The Unicorn Files

I absolutely love the geek girl movement that is sweeping the Internets, whether it be in the form of blogs, like The Nerdy Girlie, or books, like The Fangirls Guide to the Galaxy. That’s why I was immediately drawn to The Unicorn Files project. The Unicorn Files is a photo book full of beautiful images taken of true geek girls in their natural environment: their homes. Its goal is to represent this community and expose others to the fact that geek girls, in fact, do exist and are a vital part of geek culture.

For that reason, I knew I had to contact the project’s creator, Terra Clarke Olsen, to get to know her and the project a little better. Check out what she had to say;

The idea came to me over two years ago at the height of the “fake geek girl” nonsense. After a year, I finally got the nerve to pitch the idea to Nate, and he loved it! “The Unicorn Files” is in reference to a term I resent being called (which I touch on in a Seattle Weekly article). Few months later and here we are!

Finding models, actually! I have met a lot of geeky women, and after talking to them a few minutes I get so excited that I’m inspired to tell their story so I ask if they would be interested – and surprisingly a lot of women in the community do not like having their picture taken! So that has been tough since it is a photo based project. 🙂

5. What do you hope to achieve with the project?
I hope that these images will inspire other women to own their geekdom and stop gatekeeping. Some of the women’s homes we went to did not have any traditional geeky memorabilia, yet people think that you need to own these things to be a true fan. That is wrong in so many ways. You don’t have to have the world’s largest comic book collection to be considered a comic nerd, you just need to love comics.

Want to know more about The Unicorn Files, possibly participate in some way and how you can support it?
Check out these links;

Kickstarter | Tumblr | Twitter