By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 10 years ago

Happy Birthday Syreeta!

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Today is the birthday of not one, but two awesome Feministing contributors. So, happy birthday, Syreeta McFadden! Syreeta is a true renaissance woman, who reads, writes, shoots photography, edits the literary magazine Union Station and teaches writing. A native of Milwaukee, who now calls Brooklyn home, Syreeta started her first novel at the ripe old age of 12. Her heroins are Trinity from The Matrix and her grandmother. When it comes to the one feminist she’s want to have on a desert island, Syreeta is torn between Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry.

Whether she’s writing viral tweets about injustice (see above), calling out Saturday Night Live‘s diversity fail, criticizing the GOP ever so slightly for being ever so slightly racist (“GOP voters give zero Fs about your feelings on blackface costumes”), giving due props to Daisy Bates for organizing and speaking at The March on Washington, Syreeta tells it like it is and blogs truth to power. And her cultural criticism, which explores gender and race and everything in between is top notch. She also brings the funny… big time. We’re so glad to have you! Thanks for being you. And happy birthday!

 

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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