The Women’s Magazine is an hour long radio program that airs on KPFA radio that presents and discusses women’s lives and issues globally and locally from a radical, multiracial, feminist, mujerist, womanist perspective.

Women's Magazine Host: Left to right, Lisa Marie Rollins, Kate Raphael, Simin Yahagi, Lisa Dettmer, Angela Wellman, Samar Habib and Vylma V.
Women’s Magazine Host: Left to right, Lisa Marie Rollins, Kate Raphael, Simin Yahagi, Lisa Dettmer, Angela Wellman, Samar Habib and Vylma V.

About the Hosts:

Lisa Dettmer is a graduate of KPFA’s Apprenticeship program and helped co-found the Women’s Magazine in 2005. A graduate of New College School of Law she has worked in the legal arena in tenant eviction defense and against police brutality. A long time feminist and Queer activist she has worked with many groups including the Women’s Action Coalition, Lesbian Avengers, Act-Up and Queer nation. Her cutting edge radio documentary “Beyond Gay Marriage” which is available online, provides an incisive critique of the mainstreaming of the Gay Movement.

Kate Raphael is a long-time feminist and queer activist, mystery novelist, and office worker. She is a founding member of Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) and San Francisco Women In Black and a member of the editorial collective of the quarterly queer newspaper, UltraViolet. She is a former board member of San Francisco Women Against Rape and was a 2004 LGBT Pride Parade Community Grand Marshal. Kate’s interviews with Syrian and Honduran feminists have been broadcast nationally. Click here to read her blog.

Trombonist, scholar, educator and activist Angela Wellman has performed with the McCoy Tyner Big Band, Joe Williams, Al Grey, Slide Hampton, and other noted musicians. Raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Ms. Wellman was nurtured in a musical family, and is a third generation musician and music educator. Ms. Wellman is a recipient of national, state, and city Arts awards and fellowships for performance study and music education. Among these awards is the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship to study with trombonist Steve Turre. In 2005 she founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music to provide quality, affordable music education. She is presently pursuing a PhD in education.

Lisa Marie Rollins is a writer/playwright, performer, adjunct professor and a leading voice in transracial/ international adoption education and adoptee advocacy. Lisa Marie has been a commentator on CNN, NPR, HuffPostLive and was honored as one of Colorlines Magazine’s “Innovators to Watch” for her critical social justice work with black adoptees / reproductive justice / transracial adoption. She is a CALLALOO Journal London Writing Workshop Fellow and a Poetry alumnus of VONA Writing Workshop. Lisa Marie is a director and dramaturg for many solo theatrical performers in the Bay Area. Read more about her work.

Vylma V is an activist, human rights attorney and former public defender who learned her radio skills through the First Voice Media Apprentice Program (expected graduation date: Spring 2015). She is a feminist, married, Puerto Rican, mother of two boys who teaches Goddess-focused meditation to young women and girls in the Bay Area. Vylma is also a musician, singer, occasional actress and a Women Inspired to Teach our Collective History (WITCH). She is one of the hosts of Women’s Magazine, is the news editor for La Raza Chronicles and is the executive producer of Goddess on the Radio on KPFB on Saturdays at 3pm. She can be reached at [email protected].

Simin Yahaghi is one of the founders of Women’s Magazine and covers issues of women, trauma and healing. Yahaghi is Iranian who studied theater at the University Di Bologna and the School of Theater at Galanta Garrone in Italy. She has performed with several theater groups including Living Theater in Bolonga. She also studied modern dance in the school of Martha Graham in New York City. Since 1998, Simin has lived in Oakland and is currently teaching yoga.