Sunday 31 December 2023

a manifesto, an invitation, and an experiment in polyphony

 We are very pleased to share with you our latest musings: an experimental manifesto on the theme of food, feminism, and fermentation. 

In this experimental manifesto, Maya Hey, Anna Sigrithur, and Tiff Mak weave together thoughts on the current state of fermentation. As scholars and practitioners of feminism and fermentation, we wanted to see what collaborative writing could look like using the feminist practice of hundreds (a process document explaining our methods is coming soon). The resulting piece is both an offering and an invitation for joining the polyphonic manifesto — one that, like its ruminations on fermentation — centres process over product. We hope you'll enjoy it! 








Friday 31 December 2021

download our latest publication: musings, the ABCs of FFF

 Our latest publication, musings, is available for download through the following link: 


It is an abecedary, or ABC book, with entries spanning A to Z and keywords penned by over 30 contributors. We hope you enjoy it and share it with folks who might be interested. 

Happy reading! 



cover image by Eliza Wolfson

Tuesday 31 August 2021

Last Call! join us as we build an abecedary

We've heard from a few more folks (so exciting!), and our abecedary is looking more like this now: 

  • A is for Archives
  • B is for BO
  • C is for Capitalism 
  • C is for Conversation
  • D is for Decolonisation 
  • E is for Erotic 
  • F is for Flavor
  • G is for Gerund
  • H is for Hands 
  • I is for Incubator
  • J is for Joyful 
  • K is for Kneading
  • K is for Kitchens 
  • L is for Learning 
  • M is for Menstruation
  • N is for Nietzsche 
  • O is for Offering
  • P is for Politics 
  • Q is for Queering 
  • R is for Reciprocity 
  • R is for Revival 
  • S is for Something We Don't Know Yet
  • S is for Symbiosis
  • T is for Taste
  • ‼️U is for _____________? join us if you'd be interested in this entry
  • V is for Vessel 
  • V is for Vagina 
  • W is for Wrought 
  • ‼️X is for _____________? join us if you'd be interested in this entry
  • Y is for Yeast
  • Z is for Żurek


We are especially keen to hear from folks who are interested in contributing to the letters of U and X. Please see below for Submission Details or get in touch with us by email. 



We are looking for short pieces (200-500 words, can be more if you let us know in advance) that explain how the word connects to our themes of food, feminism, and/or fermentation. We're open to non-textual forms too, including images and audio (in which case, aim for 5 images or 5 minutes). We admit that we are more interested in words that cut across these themes instead of a UN model of ferments (e.g., bread, kimchi, viili, etc.). We welcome persuasive arguments, personal stories, poems, photo essays, provocations, philosophical musings, as well as sound-based or video-based work. If you've something in mind that's not listed here, let us know so we can ideate together. Of note, our abecedary will be produced both digitally and in print. 


Get in touch if you have questions or want to think out loud; after all, part of the fun is figuring this out together. 


While our ideal timeline has drafts due by September 25, we are willing to work with individual authors. Given that the world is a dumpster fire right now, we want to be flexible since we don't know what kinds of pressures uniquely affect your time commitments. 



Submission Details 

Drafts should include: 

  • title, beginning with the represented letter (i.e., Y is for _______)
  • 200-500 words of text (or 5 images or 5 minutes of audio)
  • a brief biographical statement (50 words maximum) 

Please send these to our email address by September 15, 2021: food.feminism.fermentation [at] gmail dot com 

We look forward to hearing from you! 

Thursday 31 December 2020

A Year to Ferment (or A Manifesto for Doing Things Differently)



It took a year to ferment this project into something worth keeping alive.

Without a doubt, this project was founded on the basic academic principles of more is better, publish or perish, all the projects perpetually forthcoming. Under the guise of knowledge promotion, our gauge for success was always in units of output (that is, proving one’s worth in the successive wins on a CV) and doing so without ever looking at the cumulative cost of constantly mobilizing. That intensity was unpalatable, rotten even, and I needed this year to reorient and recuperate. So, I treated this project like I do many questionable ferments: I cut away the spoiled bits, wrapped it up in some new skins, and set it aside in the hopes that it’d reestablish a teeming, vibrant energy over time.

And this sort of slowing down was necessary, especially when the world’s capacity writ large is being tamped down by relentless threats—racism, viruses, a burning planet. I certainly don’t have the heart or the energy to ask for more work in these times. Not from co-conspirators, not from myself. Overwork, over-extraction. These are the results of too much, an abundance never requested. It’s forced. And I no longer wish to be the force behind these endeavors. Terrified, petrified. Times of immobile shock are not the time to force a move. It’s a time to be still. That’s what 2020 was: a time to be still and let the range of human emotion course through me as I took note of what resonates, what is an undeniable priority, and how I could become more deliberate and intentional with my work. To continue believing in old models of productivity-as-worth is to tread water. To expect others to do this is just sinister. And to let it go unexamined is absurd.

The absurdity was super clear to me when a dear friend and colleague sent me Sabrina Orah Mark’s “Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over” in which the author writes about the impermanence of some things while others endure:
“And maybe the bread, as I’ve always understood it, really is over. The new world order is rearranging itself on the planet and settling in. Our touchstone is changing color. Our criteria for earning a life, a living, are mutating like a virus that wants badly to stay alive.”
Procuring flour for pandemic baking is not just about bread but ties in with identity and ritual; it is indicative of how purpose can become muddled and obscured when all around us is ablaze in the meme of the year: this is fine. Nope, it isn’t fine. What matters is self-reflection, grounding, and a commitment to doing things differently. 

What I’m writing right now may seem a bit manifesto in tone, as if leading up to something. I am—but I’m not ready to share it just yet. For I want to be sure that if this project is to produce something and prove its existence as being worthwhile, then I want what we do to be mutually fun, minimally extractive, built on wonder and (dare I say) compassion instead of the assumption that business as usual will get us through to the next phase. I am tired of that expectation of constantly capitalizing on opportunities for (self)promotion because I’m fearful of reinscribing the very self-centeredness that plagues academia to begin with. At the same time, I remain hopeful now, more than ever, because care and thoughtful considerations of our collective wellbeing will indeed need to come before any one achievement. Throughputs over outputs. Process over product. It is how we get to next.





Monday 2 December 2019

download our latest publication: musings

Our latest publication, musings, is available for download through the following link: 


Happy reading! 

Sunday 1 December 2019

our latest project: musings, a collection of stories with food, feminism, fermentation

It is with great pleasure that we launch our biennial publication,

    musings | 2019 edition

as a collection of stories on the themes of food, feminism, and fermentation.


Cover Image
Title: 酒母- the mother 


Table of Contents for musings | 2019 edition


1 / Culturing Creativity, and a little bit of shit stirring
WhiteFeather Hunter


2 / The Fermentation Revival in Historical Context: A Feminist Perspective
Sandor Katz


3 / The Hidden Power of Coffee Fermentation 
Lucia Solis


4 / Embodying Cultures of Cultures
Michaela Kennedy


5 / Gut Feelings: A Performance
Alanna Lynch


6 / Brewing Change: Gender and Labour in Historical Texts
Alex Ketchum


7 / Not Just Yeast: How One Sourdough Starter Bubbled Out Feminism
Arianna Sikorski


8 / Find Your Sacred
Kathryn Fraser 


9 / Attuning Entanglements: Notes on a Fermentation Workshop
Salla Sariola & Matthäus Rest


10 / Tuning to the Invisible
Maya Hey 


11 / Harvest Musings

Caroline Granger