About the Author

Hi!  I’m Alexandra.

I’m a 22-year-old undergraduate living on the Left Coast and studying biology (after a number of years at a Great Books school on the east coast).  I have been a student of many disciplines, but am a master of none; by nature I am an enthusiastic amateur, entering into many pursuits with great passion regardless of my native talent.

I became a feminist at 13.  At dinner I made the mistake of beginning a sentence with, “I’m not a feminist, but…” and my mother practically threw a copy of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique at me.  I had devoured many of the big books of second wave feminism by the age of 16, and have spent a lot of time learning on feminist blogs and communities on the internet.

My formal musical education consists of seven years of flute lessons, high school marching band, and chorus in college, where I had the privilege of singing Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, and other greats with a lot of talented people able to drown out my own mediocre voice.  However, my real musical education was at home.  My mother, formerly a ballet dancer, played classical music all the time, and I grew up listening to Monteverdi, Haydn, and Beethoven.  My father introduced my younger brother and I to the greats of rock and folk when I was about twelve, starting with Elvis and the Beatles and working up to CSNY, Dylan, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and more.  On our long cross-country roadtrips my father, raised in Detroit, would play Motown and Soul, and to this day I can sing from memory at least a dozen songs from the Temptations, Four Tops, Marvelettes, Supremes, Jackson 5, and of course Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson.

When I am not pontificating about feminism on the internet, I like to hike with my dog, look at birds, and daydream about nematodes.

Thanks for reading!