Gaggle member helps launch non-profit magazine Feminist Times

British musician and founding member of all-female alt-choir Gaggle, Deborah Coughlin has joined new not-for-profit magazine the Feminist Times as Deputy Editor.

The venture, launched by journalist Charlotte Raven, is meant as a continuation of iconic feminist publication Spare Rib. The magazine was initially expected to take Spare Rib’s name, but Raven was forced to alter the title following legal issues with its founders.

With Coughlin and other writers on board, the mag now attempts to “produce a glossy women’s magazine, with high-quality editorial content, free from advertising and PR” but “without exploiting staff, contributors or interns, is neither an easy undertaking, nor a cheap one”. The magazine will be made available via a subscription service, with different levels of membership – each named after a leading feminist icon.

“I started Gaggle because I thought there were a lack of female voices in music and I’ve joined Feminist Times for similar reasons,” Coughlin told Best Fit. ”Feminist Times is going to be the idiosyncratic cousin of other magazines, a feminist Private Eye, and a place where the focus isn’t always on what’s wrong with you – you’re too fat, too uncool, too poor – but rather on what’s wrong with culture, society – and how we can do something positive about this”.

Coughlin continued: “It’s an ambitious project and Im pleased to have been asked to join. We have an amazing Editorial Board, Founder Members and now Members. It will be exciting to watch the community grow, to have a place where all the incredible feminist activity that taking place is documented, praised and encouraged and to hear a cacophony of women’s voices.”

The Feminist Times will launch their website in September, with its first issue coming in the autumn. Keep up to date with the magazine’s progress over at Twitter.