check out my Patreon.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Science Fair Rock Star - Monique Hsu and Gina Wang

This is the first in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (You can read the second one here.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!



Monique (Yo) Hsu and Gina (Jing-Tong) Wang are a pair of junior high school students with big ideas and big smarts to go with them. When these two childhood friends learned about the problem many in their area were experiencing with buying gas that had been diluted with other solvents, they put their heads together to figure out a test that would tell consumers exactly what it is they are buying.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Kickstart This! Comics Edition

I went looking for a great crowd funding project to share with you today, but instead found soooo many I had to lump them all together into their own list posts. Here's the post of all the awesome comics and graphic novels that are looking for a little support. Each is the project of creative and clever women, and each features smart, brave, and seriously kickass women.  Give these projects a look, and maybe even pick one or three to back.



Sirenne Sisters Investigation by Stone and KaaChan, is a mad cap adventure through Victorian steam punk mysteries and chilling tales of horror with the Sirenne Sisters!
And that's where the Sirenne Sisters Investigation team comes in! A group of specialists in the world of of the Paranormal, here at your service! Composed of three Sisters; the eldest sister, Victoria, is the strong and dependable force behind SSI. The youngest sister would be the chipper and charming, fashion-forward Catherine; and the middle sister Elizabeth, the gear-oriented mechanic of the group. Together, they protect mortals from the darkness that lurks in the unknown world that coincides with our own.


As a part of the Feminist publisher Zubaan Books, with The Goethe Institut, created a week-long workshop with a group of Indian women, to share their stories. The result was something remarkable.
Drawing the Line: A Comics Anthology by Indian Women, by Nicole Marie Burton, is a collection of 14 accounts of lived experience by women in India. Stories cover topics about gender, sexuality, harassment, coming of age, family, sisterhood, race, shadeism, class, and political struggle in a country that many in the West know little about, and understand even less.


Oath Anthology of New Heroes, by Audrey Redpath, is a queer superhero comic anthology by queer creators, creating representation we deserve in a book everyone can read.
Our heroes aren't cautionary tales. Stories in the anthology will empower unquestionably queer characters and creators, and saturate heroic plots and settings with new perspectives.


Big Brown Eyes is a collective composed of three sisters: Emily, Karis and Freya Lambert, aiming to launch their first 'zine at the Bristol Comic and Zine Fair in October. Based on the artwork in their Kickstarter post, it looks like it will be a beautiful 'zine. I fully expect to see more by these creative young women in the future.
We will be showcasing our debut zine Beginnings, themed on creation, development and cycles, as well as our individual comics at the Bristol Comic and Zine Fair 2015 on October 3rd.


Poizon: Lost Child Hardcover 20th Anniversary collection by Bad Girl Artwork looks like a pretty kickass comic.
Annique Talbot lives in Queen City in the year 2072 during a time of war between humans and demons, a war humanity is losing badly. In this time Razor is a force for evil and the bride of Lucifer's agent on earth Anvil. Taking the name Poizon she is a powerful psyonic she is able to form a bubble of energy around her as barrier physical objects cannot pass but the more pressure placed on it the more effort it takes to sustain. She also has a strong psychic ability and is able to communicate over time and space with desired targets. Important to the Razor story it was Poizon that tended to the fallen Razor after her battle with Stryke. She followed Razor into Limbo and tried to persuaded her to come back to earth to finish her work instead of finding the peace and rest she so longed for. Razor chose peace only to be dragged back to earth by other undead forces.


Strange Wit, by Katy Rex, is an original graphic novel about Jane Bowles, an incredible author, inspiring woman, and tortured mind.
Jane may have been marginalized by the cultural canon, but her contemporaries considered her “one of the finest modern writers” (John Ashberry), “the most important writer of prose fiction” (Tennessee Williams), and further, a “genius imp, [a] laughing, hilarious, tortured elf” (Truman Capote). Jane drank more than she wrote, worried more than she worked, and had more epically disastrous love affairs than completed books. By almost any measure, Jane led a fascinating life filled with literary giants and great adventure and I want to bring her story to life.


Jill Trent, Science Sleuth #2, by D.M. Higgins, is a modern re-awakening of the original Jill Trent, Science Sleuth from the mid-1940s, filled with stories of science, mystery, & adventure!
Now, more than 65 years later, we've brought Jill and Daisy back! Jill Trent, Science Sleuth #2 is a 28-page comic book featuring 3 all-new stories by 3 creative teams! By popular demand, these stories are slightly longer than those in Jill Trent #1 — a full 8 pages each! Each stand-alone story reimagines the Science Sleuths in a new way, including a range of racial and ethnic identities and time periods, from the 1940s to the not-too-distant future.
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