Hello AF Media and AF+ Members,
We (Riese, Kayla, and Drew) are writing to you, because we assume we’re all feeling a lot of the same things: fear, confusion, anxiety, despair, frustration, anger. It’s the first stretch of a second Trump presidency, something none of us wanted, but alas, here we are. Here we all are together!
The media industry has been a tough landscape for a long time, and it feels especially fraught now in a time of escalated misinformation exacerbated by AI, an administration visibly endorsed and supported by an oligarchy of tech giants, social media algorithms that favor fascism and isolation over community-building, and politicians and lawmakers who seem intent on pedaling false and harmful ideologies about the most v...
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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
Kayla has written 985 articles for us.
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Drew Burnett has written 677 articles for us.
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Riese has written 3303 articles for us.
