#featherproof

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Stop Saying There Are No Female Music Critics

https://www.thefader.com/2015/06/03/the-world-doesnt-need-more-female-music-critics Emilie Friedlander says there are hundreds of female music critics. There is not so much a need for more critics as a need for greater visibility of female music critics. Jessica Hopper's 'Collection of Criticism' is helping to raise that awareness. Buy your copy direct from www.featherproof.com "Our little lane of the publishing world may still have a long way to go before we can call it an equal opportunity playing field, but undermining the progress that has been made since Ellen Willis and Lilian Roxon's time--and the hundreds and hundreds of women who have stepped up to the plate, often following their example--doesn't help our invisibility problem; in fact, it only exacerbates the feeling that our words and our efforts haven't amounted to very much. At worse it sends off the message that we simply don't exist, which I doubt is how Willis and Roxon would have wanted us to feel. Or Hopper herself, for that matter, which is probably why she included the following disclaimer in the introduction to The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic: "The title is not meant to erase our history, but rather to help us mark the path."

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Jessica Hopper Friday, May 29th Reading @ Quimby’s  7-8 PM 1854 W North Ave; 60622

Featherproof is proud to announce the publication of legendary rock critic Jessica Hopper’s newest book, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, in Spring 2015. Jessica Hopper’s music criticism has earned her a reputation as one of the firebrands of the form, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music, but the culture around it, revealing new truths that often challenge us to consider what it is to be a fan. With this premiere volume, spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly’s past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why the New York Times has called Hopper’s work “influential.” Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper’s most engaging, thoughtful and humorous writing, this book serves as a document of the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption. Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music, the ideas in songs and albums, how fantasies of artists become complicated by real life, and just what happens when you follow that obsession into muddy festival fields, dank basements, corporate offices or court records. PRAISE FOR THE FIRST COLLECTION OF CRITICISM BY A LIVING FEMALE ROCK CRITIC BY JESSICA HOPPER “Jessica Hopper’s criticsm is a trenchant and necessary counterpoint not just on music, but on our culture at large.” —Annie Clark, St. Vincent “In this crucial book, Hopper schools us all on the art of criticism. You’ll be reminded, as I was, why you care to read and write about (and listen to!) music to begin with. Hopper’s relationship with music is a joy to behold.” —Tavi Gevinson, Editor-in-Chief, Rookie “I read Hopper’s book with a sense of bewildered gratitude. She concedes nothing to the idea that it is dumb to care so much. The excitement in her work is that these things are worth scrapping about.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Love is a Mixtape About Jessica Hopper: Jessica Hopper’s music criticism has been included in Best Music Writing 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011. Her first book, The Girls Guide to Rocking, was named one of 2009’s Notable Books for Young Readers by the American Library Associa- tion. She is Senior Editor at Pitchfork and the Editor-in-Chief of The Pitchfork Review. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two young sons. For press inquiries: Dana Meyerson dana(at)biz3(dot)net

For more info at Quimbys.com: http://bit.ly/1IIfAXE

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Jessica Hopper:Chicago Tribune

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of the novel "O, Democracy!” She offers a review of Jessica Hopper’s book: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. While the feminist and musical aspects of the book are undeniable, Rooney is more interested in the careful craft and depth of Jessica Hopper’s writing. She writes, “Hopper is gifted at balancing the macro and the micro, identifying a pattern and helping the reader appreciate its scope and significance, while peppering in details that make the writing electrifying on the sentence level.”

Read the full review: http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-first-collection-rock-criticism-jessica-hopper-20150514-story.html

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Bear Country:Short Fiction from Hobart (Another Literary Journal)

Christian TeBordo

My son’s first word was “panda;” his first sentence: “Look at the bear.” “Panda” was recognizable if a little drawn out, the syllables broken in the wrong place. Paaaaa-nduh. “Look at the bear” sounded more like “lookadubba,” so it took me a minute to decode, especially because he said it while pointing at an illustration of a stuffed kangaroo.

My first reaction to each was pride. He’d said the word at ten months, the sentence at fifteen, neither with any prompting from either my wife or myself. There had been many other words in the months between, some to be expected ─ daddy, mommy, yes, no, hurt ─ others, like hedgehog, helicopter, jaguar, leviathan, a little more of a surprise. But as I closed the book I’d been reading him, the one with the kangaroo, which was actually about various kinds of light ─ streetlamps, lightning bugs, lightning itself ─ I realized that my son’s vocabulary, though impressive, would not help much with anything he was likely to encounter in everyday life, now or in the future.

As I lowered his warm, sleeping body into the crib, I considered how few of the things we’d been reading about, mostly from books my own father and mother had read to me, I’d ever seen in person. I have never, for example, laid eyes on a giant panda. Having only known them through pictures, I don’t have a good idea of a panda’s size. Are they larger, on average, than the bigger dogs? Take St. Bernards. You don’t see them often, either, and never with small rum barrels hanging from their necks, though children’s books depict St. Bernards frequently, and always with the barrel. How many animals in a common alphabetical bestiary had I personally encountered? Camels and elephants and orangutans, yes, but only on trips to the zoo. I doubt I know a single person who has swum with a narwhal or petted a yak. All this is to say nothing of the sentient train engines; the sentient cabooses that use their brakes on steep mountains to save non-sentient engines. I don’t even know if trains have cabooses anymore. I doubt that there ever was, but I know that there never will be another train that, smiling, says, “Chugga-chugga-choo-choo.”

By the time I climbed into bed beside my already-sleeping wife, I was deep into wondering whether the disconnect between what children’s books had led me to expect and what life turned out to be might be at the root of the sense of disappointment that nags at me, as it seems to nag at everyone I come across, whenever I’m not simply crushed under the weight of an overwhelming sadness.

Continue reading here: http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/bear-country

If you love Christian’s work, you might like to purchase a copy of his Featherproof release, The Awful Possibilities, at www.featherproof.com

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More than that, Hopper remains one of the sharpest and most fiery writers working today, filling column inches with deeply felt and unabashedly feminist stories and reviews of small noise-punk bands like Coughs and arena-ready superstars like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. She's also one of the most fearless critics out there, as noted by her work covering the controversy surrounding R. Kelly and, in one of the key pieces in this book, "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't," the sexism she witnessed in her hometown punk scene.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/this-is-it/Content?oid=15624070

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She's [Jessica Hopper] since become one of the most essential music critics of the 21st century.

http://dcist.com/2015/05/dcist_interview_jessica_hopper.php

Read an interview with Jessica Hopper: A Living Female Rock Critic. 

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I was writing this basically for the girls I worked with at Rookie! That it’s also resonating with young dudes who write about rap, and blackness and the modern age and we’re getting outside the punk rock radical feminist cloister is…it’s all gravy.

Jessica Hopper, on her criticism

http://thehairpin.com/2015/05/rough-around-the-edges-an-interview-with-jessica-hopper

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I feel like I’m watching some science film where something decomposes and mushrooms grow out of it.

Jessica Hopper in The Hairpin interview on women, music, and audience