Short Bio

Jennifer K. Stuller is a rebellion built on hope.

Long Bio

Even if Jennifer K. Stuller’s given name wasn’t an homage to Vanessa Redgrave’s Guenevere in 1967’s Camelot, she nevertheless would have been forged from the pop culture of the late twentieth century.

Superhero television of the 1970s taught her compassion is the ultimate superpower. Adventure films in the 1980s demonstrated that possibility is the eternal fuel of human spirit. Gen X staples of the 1990s teenager kept her, to quote an icon, “strange and unusual.”

When, in 1989, her father (who affectionately called her “Grasshopper”) gifted his first-born a copy of Ms. Magazine, it was Jennifer’s Excalibur. Pop culture and politics would be forever entwined in her quests.

Today, Jennifer is a respected and sought-after feminist pop culture historian and media critic. As a professional writer she has contributed to web and print based publications including the BBC, Bitch Media, and Geek Monthly.

As a public speaker, Jen brings her illuminating, insightful, and often playful voice to audiences in the United States and internationally. From coffee houses to Comic-Cons, libraries and classrooms to Town Halls, museums, and even the United Nations, she is a featured speaker, panel organizer and contributor, conversation moderator, and interviewer.

In her book Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, Jen presents an exploration of the journey of the female hero in comics, film, and television, as well as a call to action for creating stories with complex women at their center. As the editor of Fan Phenomena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she embraces two of her passions: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the creative endeavors of fan communities.

Jen is co-founder, founding director of programming, and former Board President of GeekGirlCon—an organization that celebrates and honors the legacy of women and girls in the fields of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), comics, science-fiction, arts, and literature, game play and game design. Founded in 2010, GeekGirlCon has connected thousands of women and allies in geek culture in friendship, unapologetic nerdiness, and career and mentoring opportunities.

Jen has been interviewed by numerous publications about geek culture and women in media including The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, The Mary Sue, Legion of Leia, and Bitch Media. Her expert opinion and interviews extend across radio, documentaries, podcasts, and news media including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National Breakfast show; KUOW’s The Conversation and The Record; and WNYC’s The Takeaway. She was a featured talking head in the 2012 documentary, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines. She can be seen in the AMC documentary series Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics. Jen’s passion for popular culture, geek culture, and feminist politics have led to collaborations with the Museum of Pop Culture, the Seattle International Film Festival, the Comics Arts Conference, Association for the Study of Buffy+, Humanities Washington, and more.

She is currently working on a memoir in essays and image, framed as a conceptual scrapbook that searches her own embodied Gen X history for answers to a midlife crisis. Traveling between 90s San Francisco and Seattle today, she traces her throughline from Lollapalooza to Perimenopause via objects of personal meaning: A navel piercing from Body Manipulations in 1993, the best mixtape, a concert tee, handwritten notes, Polaroids, cassette interviews of friends, youthful voices & sound of payphone ring, bunk uterus post-Roe, empty bottles, first journal entry since ‘98. It’s about identity and aging, how there’s a core ready for re/embrace, even as the circumstances of life evolve. It’s also a love letter to the Alternative Nation. Her most personal and vulnerable project to date encompasses transformative storytelling, insight into cultural history, feminist perspective, and joy for analogue and artifact.

Also forthcoming is a multi-media project, The Jen X Files. Tagline: It’s punk. It’s a pun. It’s perimenopausal.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer moved to Seattle in 1997. She is married to Ryan Wilkerson, a leader in Executive, Creative, and Digital Design. They live with their Maltese, Dottie.

Jen is a rebellion built on hope, and has vowed to use her powers only for good.

Bio to Copy and Paste

Jennifer K. Stuller is a writer, media critic, and feminist pop culture historian. She is the author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, and the editor of Fan Phenomena: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She has been published in BBC News, Bitch Media, and Geek Monthly. Additionally, Stuller is Co-Founder and former Board President of GeekGirlCon. A sought-after speaker, she brings her messages of media literacy and positive fandom to a variety of audiences, and speaks about geek culture and activism at conferences, libraries, and schools in the US and internationally. Stuller is a rebellion built on hope, and has vowed to use her powers only for good.