Cerise Magazine

Editors

Andrea Rubenstein (”tekanji”), Senior Editor

Andrea has a Bachelor of Arts from University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. Her academic interests include gender in video games, anti-oppression studies, and analysis of popular culture. She is currently a student at the Yamasa Institute in Japan. Andrea blogs on feminism, video games, and other kinds of popular culture analysis on The Official Shrub.com Blog and is a contributor at Killer Betties and League of Substitute Superheroes.

Robyn Fleming (”Revena”), Senior Editor

Robyn earned her BA in English at the University of Arizona, where she wrote an Honors thesis on the biblical story of Judith. She’s always been fascinated by representations of warrior women – an interest which carries over into gaming. Robyn is a regular contributor to feminist media blog The Hathor Legacy and daughter-blog Books@THL. When she’s not playing RPGs, reading books, watching sci-fi television shows, or writing about one of the preceding activities, Robyn works on her original fiction and poetry, samples of which can be found at www.RobynFleming.com.

Ariel Wetzel (”Lake Desire”), Editor

Ariel is a graduate student in English Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Her academic interests include feminist science fiction, posthuman literature, and game narratives. She is involved in antiracist community organizing and is a member of her university’s cycling team. Ariel blogs on feminism and video games at New Game Plus, and is a contributor at the Official Shrub.com Blog and Feminist SF - The Blog!

Olivia Luna (”oliemoon”), Editor

Olivia is currently finishing up her undergraduate education in History and Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. On campus she assists with archaeological research on the Jomon period of Japan and is an associate editor of the undergraduate history journal, Clio’s Scroll. Her eventual goal is to obtain a law degree and work in the field of civil rights. As a gamer, she enjoys console RPGs and is completely and utterly devoted to her Nintendo DS.

Jill Collins, Editor
Jill has a BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Women’s Studies from Warren Wilson College. Although she plans to go to graduate school for Psychology, she currently works a mindless job in Knoxville, TN, where she lives with her fiance, two cats, two gerbils, and a rabbit.

Richard Pilbeam, Editor
Richard is studying film and television production in Melbourne, Australia. He would like to write books at some point in the future when he’s not rubbish at it. He blogs over at Crimitism.

Staff Writers

Latoya Peterson

Latoya is often blogging about politics, news, love, or hip-hop culture - when she isn’t slacking off watching anime or playing PS2. She is a regular contributor to both www.EnterSoundbooth.com and www.racialicious.com as a blogger and interviewer and is currently working on a variety of independent writing projects. For sample work, links to podcasts, and other information, please visit www.alteregomaniacs.com.

Samara Steele

Samara is a recent graduate of Western Washington University with a double major in English Creative Writing and a self-designed concentration in “Science Fiction.” She currently lives in Osaka, Japan, where she teaches English lessons and eats a lot of squid. Her hobbies include sewing, writing, Cyborg Anthropology, writing, reading House of Leaves over and over again, and writing. Her lifelong interests in improvisational theatre and outdoor activities led her to become a Live Action Role-Player.

Abby Wilson

Abby is an Art History student from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, studying the art revolving around social movements of the 20th century. Her interests besides video games include cooking, dreaming about moving to Quebec, and watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. Her greatest ambition is to own a gallery for local antiracist and anti-oppression art.

Contributing Writers and Artists

Stephanie Bader
Stephanie Bader graduated from the University of Nebraska with a degree in Computer Science. When she’s not working as a web developer chances are she’s somewhere playing a video game or catching up on latest news online.

Victor Barreiro Jr.
Victor is a 24 year old writer-editor for an online videogame news site. He wishes there were more hours in the day for playing video games, but realizes that this gets in the way of other fun things, like reading, eating, and sleeping.

K. Tempest Bradford
K. Tempest Bradford is a fantasy writer and blogger who spends far too much time trying to crack 1 million points on Diner Dash 3. She’s the non-fiction editor for Fantasy magazine and can be found ranting about television, movies, and other media at The Angry Black Woman (.com).

Regina Buenaobra (”brinstar”)

Regina Buenaobra is a blogger at Acid for Blood, where she goes by the handle “Brinstar” and writes about games. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from the Universiy of St Andrews and a Master of Science degree in Organisational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Regina works in the video game industry as a community manager. She doesn’t really have acid for blood.

Nick Cummings

Nick Cummings is studying journalism and digital arts at the University of Oregon. A lifelong gamer, he currently maintains a blog on video games and journalism and tries to stay current on the newest and most innovative trends in gaming, although most of his life is siphoned into playing Guitar Hero. After graduating, he hopes to end up working with all kinds of interactive multimedia.

Anika Cunningham

Anika has a Bachelor’s degree in Literature from Towson University, and is currently working towards her MLS in English. She is a Baltimorean at heart, but currently resides in York, Pennsylvania with her husband, daughter, and a slew of felines. When she’s not engrossed in the endless needs of a full house, Anika enjoys reading thriller novels, browsing eBay, and blogging about her day-to-day activities in her livejournal. In gaming, she prefers RPGs, fighters, and puzzle games.

Rachel Edidin
Rachel hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Jewel Faulkner
Jewel hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Amanda Flowers
Amanda is a recent graduate of the Masters-level Telecommunications program at Michigan State University. Currently employed with the MSU MIND Lab, she takes part in researching both roleplaying games and video games. Roleplaying and art are her long-time passions; she is active in tabletop roleplay as well as MUSH and the occasional MMORPG. Her personal web spaces are at www.secondtruth.com.

Laura Galliardt
Laura hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Lindsey Galloway

Lindsey has been a gamer since the days of Mixed-Up Mother Goose on the Commodore 64. She is about to graduate from Scripps College with a degree in English and Gender & Women’s Studies and has written many papers on issues of gender and games along the way. Her writing has been published in U.S. News and World Report and Denver’s city magazine 5280. With any luck, she will eventually find a career that magically combines her love of magazines, feminism, and games.

Christin Gilbert

Christin Gilbert has a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Bergen, Norway. Many moons ago she played Dungeons & Dragons and she has been playing World of Warcraft almost since release. It was either learn to play or never see her husband again. She currently lives in Adelaide, Australia with her husband and two boys, When not in Azeroth, she keeps freelance writing and maintaining her blog, Strumpetslife.

Karen Healey

Karen grew up in New Zealand, taught English in Japan for a couple years and is now living in Australia and writing a dissertation on superhero comic fandom. On weekends, through the power of the internets, she turns into a teenage boy at a special school for mutants and fights evil-doers. The rest of the time, she can be found blogging at Girls Read Comics (And They’re Pissed), or at KarenHealey.com.

Natalie Hill (”100littledolls”)

Natalie recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago where she studied Poetry and Women & Gender Studies. Her poems have been previously published in The Columbia Poetry Review, The Indiana Review and are forthcoming in MiPOesias. She co-blogs about feminism and geek culture at One Hundred Little Dolls and is an archiver for the gender and video games link blog, Jade Reporting.

Anna E. Holt
Anna is a PhD student at the University of California San Diego. She is interested in the development of language and flexible higher cognition. This leaves her little time to pursue the finer of life’s geeky pursuits. In the spare time she does have, she game masters for her long-running gaming group, which includes players unfortunate enough to be mentioned in her article. (They don’t mind, really. They promised.)

John Kim
John hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Jenni Lada

Jenni has a BA in English from Northeastern Illinois with a double minor in History and Linguistics: TESL. She has been playing videogames from the age of 1, when her father would let her play on his Intellivision. She also is a staff writer for the videogame portion of Cad-Media.

Diego Luna
Diego hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Yvonna Lynn

Yvonna has written for magazines and various publications from France to Hong Kong while modeling and acting abroad. She returned to the states looking for a way to incorporate her passion for gaming with her experience in media. Being a booth babe at E3 opened the doors to meeting producers, media personalities, and website creators. Yvonna has been seen on G4, Spike TV, as well as numerous gaming websites for video reviews and articles all over the world. She feels grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Cerise. For demos click the center button on yvonnalynn.com. For all other kinds of updates and correspondence check out MySpace.

Elizabeth McDonald
Elizabeth is a dilettante with a short attention span. She likes obscure medieval weaponry, impractical steam-powered machinery, and teeny animals with big ears. She occasionally comes out from her lair at girl-wonder.org to interact with bits of the internet that don’t know who the Bat-mite is.

Patrick Miller
Patrick earned his BA in Philosophy from Pitzer College, but his true passion lay in Asian American Studies. When he’s not writing about race, gender, and video games over at Token Minorities and The Escapist, he’s wrestling around with sweaty men and women as part of a Fulbright Fellowship research project on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in working-class Brazilian communities in Japan. He also works freelance, so look him up if you need a writer-for-hire.

Bonnie Moxnes

Bonnie is currently a college student shooting for a degree of some kind in the vast, flat landscape known as South Dakota. As any good hardcore geek does, she enjoys video games (obviously), board games and the occasional tabletop game (usually anything that doesn’t begin with Dungeons and end with Dragons). She mostly writes gaming reviews. In life away from video games, she enjoys film, music, zombies, and comics.

Stephanie Pegg

Stephanie has a BE from the University of Auckland and a BA from Victoria University of Wellington, figuring that if you can switch from Engineering to Latin you’re making good progress towards knowing a little bit about everything. Her hobbies range from larping, historical re-enactment and Ultimate Frisbee to more sedentary things like dress-making, roleplaying and creative writing. She’s currently looking for work following her latest stint as a full-time student. She blogs here and here but notes that it’s mostly random burblings about her life.

Mara Poulsen
Mara graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Bryn Mawr College. She worked as a game programmer for three years, first for Saffire Corporation and then for Acclaim Entertainment and has three published titles: Xena Warrior Princess: Talisman of Fate, Barbarian, and Jeremy McGrath Supercross World for Gamecube. She is now a full-time writer and was recently featured in She’s Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. She is currently working on a sci-fi novel.

Robin Sevakis (”Ra-chan”)
Robin hasn’t sent us a bio yet!

Janet Tait

Janet has a B.A. in Political Science from U.C. Riverside and an M.B.A. from U.C. Irvine. She currently works as a market researcher for a large telecommunications company in San Diego, California. In her spare time she plays tabletop roleplaying and video games, reads and writes science fiction and fantasy, and blogs about television, gaming, comics, politics, and culture on LiveJournal.

Cherie Thomason (”feline”)

Cherie is a mechanical engineer in Berkeley, CA. Her gaming interests include board games, MMORPGs, console adventures and music games. After years of drought, she rediscovered her love of writing thanks to the inspiration of a video game story. She is excited to be combining two of her keen interests in contributing to Cerise. When she’s not playing video games, Cherie enjoys writing original fiction, sewing, karate, snowboarding, rock climbing, and reading.

Maria Velazquez
Maria is presently working on her doctorate in American Studies, and is relying on her Harry Potter RPG buddies to keep her (mostly) sane. She also writes for the Hathor Legacy as Melpomene.

Melissa Velte (”Melba”)

Melissa Velte has a BS in Professional Writing and a minor in Information Technology from Slippery Rock University. She currently works for the Federal government and part time at a chocolate/gift shop. Melissa blogs her dreams at Xanga. Other than video games, she enjoys writing, reading, golfing, playing on her computer, and watching the NFL.