Called "the hardest-working woman in feminism" by Michelle Tea, Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, performer, and activist. Her writing has been featured in Bitch Magazine, AlterNet, Women's eNews, The Huffington Post,, PW.org, and PopPolitics. She's also appeared as a guest blogger on Feministe, and in the Lambda Award nominated anthology Pinned Down By Pronouns. She has been a guest on numerous television and radio shows including Democracy Now!, BBC's The World Tonight, To the Contrary, The Brian Lehrer Show, and GRITtv. Friedman holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and has received a 2001 Cambridge Poetry Award, a 2004 Somerville Arts Council Artist Grant, and a recent fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She was named one of 2009’s “Top 40 Progressive Leaders Under 40” by the New Leaders Council.

In her work as the Program Director for the Center for New Words, she programs and produces a 50 plus event-per-year series of author discussions, as well as writing workshops, open mics, political discussions, music concerts, book groups, and special events. She is Co-Founder and Co-Chair of WAM!, CNW's conference on Women, Action & the Media. Before coming to CNW, Friedman worked as Program Director of the LiveSafe Foundation, an organization dedicated to teaching self-defense, de-escalation, and safety skills in communities with high rates of violence. In her spare time, Friedman plots world domination through truth and secretly watches reality television. Her favorite lipstick color is Wicked.

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Jessica Valenti—called the “poster girl for third-wave feminism” by Salon—is the author of three books: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut…and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, which is being made into a documentary by the Media Education Foundation. She is also the editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, which was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 100 Books of 2009, and the founder of Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review calls “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.”

Jessica’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon, and Bitch magazine. She has won a Choice USA Generation award, was featured as one of ELLE magazine’s “IntELLEgentsia”, and was named one of the Left’s Top 25 Journalists by The Daily Beast. She has appeared on The Colbert Report and the Today show, among others, and was recently profiled in The New York Times Magazine under the headline “Fourth Wave Feminism.”

Jessica is also a widely sought after speaker who gives dozens of speeches annually at universities and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She received her master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, where she is a part-time lecturer.

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