Lisa Jervis

Bitch co-founder Lisa Jervis's official bio makes her sound far more official than she actually is. In addition to her many writings for Bitch, her work has appeared in Ms., the San Francisco Chronicle, Utne, Mother Jones, the Women's Review of Books, Bust, the late and much-lamented Hues, Salon, the late but not-so-lamented Girlfriends, the late and also-lamented Punk Planet, the late and lamented-by-the-few-people-who've-heard-of-it LiP: Informed Revolt, Body Outlaws (Seal Press), The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin), and Tipping the Sacred Cow (AK Press). She is the co-editor of Young Wives' Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership (Seal Press) and (of course) Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). She’s currently finishing up a cookbook called Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Local, Healthy Eating (PM Press, spring 2009) and procrastinating on her research for a book about the intellectual legacy of gender essentialism and its effect on contemporary feminism.

She was born in Boston and partially raised in Los Angeles; she moved to New York City at age 8 and so considers herself a New Yorker by both chronology and temperament, though the transplant to Oakland, California, has worked out remarkably well.

In her spare time, she squeezes fruit at farmer's markets, bikes around Oakland, and resists adopting more cats.

A few of her favorite things are Buffy, Shortbus, cheese onion curry bread, Weeds, Alison Bechdel, Jane Austen, roasted brussels sprouts, Ben Lee, Ben Kweller, liar's dice, knitting, tattoos, Dexter, salacious memoirs, contemporary mystery novels about female PIs and investigative reporters, hammocks, vodka smoothies, The Philadelphia Story, terry-cloth hoodies, Liz Phair (yes, even the later "bad" stuff), sweet potatoes, Michael Pollan, bell hooks, Susan Faludi, and zine libraries.