About

The Learned Fangirl is committed to highlighting and nurturing under-reported writing focused on media, technology, and online culture by providing access and opportunity for women and people of color to publish media and cultural critiques that are too often ignored by the mainstream media.

Free from the dictates of commercial pressure, TLF is dedicated to creating an independent media space, for underrepresented writers and critics to publish challenging critiques and research focused on mass media, technology and society in general. To further its mission to supporting the future development of writers’ careers, TLF, unlike most other similar online and print publications, is committed to writers retaining copyright in their work, allowing writers to further to grow ideas first sprouted at TLF.

The Learned Fangirl is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Contact us @ thelearnedfangirl @ gmail [.dot.] com, with inquiries and requests or any kind, or just to say hi!

We do not accept sponsored content. We define sponsored content as content marketers want placed on sites to promote their products without critical analysis.

The Learned Fangirl Editors

Keidra Chaney

(Publisher/Editor In Chief)

is a writer and editor. She’s written about music and culture for Chicago Sun-Times, Paste Magazine, Time Out Chicago and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. She’s especially interested in online fan communities and the intersection between fan works and labor. In what little spare time she has, she’s a musician.

Keidra Chaney

(Publisher/Editor In Chief)

is a writer and editor. She’s written about music and culture for Chicago Sun-Times, Paste Magazine, Time Out Chicago and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. She’s especially interested in online fan communities and the intersection between fan works and labor. In what little spare time she has, she’s a musician.

Raizel Liebler

(Managing Editor)

is a writer and editor. She’s written about music and culture for Chicago Sun-Times, Paste Magazine, Time Out Chicago and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. She’s especially interested in online fan communities and the intersection between fan works and labor. In what little spare time she has, she’s a musician.

Raizel Liebler

(Managing Editor)

is a writer and editor. She’s written about music and culture for Chicago Sun-Times, Paste Magazine, Time Out Chicago and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. She’s especially interested in online fan communities and the intersection between fan works and labor. In what little spare time she has, she’s a musician.

Interested in writing for us?

The Learned Fangirl is looking for feature essays (2,500 words and up) about popular culture, fan studies, technology, and online culture. Our scope is wide: we publish on topics from online archiving of fanworks to activism in boy band fandom – and a whole lot in between and beyond.

We are aiming for a scholarly but accessible tone for our essays that place pop culture issues/events in a broader historical and socio-cultural context. We want the essays we post to stand the test of time – so think “long-tail”, rather than “hot take!”

There are publishers that are interested in more immediate pop-culture related essays, we do not publish articles on the latest pop culture event that just happened last week or yesterday.