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[Welcome To Riot Grrrl Online] Important Females Here are some females I admire. (not necessarily riot grrrl or feminist related) You should check them out. All biographies took from Wikipedia & imdb & Poets. Tank Girl history took from here. Alice FultonAlice Fulton's most recent book of poems, Felt (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her other books include Sensual Math (1995); Powers Of Congress (1990); Palladium (1982), winner of the 1985 National Poetry Series and the 1987 Society of Midland Authors Award; and Dance Script With Electric Ballerina (1982), winner of the 1982 Associated Writing Programs Award. A collection of prose, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, was published by Graywolf Press in 1999. Her work has been included in five editions of The Best American Poetry series and in The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997. Anthony Cornicello's ...turns and turns into the night, a setting of four poems from Sensual Math, premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, February 2001. The world premiere of Enid Sutherland's complete setting of "Give: A Sequence Reimagining Daphne & Apollo" took place on October 24, 2003, at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. William Bolcom's setting of "How To Swing Those Obbligatos Around" was first performed by Marilyn Horne at Carnegie Hall's Centennial Celebration. Turbulence: A Romance, a song cycle with music by William Bolcom and words by Alice Fulton, debuted at the Walker Art Center in 1997. She has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Michigan Society of Fellows, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is currently Professor of English at Cornell University. Angelina Jolie is an American actress born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California, United States. She is noted as much for her tattoos, exotic looks and sensual lips as for her acting. Jolie became very familiar with her profession growing up, being the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute at the age of 11. In addition to acting, Jolie produced a film in 2003 called Lovesick. She has also worked as a professional model in London, New York and Los Angeles, and has also appeared in music videos for many artists, including Meat Loaf, Lenny Kravitz, The Rolling Stones, Antonelle Venditti and The Lemonheads. Additionally, Jolie has acted in 5 student films for the USC School of Cinema. In 1995, she married the British actor Jonny Lee Miller, with whom she co-starred in the movie Hackers. They divorced in 1999. She married Academy Award Winner Billy Bob Thornton in May 2000 and adopted a son Maddox from Cambodia, but they too divorced in 2002 and she now has custody of Maddox. Aside from her acting, she is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nation High Commission for Refugees) Jolie's performance in 1999's Girl, Interrupted won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was one of the first celebrities to accept the invitation to be an Athens 2004 Torchbearer. Ani DiFranco (pronounced "AHH-nee") (born September 23, 1970) is a progressive feminist singer, guitar player, and songwriter. Ani's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, but since her earlier albums she has developed her reach across genres, having collaborated with a wide range of artists including the pop musician Prince, the folk musician Utah Phillips and rapper Corey Parker. In various songs and albums, she has brought in the use of a variety of instruments as well as styles -- from brass, notably in 1998's Little Plastic Castle, and strings, particularly noticeable on the live album Living In Clip. Her song writing is also notable for her lyrics which nearly always carry heart-felt emotion, often feature clever poetry, and are frequently very witty. In her songs she has commented on a wide range of political and social issues. DiFranco is a prolific songwriter, having produced three studio albums of new material and one remix album just in 1999 (see list below). She has released at least one album every year since 1990, except in 2000 (since she released three albums in 1999 and a double album in 2001.) Educated Guess, her newest album, was released on January 20, 2004. According to the Righteous Babe website, "not since the release of her second album back in 1991 has [Ani] been quite as much a solo act as she is on [Educated Guess]."[1] The only other person involved in the record was Greg Calbi, who mastered it; Ani DiFranco did all the performance and recording herself at home, and was involved in much of the artwork and design for the packaging. Born in Buffalo, New York, Ani started playing gigs at the age of nine and built her career from there. In 1989, at the age of eighteen, Ani started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, with just $50, and recorded Ani DiFranco, issued in the winter of 1990. Later on she relocated to New York City and toured vigorously. She is openly bisexual and, in 1998, married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist. Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928–October 4, 1974), born Anne Gray Harvey, was an American poet and writer. Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1928, and spent most of her life near Boston. In 1945, Sexton began attending a boarding school, Rogers Hall, in Lowell, Massachusetts. She eloped in 1948 with Alfred Muller Sexton, known as "Kayo." Before their divorce in the early 1970s, she had two children with Kayo: Linda Gray Sexton, later a novelist and memoirist, and Joyce Sexton. Tragically, she suffered from depression for most of her life; in fact, her poetry was prescribed as a possible remedy and eventual cure for her condition. Sexton's first breakdown took place in 1954, After a second breakdown in 1955, Anne met Dr. Martin Orne at Glenside Hospital, who encouraged her to take up poetry writing, and she enrolled in her first poetry workshop, with John Holmes as the instructor. After the workshop finished, Sexton experienced quick success with her poetry, with her poems accepted by The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the Saturday Review. She attended a poetry workshop with Sylvia Plath, taught by Robert Lowell. Later, Sexton herself taught workshops at Boston College, Oberlin College, and Colgate College. Anne Sexton is the modern model of the confessional poet, one perhaps begun by the publication of Heart's Needle, by W.D. Snodgrass. In this sense, Sexton helped open the door not only for female poets, but for female issues; Sexton wrote about menstruation, abortion, masturbation, and adultery before such issues were even topics for casual discussion, helping redefine the boundaries of poetry. Anne Sexton was a stunningly beautiful woman, who, for a brief period had modeled for Boston's Hart Agency. Indeed, with James Dickey, Anne Sexton was one of the poetry celebrities during this time, famous across the United States. The title for her eighth collection of poetry, The Awful Rowing Toward God, came from her meeting with a Catholic priest who, although he refused to administer the last rites, did tell her: "God is in your typewriter," which gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing for some more time. In 1967, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection, Live or Die. She committed suicide in 1974, after winning the admiration of Robert Lowell, close friend Maxine Kumin, James Dickey, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sylvia Plath, among others. She is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery & Crematory, Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts. Bettie Page born Bettie Mae Page, also known as Betty Page, (born April 22, 1923) is an American pinup model. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Page's parents divorced when she was 10 years old, forcing her and her sister to live for a year at an orphanage. A strong student in high school, she reported missed earning the title of school valedictorian and a scholarship to Vanderbilt University by a quarter of a grade point, but graduated from Peabody College with a Bachelors of Arts in 1943. She married Billy Neal, who had attended high school with her, but who shortly afterwards left her for active duty in World War II, and whom she divorced in 1947. After working briefly in Haiti as a secretary at a furniture company, she moved to New York city, where she supported herself as a secretary while looking for work as an actress. While she appeared in a couple of Off-Broadway plays in 1956, she found her fame and success in modelling, first for camera clubs, then later for commercial redistribution. She learned of this line of work through a chance encounter in 1950 with Jerry Tibbs on a deserted beach at Coney Island. Tibbs also suggested her trademark bangs. At first Page posed for camera clubs, sometimes in the nude, because the photographs were not to be published. In 1951 her image appeared on the cover of men's magazines with names like Eyeful, Wink, Titter, Black Nylons, or Beauty Parade. At the same time she posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with a bondage or sado-masochistic theme, making her the first famous bondage model. She was the centerfold for Playboy in its January 1955 issue. In an industry where the average career of a model was measured in months, Page was in demand for several years, modelling until 1957. Although she frequently posed in the nude, she never appeared in any scenes with explicit sexual content. When Howard Hughes, movie maker and billionaire, sent her a letter asking to meet her, she declined. The reasons for her departure from modelling work are varied. Some authorities state she was burnt out and her marriage to Armand Walterson in 1958 was the cause. Others mention the "Kefauver Hearings" of the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States, which ended Irving Klaw's mail-order photography business. In any case, shortly after her marriage to Walterson, she had a religious conversion December 31, 1958, and severed all contact with the prior life. For many years, the last known facts of her life was her divorce from Walterson in the early 1960s, and that she was working as a secretary for a Christian organization. In 1978, Belier Press began to reprint some of the pictures from the private camera club sessions, which reintroduced Page to a new generation. Within a few years, Page became an icon of the 1950s, her renewed fame rivalling Marilyn Monroe's. This renewed attention raised the inevitable question: what had happened to Bettie Page since the late 1950s? This question was inevitably answered with the publication of an official biography in 1996, Bettie Page: the Life of a Pin-up Legend. Her biography described a woman who dealt head-on with adversity, always looking forward, never looking back. It told how she had remarried her first husband briefly, in order to satisfy requirements so she could become a missionary; neither the remarriage nor her missionary work was a success. She married a third time in 1967 to one Harry Lear in Florida, divorcing him in 1972. At the time of the rebirth of her celebrity, Page was living penniless in California, unaware of her renewed celebrity. She hoped that with the efforts of her co-author and agent, James Swanson, she would be seeing some financial reward for this renewed attention. A second biography, written by Richard Foster and published in 1999, The Real Bettie Page: The Truth about the Queen of Pinups, tells a less happy tale. It details not only numerous accounts of violence on her part against not only her third husband and her two step-children, but also against other people, but several stays in mental institutions, the last one from 1983 to 1992 at Patton State Hospital in Highland, California. It also furnished information that Page had still not received all of the monies due to her since her rediscovery. Foster's book immediately provoked attacks from her fans, including Hefner, and Harlan Ellison, as well as a statement from Page that it is "full of lies." However, Steve Brewster, founder of the Bettie Scouts of America fan club has stated that it is not as unsympathetic as the book's reputation makes it to be. Brewster adds that he also read the chapter about her business dealings with Swanson, and stated that Page was pleased with that part of her story. In a recent interview, Page has stated she will not allow any current pictures of her to be shown, because she is 25 to 30 pounds overweight. A friend believes the reason for her reluctance is more likely insecurity. "If your grandmother looked like Bettie does today, you'd be thrilled. Her eyes still sparkle. She really looks like her old self." Betty White (born January 17, 1922) is a notable American television actress with a career spanning over 50 years. White's early television roles included her portrayal of Elizabeth on Life With Elizabeth in 1953 and as Vicki Angel on Date With the Angels in 1957 and 1958. She also had her own show briefly in 1954 with the original Betty White Show. White is perhaps better known for her appearances on the hit gameshow Password, in which she was a regular as a panelist from 1961 through 1975; it was through her early appearances on Password that she met the show's host Allen Ludden, whom she married in 1963 and remained with until his death in 1981. White also made frequent game show appearances on What's My Line? (starting in 1955), To Tell the Truth (starting in 1961) and Match Game (1973-1982). In her later career, White played Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1973 to 1977. From 1983 through 1986, she played Ellen Jackson on the moderate hit show Mama's Family along with future Golden Girls co-star Rue McClanahan. When NBC canceled Mama's Family in 1985, White would soon leave the show and score perhaps her most memorable role as the ditzy Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, a show about the lives of four widowed senior citizens in Miami. The Golden Girls was immensely successful and ran from 1985 through 1992. Overall, White has won five Emmy Awards, three American Comedy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990), and two Viewers for Quality Television Awards. She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside the star of her late husband Allen Ludden. White is well known as a pet enthusiast and animal-rights activist. Carol Burnett (born April 26, 1933) was one of the most successful female comedians on American television, thanks largely to her variety show that ran on CBS from 1967 through 1978. Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas to two alcoholic parents, who left her with her grandmother, who moved to Hollywood, California. She graduated from Hollywood High School and the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked her way up through bit parts on TV, coming to prominence in the mid-1950s singing a novelty love song, "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles". She achieved success in Broadway in the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress, and finally came to headliner status in shows such as the 1962 special Julie and Carol and Carnegie Hall, also starring fellow singer/actress Julie Andrews. The hour-long The Carol Burnett Show was a huge success, garnering 22 Emmy awards and continuing to success in syndicated re-runs. Its ensemble cast included Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, and Vicki Lawrence, who was cast partly because she looked like a younger Burnett. Burnett drew attention in 1981, when she sued the National Enquirer for libel after the tabloid newspaper described her alleged public drunkenness. The case is a landmark in the study of libel cases involving celebrities, although the unprecedented $1.6 million verdict was reduced on appeal, and the case was eventually settled out of court. Burnett was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors for 2003. Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was an English poet. She was born in Bloomsbury, London, the daughter of an architect, Frederick Mew, who designed Hampstead town hall. He died early in her career. Two of her siblings suffered from mental illness and were committed to institutions, leaving Charlotte and her sister, Anne, who made a pact never to marry for fear of passing on insanity to their children. Charlotte wrote about the subject in several poems. Her own inclinations may have been towards lesbianism; she was strongly influenced by her first schoolmistress, and became deeply attracted to Ella D'Arcy, a writer she met through her first publisher. In 1894, she succeeded in getting a short story into The Yellow Book, but wrote very little poetry at this time. Her first collection of poetry, The Farmer's Bride, was published in 1916, in chapbook format, by the Poetry Bookshop; in the USA, it was entitled Saturday Market and published in 1921. It earned her the admiration of Sydney Cockerell. Many of her poems have a melancholy note, reflecting the sadness of her personal life. Charlotte Mew gained the patronage of several literary figures, notably Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sassoon, and obtained a small Civil List pension with the aid of Cockerell, Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare. This helped ease her financial difficulties, but she never achieved the level of fame her patrons felt she deserved. The death of her sister caused her to descend into depression, and she was admitted to a nursing home where she committed suicide by drinking disinfectant. Christina Ricci (born February 12, 1980) is an American actress known for her appearance in The Addams Family and acting in independent films such as Buffalo 66, Prozac Nation and The Opposite of Sex. She has also begun producing films. She was born in Santa Monica, California. Clea DuVallGraduated from the L.A. County High School for the Arts. [June 1995] Took a small role in _She's All That ( 1999)_ to support her friend, 'Rachael Leigh Cook' , in her first leading movie role. The two met on the set of Defenders: Payback, The (1997) (TV). She practices tae kwon do. She worked in a coffee shop before appearing in Little Witches (1996). She is an only child. Courtney Love (Courtney Michelle Harrison) was born on July 9, 1964 in San Francisco, California and was a singer and guitarist for the now-defunct band Hole. Currently performing solo, Love is also an occasional model and actress. Love is the widow of Kurt Cobain (1967 - 1994), singer in the band Nirvana, with whom she has one daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Courtney Love had ealier been the lead singer of Faith No More in the early 1980's. She appeared as the best friend of Nancy Spungen in Sid and Nancy directed by Alex Cox in 1986 and in Cox's Straight to Hell in 1987. In her early career, Love modelled a 'Kinderwhore' look, which she was accused of having ripped off of Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland. She was in Babes in Toyland briefly before Bjelland kicked her out of the band. Courtney herself stated that the look was inspired by Christina Amphlett of 1980s rock group The Divinyls. Love's style has since evolved, and she has modelled for more sophisticated designer labels. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was romantically involved with her prior to her involvement with Cobain. Upon Cobain's death Corgan was said to have had a great influence on her rehabilitation as it were. In the 1997 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, Love received considerable acclaim for her role as Flynt's wife, Althea. Love attempted to begin a 'punk rock femme supergroup' during summer/autumn 2001 called Bastard. Hole broke up in 2001 amid continuing litigation. Love in October 2001 performed in some solo shows as an opening act. Love has also been an outspoken critic of the music industry, which she says exploits musicians unfairly. In 2003, Love pleaded not guilty to felony drug charges related to possession of painkillers. In February of 2004, an arrest warrant was issued for Love after she failed to appear at a preliminary hearing; the warrant was subsequently rescinded when she appeared in court on February 18. She released her first solo effort "America's Sweetheart" just eight days earlier on February 10. Early on the morning of March 19, 2004 Courtney Love was arrested in New York City for allegedly throwing a microphone stand and hitting a man on the head. Earlier in the night, she appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and flashed her breasts at David Letterman six times. Drew Blythe Barrymore (born February 22, 1975 in Culver City, California) is an American film and television actress and producer. She is the granddaughter of stage actor John Barrymore, and great-niece of Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Her father, John Drew, and half-brother, John Blyth, are also actors (although they haven't had the critical or commercial success the other Barrymores have enjoyed). About her name: "Drew" was the maiden name of great-grandmother, Georgiana; "Blythe" was the original surname of the dynasty founded by great-grandfather, Maurice. She became extraordinarily famous as a child actor when she co-starred in the 1982 Steven Spielberg film E.T.. In the wake of such sudden renown, she had a wild childhood, becoming involved with drugs and alcohol by the time she was just 8 years old. She is also known to be bisexual. She was the youngest host ever of the program Saturday Night Live, at the age of 7 on November 20, 1982. She performed in a skit where she revealed she had killed E.T. On February 3, 2004, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was delivered by Dr. Paul Fleiss, father of Heidi Fleiss. (Interview on The Tonight Show, January 22, 2003.) Spielberg is her godfather. He gave her a quilt for her 20th birthday with a note "Cover yourself up." Enclosed was a copy of the January 1995 issue of Playboy for which she posed nude, with the pictures altered by his art department so that she appeared fully clothed. She is the godmother of singers Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter, Francis Bean. Her height is 5'4" and measurements are 34C-24-34. She was married to bartender Jeremy Thomas from March 20 - April 28, 1994, and to comedian Tom Green from July 7, 2001 - October 15, 2002 (Green filed for divorce in December 2001). She is currently engaged to drummer Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes. Diane Di Prima (born 1934) is an American poet who was one of the most active of women poets associated with the Beats. Di Prima was born in Brooklyn and educated at Swarthmore College. She began writing as a child and by the age of nineteen was corresponding with Ezra Pound and Kenneth Patchen. Her first book, This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards was published in 1958. Di Prima spent the early 1960s in Manhattan, where she became part of the Beat movement. She edited The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and was co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre and founder of the Poets Press. In 1966, she moved to Millbrook to join Timothy Leary’s psychedelic community there. In the early 1970s, she moved to California, where she has lived ever since. Here, she became involved with the Diggers and studied Buddhism, Sanskrit, Gnosticism and alchemy. She also published her major work, the long poem Loba in 1978, with an enlarged edition in 1998. She teaches and continues writing, having published thirty-five books of poetry. Her selected poems, Pieces of a Song was published in 1990 and a memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, in 2001. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Moulton) (March 6, 1806-June 29, 1861) was the most respected female poet of the Victorian era. She was born near Durham, England of a wealthy family; in her early teens she contracted a lung complaint, possibly tuberculosis, although the exact nature has been the subject of much speculation, and was treated as an invalid by her parents. For a girl of that time, she was well-educated, having been allowed to attend lessons with her brother's tutor. She published her first poem, anonymously, at the age of fourteen. Her most famous work is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of love sonnets written by Browning but disguised as a translation. The family moved to London in 1837, and it was there that Elizabeth met the English poet Robert Browning, whom she married. They went to live in Italy and had one son. She died at their home in Florence and is buried there in the Cimitero Degli Inglesi. Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886), nineteenth century United States poet was born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a prominent family known for support of the local educational institutions. Emily's grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College, and her father served as lawyer and treasurer for the institution. Emily's father also served in powerful positions on the General Court of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts State Senate, and the United States House of Representatives. During a religious revival that swept Western Massachusetts during the decades of 1840-50, Dickinson found her vocation as a poet. One of her biographers has suggested that Dickinson thought of becoming a poet in the Biblical terms of Jacob wrestling with the angel. Dickinson lived most of her life in the house in which she was born, made a few trips to visit relatives in Boston, Cambridge, and Connecticut. Most of her work is not only reflective of the small moments of what happens around her, but also of the larger battles and themes of what was happening in the larger society. For example, over half of her poems were written during the years of the American Civil War. By the time of her death, no more than seven Dickinson poems had been published, but her legacy of 1776 poems eventually brought the full extent of her work to the world. Today, Dickinson is not only considered one of the most accessible poets of all time but one of the most representative. Features of her work that were considered oddities have become signature aspects of her style and form. Dramatic asides, odd capitalization, telegraphic dash punctuation, hymnbook rhythms, off-rhymes, multiple voices, and elaborate metaphors have become recognizable to readers across time and translations of her work. She died, as she was born, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 - May 14, 1940) was a Lithuanian-born anarchist known for her radical libertarian and feminist writing and speeches. She emigrated to the United States at sixteen, and was later deported to Russia, where she witnessed some events of the Russian Revolution. She also spent a number of years in Britain, where she wrote her autobiography and other works. Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kaunas, Lithuania where her family ran a small inn. In the period of political repression after the assassination of Alexander II, she moved with her family to St Petersburg at the age of thirteen. There -- due to economic hardship -- she was forced to leave school and work in a factory. It was in that workplace that Goldman was introduced to revolutionary ideas; she obtained a copy of Cherychevsky's What is to be done which sowed the seeds for her anarchist ideas and her independent attitude. She was sent to America with a half-sister after she refused to allow her father to marry her off at fifteen. The hanging of four anarchists after the Haymarket Riot drew the young Emma Goldman to the anarchist movement, and at twenty she decided to become a revolutionary. By this time she had been married for ten months to a Russian immigrant. The marriage didn't work out, so she divorced him and moved to New York. In New York City she met and lived with Alexander Berkman, along with whom she was a major leader of the anarchist movement in the United States at the time. Her defence of Berkman's attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick made her highly unpopular with the authorities. She was imprisoned in 1893 at Blackwells Island penitentiary for publicly urging unemployed workers that they should "Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, take bread." (The statement is a summary of the principle of expropriation advocated by anarchist communists like Peter Kropotkin.) Voltairine de Cleyre gave the lecture In Defense of Emma Goldman as a response to this imprisonment. On February 11, 1916 she was arrested and imprisoned again for her distribution of birth control literature. For several years, she expected to be arrested whenever she gave a speech, and therefore always carried a book when she got up on stage. Her third imprisonment was in 1917, this time for conspiring to obstruct the draft: Berkman and Goldman were both involved in setting up No Conscription leagues and organising rallies against World War I. She was imprisoned for two years, after which she was deported to Russia. At her deportation hearing, J. Edgar Hoover, directing the hearing, called her "one of the most dangerous women in America." This deportation meant that Goldman, with Berkmann, was able to witness the Russian Revolution first hand. On her arrival in Russia, she was prepared to support the Bolsheviks despite the split between anarchists and statist communists at the First International. But seeing the political repression, bureaucracy and forced labour in Russia led Goldman to write My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia. Goldman was friends with fellow Communists and New Yorkers John Reed and Louise Bryant, both of whom were also in Russia at this time (during a period when it was impossible to leave the country); they may even have shared an apartment (see also the film Reds). Her experiences in Russia helped change her ideas on the use of violence: after the Red Army was used against strikers, Goldman began rejecting violence except in self-defense. In 1936, Goldman went to Spain to support the Spanish Revolution and the fight against Franco's fascism that was the Spanish Civil War. During this time she was to write the obituary of the prominent Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, in a piece of vibrant prose entitled Durruti is Dead, Yet Living, which echoes Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais. Emma Goldman died in Toronto and was buried in Chicago. Fairuza Alejandra Balk (born May 21, 1974) is an American film actress, probably most famous for her participation in the 1996 movie The Craft. She is a native of Point Reyes, California. Legend has it that she was named Fairuza because her father, an expert in Persian culture, exclaimed that word the moment she was born, Fairuza meaning Turquoise in Persian, and Balk's eyes being of that color. Soon after her parents split, Fairuza became a world traveller. Raised for the first part of her life in San Francisco, she and her mother moved to Vancouver when Fairuza counted nine years of age. At the age of 11 she moved to London, where she attented various prestigious ballet and acting schools. At that age also, she was picked by the Walt Disney Company to star in the movie Return to Oz. In 1988 she moved to Paris to do more work as an actress, and by 1989 she was back in Vancouver, where she began to attend high school. Soon, however, she decided to take correspondence courses instead. Then she went back to Hollywood, where she began to be more and more noticed as an actress. In 1992 she was awarded an Independent Spirit Award as Best Actress for her performance in Gas Food Lodging. Balk was soon cast in The Craft, in which she forms a teenage coven along with Neve Campbell, Rachel True and Robin Tunney. This was particularly appropriate casting, as Fairuza is a wiccan in real life, and she owns a store dedicated to that religion, named Panpipes Magickal. Balk also had a memorable performance as a neo-nazi opposite Edward Norton in American History X. Balk has been romantically linked to British actor David Thewlis. Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 - July 29, 1946) was an American writer, poet, feminist, playwright, and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature, who spent most of her life in France. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now the North Side of Pittsburgh), her family moved to Vienna and then Paris when she was three. After returning almost two years later, she was educated in California, graduating from Radcliffe College in 1897 followed by two years at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1902 she moved to France during the height of artistic creativity gathering in Montparnasse. From 1903 to 1912 she lived in Paris with her brother Leo, who became an accomplished art critic. Gertrude Stein was a lesbian. She met her life-long companion Alice B. Toklas in 1907; Alice moved in with Leo and Gertrude in 1909. During her whole life, Gertrude Stein was supported by a stipend from her family's business. In Paris she started to write in earnest: novels, plays, stories, librettos and poems. Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, sometimes repetitive and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." and "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle." as well as "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable." These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical word-paintings, were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as an answer to Cubism in literature. They were loved by the avant-garde, but mainstream success initially remained elusive. She and her brother compiled one of the first collections of Cubist art. She owned early works of Pablo Picasso (who became a friend and painted her portrait), Henri Matisse, Andre Derain plus other young painters. When England declared war on Germany in World War I, Stein and Toklas were visiting with Alfred North Whitehead in England. They returned to France and volunteered to drive supplies to French hospitals; they were later honored by the French government for this work. By the 1920s her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great artists and writers including Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson and Georges Braque. She coined the term "Lost Generation" for some of these ex-patriate American writers. Extremely charming, eloquent, cheerful and overweight, indeed cheerfully overweight, she had a large circle of friends and tirelessly promoted herself. Her judgments in literature and art were highly influential. In 1932, using an accessible style to accommodate the ordinary reading public, she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was really her own autobiography. She described herself as extremely confident, one might even say arrogant, always convinced that she was a genius. She was disdainful of mundane tasks and Alice Toklas managed everyday affairs. The style of the autobiography was quite similar to that of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, which was actually written by Alice and contains several unusual recipes such as one for Hashish Fudge (also called Alice B. Toklas brownies). Gertrude Stein wrote in long hand, typically about half an hour per day. Alice B. Toklas would collect the pages, type them up and deal with the publishing. Indeed, Toklas founded the publisher "Plain Editions" to distribute Stein's work. Today, most manuscripts are kept in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. In the manuscript for Stanzas in Meditation, written in 1932, every word "may" and "May" is crossed out and replaced by "can" respectively "day" or "today". This change had been forced by Toklas out of jealousy after having read Stein's early and unpublished short novel Q.E.D. which recounts a love affair between Stein and a woman called May Bookstaver. Politically, Gertrude Stein was deeply conservative; she regarded the jobless as lazy, opposed Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal and supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War. She would later start a project of translating speeches by Vichy regime leader Pétain into English. With the outbreak of World War II, Stein and Toklas moved to a rented country home in Bilignin, Ain, in the Rhône-Alpes region. Referred to only as "Americans" by their neighbors, the Jewish Gertrude and Alice escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Faÿ, a gay collaborator with the Vichy regime with connections to the Gestapo. When Bernard Faÿ was sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice campaigned for his release. Several years later, Alice would contribute money to Faÿ's escape from prison. After the war, Gertrude's status in Paris grew when she was visited by many young American soldiers. She died of stomach cancer in Paris on July 29, 1946 and was interred there in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery. Several of Stein's writings have been set by composers, including Virgil Thompson's operas Four Saints in Three Acts, The Mother of Us All, and James Tenney's skillful if short setting of Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose as a canon dedicated to Philip Corner, beginning with "a" on an upbeat and continuing so that each repition shuffles the words, eg. "a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose." Gloria Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is a US feminist and journalist and a spokeswoman for women's rights. Gloria Marie Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was an antiques salesman who traveled in a trailer all around the USA buying and selling with his family in tow. The family split in 1944 and Gloria went to live with her mother in Toledo. She had to support them both because her mother was constantly sick. In 1952 Steinem entered the Smith College. She majored in government studies and became politically active working for Adlai Stevenson’s campaign. She graduated 1956 and left to study in India for two years. When she returned to USA, she was unable to find a job as a journalist because editors wanted male reporters. After two years she landed in a job as a assistant editor of Help! magazine and also freelanced for other magazines. In 1963 she became a full-time freelance writer. After a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem was eventually able to get a political assignment in covering George McGovern's presidential campaign. This led to a position in a New York magazine. She also became politically active in the feminist movement. In 1971 Steinem founded National Women’s Political Caucus and Women’s Action Alliance. In 1972 she founded feminist magazine Ms and wrote for it until its closing in 1987. In 1974 Steinem founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women. In 1977 she participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas. In 1991 when Ms magazine revived, she became its consulting editor. In 1993 she was inducted into National Women’s Hall of Fame. She also contracted trigeminal neuralgia in 1994. Jennifer Tilly Jennifer Tilly, An actress who always attracts audiences' attention, Jennifer Tilly is by turns funny, sexy, compassionate, and compelling and often all at once. Her breakthrough movie role tapped into all of those qualities failing singer Blanche "Monica" Moran in Steve Kloves' The Fabulous Baker Boys, opposite Jeff and Beau Bridges. A few years later, Jennifer earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of the aspiring, but hopelessly untalented, actress Olive Neal in Woody Allen's Bullets over Broadway. She has become well-known to filmgoers for both major studio and independent films. In Tom Shadyac's blockbuster Liar Liar, she kept pace with star Jim Carrey. Her steamy performance opposite Gina Gershon helped make the Wachowski Brothers' Bound a breakout indie success at the Sundance Film Festival and then in theatrical release. The latter film also expanded Jennifer's already significant gay and lesbian following. She successfully cultivated another fan base with the revitalization of the Child's Play horror comedy franchise. For Ronny Yu's Bride of Chucky, the filmmakers turned to Jennifer to create the character who would spark the series in a new direction. She met the challenge and established a new horror icon in Tiffany. This Halloween, in Rogue Pictures' all-new Seed of Chucky, written and directed by series creator Don Mancini, Jennifer again takes the popular series to the next level; she stars as Tiffany and the deadly doll's favorite actress Jennifer Tilly, who soon becomes an unwitting hostess in more ways than one. Jennifer's pitch-perfect voiceover work as Tiffany is not the only instance of her being able to incarnate a character from the vocal chords out. Families know her distinctive cadences from the recent Disney hits Home on the Range (in which Jennifer voiced a new-age bovine), directed by Will Finn and John Sanford; The Haunted Mansion (in which Jennifer acted from the neck up only), directed by Rob Minkoff; and the Pixar blockbuster Monsters, Inc. (voicing Mike's love interest Celia), directed by Pete Docter, David Silverman, and Lee Unkrich. She began her acting career as a teenager, putting herself through the theater program at Stephens College in Missouri by winning writing competitions. She then headed to Los Angeles. While she continued to act on the stage (earning a Dramalogue Award for her performance in Vanities), movies and television immediately came calling for the actress with the unique voice and visage. Over the years, Jennifer has made memorable appearances on some of television's best series, including Hill Street Blues (in a recurring dramatic role), Cheers, Moonlighting, It's Garry Shandling's Show, and Frasier. In addition, she has been a favored guest on a number of talk shows, from Johnny Carson to The Arsenio Hall Show to (currently) The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Those interview segments have encouraged viewers to expect the unexpected from her interplay with the host and the studio audience. Her many films over a two-decade span include Neil Jordan's High Spirits, Oliver Stone's The Doors, Richard Benjamin's Made in America, Roger Donaldson's The Getaway, Joe Pytka's Let It Ride, P.J. Castellaneta's Relax, It's Just Sex, Michael Radford's Dancing at the Blue Iguana, Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow (in which she played Louella Parsons). Jennifer has also continued to act on the stage. She won a Theater World Award for her performance in off-Broadway's One Shoe Off, and starred on Broadway in the 2001 revival of The Women (which was later taped for, and broadcast on, PBS). Kathleen Hanna is the lead singer of Le Tigre (Mr. Lady Records) and former lead singer of Bikini Kill (early 1990s) in between which she had a solo project as Julie Ruin. She inspired the name of Nirvana's hit song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by writing "Kurt smells like teen spirit" on one of Kurt Cobain's walls. Kim Gordon Kim Gordon, the brash and enigmatic female member of sonic youth was born in southern california in 1953. her father, a professor of sociology and education, taught at ucla; her mother, a tailor, worked out of the home. in 1980, after graduating from the otis college of art and design, gordon moved to new york. she arrived in gotham at a time when it seemed that the punk movement had enjoyed its fifteen minutes in the spotlight and warhol had disproven his own hypothesis by extending his into its second decade. gordon first put her art degree to use by creating installation pieces and writing for artforum magazine. her experimentation with physical art was soon sidetracked by her interest in music. in 1981, with then-boyfriend thurston moore and lee renaldo, gordon formed a band, influenced by the drone-rock culture that emerged from the ruins of punk rock. born from this union was sonic youth—"sonic" from the sonic rendezvous band and "youth" from big youth. While gordon may have began her musical career with only rudimentary bass-playing skills her determination and innovation quickly established her as a force with which to be reckoned. while gordon claims that her winding up playing bass is the result of the climate of punk music at the time, she, no doubt, could have picked up any instrument and wound up where she is today. immediately, sonic youth began producing music that has been described, by some, as "perfect noise". tuning their instruments to acheive sounds never before produced as or considered music, gordon and her bandmates began to make a name for themselves on the underground scene. lyrically, gordon has become a voice of feminism without becoming subsumed by the movement. while dealing with issues such as rape, anorexia, sexual harassment and supermodels, she has been able to maintain a certain reserve. her austere persona paints a picture of gordon more as a warrior than a survivor. unlike artists such as tori amos and courtney love, whose railings against the patriarchy seem violently personal, gordon seem almost above the issues about which she sings; it's almost as if her strength has completely shielded her from the pain she witnesses in the women around her. perhaps the best example of this is the song "tunic (song for karen), from the 1990 album goo. "i feel like i'm disappearing/getting smaller every day/but when i open my mouth to sing/i'm bigger in every way," she sang, almost channeling the spirit of karen carpeneter as she struggled to balance her desire to pursue her career as a drummer and her success as the front-woman of the 1970s pop duo, the carpenters. Gordon graciously rejects the title of godmother of the riot grrrl. while supportive of the washington-born female punk movement that has fostered groups such as bikini kill and L7, gordon feels the title is mistakenly applied to her. all modesty aside, however, there is no denying that, regardless of the degree of influence that gordon had on these grrrls, she clearly embodies the spirit of the movement. not only has gordon created a sucessful career as a musician, she has released a line of clothing called x-girl and started a family with husband thurston moore and daughter coco. never forgetting her roots, gordon has continued her study of the alchemy of performance and pop culture. she followed up her musical exploration of madonna's success with the film 1991: the year punk broke, a parody of madonna's truth or dare. gordon has also appeared, with sonic youth, in the animated television series, the simpsons. other musical endeavors include producing hole's first album, pretty on the inside, briefly forming the sometimes-bands harry crews, with lydia lunch, and free kitten, and co-directing a music video by the breeders. having mastered the bass, gordon has began studying the lead guitar, which she plays on washing machine and a thousand leaves. Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedian and star of I Love Lucy. A second rank movie star of the 1940s, she became one of the best and most popular stars in television history. She was born in Jamestown, New York and after her father died, was raised by her working mother and grandparents. She moved to New York City to become an actress and had some success as a fashion model and chorus girl. She moved to Hollywood in 1933 to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO. She switched to MGM in the 1940s, but never achieved great success in films. In 1948, she was cast as a wacky wife in "My Favorite Husband", a radio program. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it as a television program. She agreed, but insisted on working with her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz. "I Love Lucy" was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had been badly strained by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule. "Lucy Ricardo" was a friendly, ambitious and somewhat naive housewife who was constantly getting into trouble of one kind or another. "Lucy! You got some 'ess-plainin' to do!" became a famous cry of Ricky Ricardo. The setup provided ample opportunities for Ball to display her skills at physical comedy, at which she is regarded as one of the best-ever in the history of film and television. Along the way, she pioneered the television sitcom, and was among the first stars to film before a live audience. The use of actual film during production, instead of making just an inferior-quality kinescope as most other TV shows did at the time, paved the way for rebroadcast through syndication. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz founded Desilu Productions. Lucille Ball died on April 26, 1989 and was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, but was later moved by her children, Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Lucie Arnaz to the Lake View Cemetery, in Jamestown, New York. There is a Lucille Ball museum located in the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida. Marianne Moore Born near St. Louis, Missouri, on November 15, 1887, Marianne Moore was raised in the home of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor. After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed with other relatives, and in 1896 they moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her B.A. in 1909. Following graduation, Moore studied typing at Carlisle Commercial College, and from 1911 to 1915 she was employed as a school teacher at the Carlisle Indian School. In 1918, Moore and her mother moved to New York City, and in 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and to contribute to the Dial, a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. Along with the work of such other members of the Imagist movement as Ezra Pound, Williams, and H. D., Moore's poems were published in the Egoist, an English magazine, beginning in 1915. In 1921, H.D. published Moore's first book, Poems, without her knowledge. Moore was widely recognized for her work; among her many honors were the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily condensed and precise, capable of suggesting a variety of ideas and associations within a single, compact image. In his 1925 essay "Marianne Moore," William Carlos Williams wrote about Moore's signature mode, the vastness of the particular: "So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events." She was particularly fond of animals, and much of her imagery is drawn from the natural world. She was also a great fan of professional baseball and an admirer of Muhammed Ali, for whom she wrote the liner notes to his record, I Am the Greatest! Deeply attached to her mother, she lived with her until Mrs. Moore's death in 1947. Marianne Moore died in New York City in 1972. Marilyn Hacker Marilyn Hacker was born in New York City in 1942. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002 (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003); First Cities: Collected Early Poems 1960-1979 (2003); Squares and Courtyards (2000); Winter Numbers (1994), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; Selected Poems, 1965-1990 (1994), which received the Poets' Prize; Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986); Assumptions (1985); Taking Notice (1980); Going Back to the River (1990), for which she received a Lambda Literary Award; Separations (1976); and Presentation Piece (1974), which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a National Book Award winner. She also translated Venus Khoury-Ghata's poetry, published in She Says (2003) and Here There Was Once a Country (2001). Hacker was editor of The Kenyon Review from 1990 to 1994, and has received numerous honors, including the Bernard F. Conners Prize from the Paris Review, the John Masefield Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. She lives in New York City and Paris. Maxine Kumin Maxine Kumin was born in Philadelphia in 1925. She has published eleven books of poetry, including Connecting the Dots (W. W. Norton, 1996); Looking for Luck (1992), which received the Poets' Prize; Nurture (1989); The Long Approach (1986); Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief: New and Selected Poems (1982); House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate (1975); and Up Country: Poems of New England (1972), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of a memoir, Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery (W. W. Norton, 2000); four novels; a collection of short stories; more than twenty children's books; and four books of essays, most recently Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2000) and Women, Animals, and Vegetables (1994). She has received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern Poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Sarah Joseph Hale Award, the Levinson Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, and the National Council on the Arts. She has served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, and is a former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. She lives in New Hampshire. Maya Angelou (born April 4, 1928) is considered one of the United States' most eminent authors and poets, and has long been one of the strongest voices for civil rights activism in America. She is best known for her autobiographical writings, such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she has published numerous other collections of verse. Angelou's early activism led Martin Luther King, Jr. to request that she become the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1959. In the early and mid-1960s, Angelou was an editor for newspapers in Africa, including The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt and The African Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the United States in the 1970s, being named a member of the Bicentennial Commission by Gerald Ford and a member of the Commission for International Woman of the Year by Jimmy Carter. She was given a lifetime appointment in 1981 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She also read one of her poems at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, at his request. In addition to her careers in literature and activism, Angelou has had success as a director, producer, actor, and author for stage, television, and film. She wrote the screenplay and score for the film Georgia, Georgia in 1971: the screenplay was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has twice been nominated for a Tony Award for her acting: once in 1973 for Look Away (her debut role), and once in 1977 for Roots. She was the first African-American woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America. Robin Tunney (born June 19, 1972 in Chicago) is an American actress of stage and screen. Tunney studied acting at the Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts. She moved to Los Angeles, at the age of 18, where she had several recurring TV roles on Law & Order, Dream On, and Life Goes On. She had a major breakthrough with her role as a suicidal teenager in Empire Records before receiving the leading role as a gothic witch in The Craft, alongside Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell and Rachel True. Tunney also starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1999's action flick End of Days. In 1997, Tunney married producer Bob Gosse. Rose McGowan (born September 5, 1973, Florence, Italy) is an American actress. Born to a French mother and an Irish father and the oldest of six children, her family relocated to America when Rose was just nine years old. There she began modeling as a child. Her first role was won at the age of 19 as Nora in Encino Man, but it wasn't until she ran away to Los Angeles, California and met independent film director Gregg Araki that she found her big break. Araki cast her as the female lead in his hit film The Doom Generation, where she portrayed a foul-mouthed sexpot in the midst of a violent, crime-prone bisexual love triangle. Another small role in the film Bio-Dome with Stephen Baldwin led to the role that brought her into major public attention. McGowan was cast as Tatum in the hit horror film Scream. As the anti-stereotypical busty blonde who gets slaughtered (by, of all things, a garage door) McGowan left a huge impression on the viewing audience. Soon she was appearing everywhere in independent films like "Southie", "Going All the Way", "Lewis & Clark & George" and "Phantoms" by Dean Koontz. Her next critically acclaimed performance would be in the 1999 black comedy "Jawbreakers" where she played a high school student who tries to cover up her (allegedly) accidental murder of a friend. McGowan was quickly getting a reputation for playing brassy, bitchy and often violent characters, and to add to this reputation she began a very public romance with shock-rocker Marilyn Manson. Soon McGowan was popping up as celebrity events in very revealing outfits with Manson on her arm. The end of that relationship coupled with several unwise choices (including a small role in the wrestling-themed movie "Ready to Rumble", which was a massive bomb at the box-office) served to nearly push McGowan out of the limelight. However in 2001 she was cast as Paige Matthews in the hit television series "Charmed" as a replacement for Shannon Doherty. Currently she can be seen on the show weekly as part of a trio of witchy-sisters. Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963) was an American poet, author, and essayist. She showed early literary promise, publishing her first poem at the age of 8; her father, Otto, a college professor and noted authority on the subject of bees, died at around the same time, October 5, 1940. In her junior year at Smith College, Plath made what was to be the first of several suicide attempts: she later detailed this in the autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, published in 1963. Possibly affected by manic depression, she became a resident of McLean Hospital. She obtained a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge University where she continued to pursue her poetry. It was there she met the English poet Ted Hughes. They were married in 1956, and she published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, in England in 1960. She and Ted Hughes settled for a while in a small village in Devon, but separated less than two years after the birth of their first child, and Plath returned to London with their two children, Frieda and Nicholas. The winter of 1962/1963 turned into one of the harshest in living memory. On February 11, 1963, ill and low on money, Sylvia Plath committed suicide in her kitchen by gas asphyxiation. She lies buried in the churchyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire. Posthumously published collections of her poetry include the celebrated Ariel, published in 1965, and The Collected Poems (1981), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The 2003 film, Sylvia, tells the story of the troubled relationship of the poet couple. Tank Girl I know that Tank Girl is a comic & a movie character. However, she is also important as a character. Well, Tank Girl's attitude is the what defines the comic. It's the fact that she takes no shit that makes her so appealing. "People world wide are living a lie and run their lives around a system that is complete bollocks." Society forces people into little pigeon holes. You conform to your group, that's it. Men do one thing, women do another. There are all sorts of arbitrary rules just put there to keep people in line. "Be like this and you will be happy". People follow these rules 'cos they just don't think. They don't realise that they can be happy as something else, being what they truly want to be. This is what Tank Girl rebels against. She lives life the way she wants. Whoever gets in her way is going to get hurt. Ok, what's the story behind Tank Girl? Tank Girl was created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin in 1988 as a comic to be put in Deadline magazine. Being fed up with shallow females in comics, they decided to break all the rules and have a chick that can drink, puke, and shag with the best of them. Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos August 22, 1963) is an American singer, pianist and songwriter. Tackling a wide range of subjects, including sexuality, religion, patriarchy and personal tragedy, she has built a devoted following. She is probably best known to the wider public for a dance remix of "Professional Widow", her sole single to reach #1 on the European Billboard charts. Classically trained, Amos' voice and mostly piano based music has frequently been compared to that of Kate Bush. Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos August 22, 1963) is an American singer, pianist and songwriter. Tackling a wide range of subjects, including sexuality, religion, patriarchy and personal tragedy, she has built a devoted following. She is probably best known to the wider public for a dance remix of "Professional Widow", her sole single to reach #1 on the European Billboard charts. Classically trained, Amos' voice and mostly piano based music has frequently been compared to that of Kate Bush. She was born Myra Ellen Amos (called Ellen) to Dr. Edison & Mary Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963 during a trip from their home in Georgetown to North Carolina, at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton. At the age of 2 1/2, Amos's family moved to Baltimore, Maryland where Amos began to play the piano and attend her father's church every week. By age 5, she had written her first song. Around this time, she began to spend time with her maternal grandfather, who taught her about her Cherokee heritage. A year later, she was given a full scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music which she was the youngest person ever to attend. At age 11, her scholarship was discontinued due to her growing influence by popular music. Two years later, she began studying at Montgomery College and began playing at piano bars, many of them gay, chaperoned by her father. Reverend Amos began sending tapes of the songs she'd written to record companies at this time. She first came to local notice by winning a county Teen Talent contest, and her picture was published in a local paper. The song she sang was called More than Just a Friend. By the time she reached high school, she was well known in the DC area. During her years at Richard Montgomery High School, she was elected Homecoming Queen and became involved with the drama group. As a high school senior, Ellen Amos wrote Baltimore for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles. This song became her first single, and was released as a 7" pressed for family and friends. Amos' acting has been limited to fringe performances. She has long been asked to audition for roles, notably the female lead in The Crow 2. She appeared in the telesoap Trial by Jury in 1987 as a woman who was accused of killing her married lover. Also in the late 1980s she appeared in a television commercial for Kellogg's Just Right, a breakfast cereal. Most of her contributions to cinema have been musical. In 1998 she coordinated the soundtrack of the film version of Great Expectations, weaving breathy, ethereal vocals through the film's background. She made her first character appearance in the 2004 film Mona Lisa Smile as a big-band singer. A number of factors contribute to Amos' underground appeal: she is very popular amongst underground remixers, as well as the gay and lesbian community; in addition her songs have been covered by a number of artists including Faye Wong and Voltaire. She inspired the character Delirium in Neil Gaiman's comic The Sandman. She is married to British sound engineer, Mark Hawley - the inspiration for her song "Northern Lad". A b-side, entitled "Never Seen Blue", is also said to be about him. Vandana Shiva Vandana Shiva, physicist, philosopher, ecofeminist, environmental activist, writer, was born in 1952 in Dehra Dun, India. She participated in the 1970s in the Chipko movement, of Indian women hugging the trees to prevent their felling, and founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in 1982. Initiatives of this Foundation are the organic farming programme Navdanya, the Bija Vidyapeeth (or Seed University, International College for Sustainable Living), and Diverse Women for Diversity. Another of the Vandana Shiva's initiatives is the Living Democracy Movement. She received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993 "...For placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse." (See [1] (http://www.rightlivelihood.se/recip1993_3.html)). Other awards she has received include the Global 500 Award of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1993 (see [2] (http://www.global500.org/ViewLaureate.asp?ID=191)), and the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations (UN). Vandana Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, etc.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as anti-globalization movement.