We recently connected with Keidra Chaney and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Keidra, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?
My first published writing was at 17: a letter to the editor for a music magazine decrying racism in the local music scene; seeing my letter in print made me want to keep writing, especially about the issues I wanted to read about. This led me to my first paid writing opportunity, through the now defunct Bitch Media, at the time it was called Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, for a personal essay called “Sister Outsider Headbanger” about being a Black woman and feminist who listens to heavy metal.
At the time Bitch was a print-only publication; it had started as a zine and, by that time, had grown into a full-length magazine. But it was my dream to write for Bitch; I had figured out in journalism school that I wanted to write for a living rather than stay on in grad school for a Ph.D in cultural studies and communications, which was my original dream.
I focused on music writing and personal essays; I read the cultural criticism that Bitch was doing and thought, “This is how I want to spend my days,” but I honestly didn’t know if there was real money in it or if I could make a living out of it. I took a class on creative nonfiction in a journalism class at UW-Madison, and my professor, Deborah Blum, told us early on, “Most of y’all are not going to get full-time jobs in journalism; you’ll be full-time freelancers.” One of our assignments was to write a pitch for a publication. So, this essay was my very first pitch to a publication. I was so thrilled and surprised that it was accepted, and it was my first time getting my work professionally edited, which was a game-changer for me. I’ll always be a massive cheerleader for editors; they make writers look good!
I got $150 for the piece; later, the essay was re-published in the Bitch 10th anniversary book anthology, and I still get emails about the essay every year or so; it’s been taught in university classes. It was a fantastic start to my writing career, and I’ll always be grateful to Bitch (R.I.P)
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My creative career is definitely a hodgepodge, but it all connects and makes sense to me. I have called myself a “writer in a complicated relationship with the internet.” I wanted to be a writer before anything else, but technology and social media have been how I’ve built my career and made a living. I’ve had a dual career in social media/content strategy and accessibility (I’ll get to that later) while writing and editing music journalism, cultural criticism, and personal essays. I write primarily music and culture journalism and criticism. I’m also a musician, I’ve played bass in a couple of bands and I still write songs.
From 2008 to 2020, I was the co-founder and managing editor of The Learned Fangirl, an online publication focused on writing about fandom and pop culture criticism from an intersectional lens. It was, in many ways, my dream job, being able to be a professional fangirl, write about my fannish fixations, and publish other marginalized writers with similar interests.
Bitch Media and other feminist pop culture websites of the time inspired TLF greatly. We eventually published and paid more than 50 writers and three part-time staff, most of them first-time writers, graduate students, or junior scholars, and overwhelmingly women and non-binary people of color. We saw a number of these writers move on to other positions and opportunities in pop culture writing.
In 2020, TLF was put on a permanent hiatus, mostly due to burnout. I used the remaining funds to create an emergency fund for freelance culture writers, focusing on marginalized writers (BIPOC, LGBTQ, disabled) who are disproportionately employed as freelancers in media and who were also impacted first by pandemic layoffs. We felt like it was an appropriate extension of the mission of TLF and a good way to wind down the project.
In 2023 I started to feel the mental stress of being “extremely online” for most of my career, and I longed to return to analog and print as a form of self-expression. I started thinking about relaunching TLF as a print publication but didn’t want to focus solely on pop culture and fandom, So I launched Wild Ramp Publishing, which is a print micropublisher of zines and chapbooks. I’m currently focused on publishing my writing, but I hope to start distributing other writers later this year. My first publication was Fangirl Confessional, a personal essay collection about fandom, race, gender, and growing up in the 80s and 90s. My second release is the first of a series called “Act Your Age, ” a collaborative zine from fans over 35. I feel like Wild Ramp is “grown up” TLF, taking much of what I loved about that experience and channeling it into something that reflects my life and interests.
In addition to all of this, I advocate for disability justice and accessibility. I was diagnosed with a degenerative cornea disease 15 years ago. I became a certified professional in accessibility from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, and I recently completed a fellowship in disability studies at San Francisco State University’s Longmore Institute, and work at a new nonprofit called Disability Culture Lab.
I’ve recently connected my two passions – writing and disability advocacy – by offering microgrants to zinesters who want to do a zine focused on disability justice. As a disabled Black woman, I’m so passionate about self-expression as a form of liberation and I want to continue to focus my creative work in this direction.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
There is an idea that people who want to pursue creative careers are primarily interested in fame or a lot of attention and that becoming famous is the goal or the destination. It’s weird because I am very introverted but love to perform. I love playing out in bands and doing spoken word performances. I love performing but don’t do it to ” blow up ” and be famous. I’ve always been more interested in expressing myself and connecting with others who understand what I’m doing.
My audience isn’t “everyone,” and I don’t wish it to be; I create, write, and make music to express myself. I hope that others resonate and connect with what I create, but it’s perfectly okay if not everyone gets it. I think a lot of creatives are driven by connection and self-expression as much as if not more than, the idea of making a lot of money and becoming famous, but sometimes people don’t get the idea of giving as much of your energy to an audience of 20 as you do an audience of 20,000.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
In the past few years, I’ve been able to articulate what drives my creative work. My mission is to support writing and self-expression for anyone who wants to do it and encourage fans to engage with their passions through a lens of media literacy. Being a writer or culture critic should not be owned simply by people who want to make it a job. So many of us have a voice, a story, and a perspective that should be heard and shared.
In the first couple of years after I started The Learned Fangirl, we had a couple of offers to integrate the website into a content network. After some deliberation, we realized it wasn’t aligned with our values and goals. I know a couple of people probably thought that was a stupid choice, but I think if we had gone that route, the site would not have lasted as long as it did; it probably would have gone in a very different direction, not as focused on marginalized voices and new writers. And we would not have been able to start an emergency grant for writers. Sticking by the values of centering self-expression kept TLF alive for a long time and will continue to motivate me to do Wild Ramp Publishing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://keidradchaney.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keidrachaney/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wild-ramp-publishing/
- Other: @wildramppublishing.bsky.social
@kdc.bsky.social
https://soleheiress.bandcamp.com/ (music)
https://thelearnedfangirl.com/ (archived)
Image Credits
Performance credit (Andrew Huff)
Music Performance credit (Ann Markey)