Riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna will tell the story of her life and career in a new memoir.
Ecco will publish Hanna’s Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk next year, the HarperCollins imprint announced in a news release. The press describes the book as a “raw and insightful new memoir [that] traces Hanna’s life from her tumultuous childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band.”
Hanna, a native of Portland, Oregon, was raised in Maryland and Portland and educated at Evergreen State College in Olympia. In 1990, she co-founded the punk band Bikini Kill with Billy Karren, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail. The band broke up in 1997, and Hanna later formed the electronic rock band Le Tigre with Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning.
Hanna inspired one of the most iconic songs in rock history after writing the phrase “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Kurt Cobain’s wall. The Nirvana frontman used the phrase as the title of the song that introduced the world at large to grunge.
“Hanna makes clear that surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination as she and her bandmates faced male violence and antagonism at every turn,” Ecco says of Hanna’s book. “In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how it continues to fuel her revolutionary art and music.”
Rebel Girl is slated for publication on May 14, 2024.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
