I've always had a love for writing and books. Ever since I was a little girl, I could never go a day without reading something. I would stack them around my bed in an attempt to read as many books as I could before the night ran out. Safe to say, I always passed out before that happened, only ever reaching the very tip of what I had started, the wall of books still surrounding my head. In 3rd grade, they sent out a form to every student asking for our top 5 favorite books. I wrote down my entire bookshelf. When they posted the response in the school newsletter, they had cut down my response by 90%. In 4th grade we had a writing assignment where we had to write a short story. Mine grew to 4, 5, 6, 12 pages, before my teacher told me I had to cut it down. I rushed to finish the ending and was left unsatisfied because it wasn't good enough. 

I moved onto middle school, and my love for reading and writing never died. My friend and I would write stories in class and send them to each other, writing comments on what we loved about what the other wrote. I also now had a newfound interest in art. In 8th grade I decided I wanted to go to art school, so I put together the best art portfolio I could, did my absolute best on all of the auditions and tests, and got into my 3rd choice school. In the end though, I can never ever see myself having gone anywhere else. I was now developing my art in high school, while still never letting go of my books or my writing. COVID happened when I was 15, and I still never gave up on what I loved (although my art assignments did begin to feel a little annoying). In fact, now that I had more time for it I wrote and wrote and wrote until I couldn't write anymore, and not a single word came out of me until I was 17. I had burnt myself out and moved onto other things. I now had a love for music.

I "discovered" and fell in love with grunge music and Riot Grrrl when I was 16. The real push however didn't come until I read a book, "Girls to the Front" by Sara Marcus. It talked about the history of Riot Grrrl, showing the behind-the-scenes part you could never figure out just by listening to the music. By the time I was 17 years old and my junior year of high school was halfway over, I told myself I didn't want to leave high school without having anything to show for it. I had my art, but so did everybody else. I started a Riot Grrrl club, got some of my friends to join, and a few others followed soon after. The club lasted all the way until the end of my senior year, and in that time we created and distributed 5 zines to our school. It was also during my senior year that a student teacher came to my AP Literature class. She was also a fan of Riot Grrrl, and a writer who happened to have published pieces in some online magazines. She gave me the links to her pieces, and another idea hit me. College was soon approaching, and I was already thinking about how I could continue Riot Grrrl (or at least the idea of it) in the future. My time working on zines with the Riot Grrrl club made me realize that we need curators just as much as we need creators, or else how will anything get anywhere? I was like, "well why don't I create an online magazine?" And so I did. And no one told me I couldn't. And it felt weird, because for some reason I thought they would. 

I named the magazine Seether, as a tribute to what the original name for the Riot Grrrl Club zine was going to be. My friend Katya had suggested the name in the very beginning, naming it after the Veruca Salt song (we ended up going with just Riot Grrrl for the zine, but Seether had always stuck with me). Seether holds the same values and purpose as our club's zine - being a platform for creative people to share ideas creations to anyone who's willing to listen. But now that it's on the internet, it's open to the entire world ;).

There are so many talented people out there, and everyone deserves to be heard. If you're one of those people, make sure you SUBMIT something and become a part of Seether Magazine. If you need a little inspiration, here's some of my work: