New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams was one of the first magazines I ever published in...I think I was about 16 and it was an essay about an old woman named Ana Lucia that I met while spending a summer in Costa Rica. She rocked my world and I immediately wanted to write about the experience, but what's a girl in the middle of Colorado Springs, Colorado to do with a lot of ambition and a cheesy personal essay? Send it to New Moon, it turns out.
New Moon has encouraged so many young voices over the years, many of whom I'm sure have developed into bonafide journalists and editors and poets as the years wear on. Part of this is due to the fact that the magazine recognizes that wellbeing and authenticity go hand in hand. You don't have to sanitize the content just to make it safe and you also don't have to dumb it down to make it attractive to girls. Let girls create their own media, and enlightenment follows.
Thanks to Nancy Gruver and all the other visionaries behind New Moon's founding and all those that continue to keep it alive and thriving.
*In this month's issue, by the way, is an interview with DJ Rehka alongside an essay with "examples of artists who bring positive messages to the airwaves while maintaining the true essence of hip-hop." See what I mean?
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I read and loved this magazine as a girl. Once, in the Letters to Luna section, there was a particularly funny write-in that I remember to this day. The girl was writing about discovering New Moon and she wrote something along the lines of looking around and then "Crash! Bang! Boom! There was New Moon!" My best friend and I thought that was just the funniest thing we'd ever read and for weeks went around saying "Crash! Bang! Boom!" at the beginning of all our sentences. So now whenever I see it I always add that in front, too.
We were lucky girls, to have that magazine.
I LOVED New Moon, and when my sister turned 10, I starting paying for her subscription to it. She totally loved it too - we both kept reading it beyond the "recommended" age. :)
"New Moon has encouraged so many young voices over the years, many of whom I'm sure have developed into bonafide journalists and editors and poets as the years wear on."
I got my hands on my first New Moon when I was 11. 15 years later, I'm typing this comment from the New Moon office, where I now work as the managing editor of the magazine.
My "testimony" of New Moon's impact on girls is not rare. In fact, the best part of my job is reading letters from girls all over the world who feel empowered by having New Moon as a tool for crafting their voices and deepening their confidences.
Every day, I work with passionate and talented girls and women who never fail to inspire me. Thanks so much, New Moon!
My daughters have been subscribed to New Moon since they were 9. They love it and have both written letters and been published in the magazine. They are 13 now and I think we have another year or so of New Moon before we move on to Shameless magazine.
This magazine made me a feminist, at the age of twelve, in a really Catholic household. I sat my mom down and said, "I'm not Catholic anymore because I think birth control and abortion are okay," and she said, "Oh God, you're pregnant, aren't you?"
By the way, what magazine should I get for my fourteen year old sister? She's a bit old for New Moon and a bit young for Bust, I think, but she needs to be corrupted.
I loved reading New Moon when I was a kid. I remember discovering it one day in a bookstore like Borders. That was back when I probably didn't even know what a "feminist" was.
My mom used to get me this mag, loved it!
awwwww I totally used to read New Moon - I had a few Luna sketches but not enough courage to send them in and let anyone else see...
I think I still have like every issue I got - I should go find them!
I started reading New Moon when I was 9, and I looovvveeed it. At the time, I totally didn't see it as a feminist magazine - I just liked that it was a magazine for smart girls! (Hehe.) I think it totally shaped who I later became, though.
Thanks, New Moon!
Hey, I grew up in Colorado Springs too...but my family would've sent me to get deliverance from demons if I'd been caught reading anything to do with feminism. No wonder I ended up an atheist feminist! :)