For the last year and a half, Girl Fest founder/curator Madison Sturdevant’s day job has been production manager at the Doug Fir Lounge (AKA everyone’s favorite venue). Although she may seem like she’s got it all together—she’s the founder and curator of Girl Fest, a yearly all-ages showcase for women and nonbinary artists from the Pacific Northwest region that’s going strong into its sixth year, and two weeks before our interview, she was promoted to Doug Fir’s booking coordinator—she went through a period of not knowing what the hell she was doing with her life.
Before starting Girl Fest, Sturdevant spent two years studying communications at a “tiny little Christian college in the middle of nowhere in Kansas,” something she describes as “a bizarre experience” where she was just going through the motions.
“I was like ‘I’m this little liberal girl from the Northwest and somehow I’m in this alternate universe,’ and then I quickly came back,” says Sturdevant.
Born and raised in Newberg, Sturdevant started writing for Seattle-based blog Respect My Region as a way to stay connected to the Pacific Northwest’s bubbling pool of musical talent while away at school. She’d listen to Northwest hip-hop and write about it, researching and obsessing over all the releases and shows she couldn’t attend.
