Ginny Berson

Ginny Z. Berson is a radical lesbian feminist, political activist, and community organizer who lived and worked collectively as a lesbian separatist with The Furies Collective and Olivia Records.

Early life Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1946, Berson is the second of three daughters. Her parents were first generation Americans of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Her grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. The family moved to Fairfield, Connecticut when Berson was in kindergarten and opened a family-run children’s clothing store called the Peter Pan Shop. She wrote extensively for The Furies newspaper from 1972 to 1973. In 1973, Berson and her romantic partner, Meg Christian, helped found Olivia Records, a national women’s record company created to release music centered on women’s lives. Similar to The Furies, Olivia Records operated as a collective that created an alternative feminist economic institution for women in the music and music distribution industry. Olivia Records, along with Berson and Meg Christian, moved from Washington DC to Los Angeles in March 1975 and then to Oakland in 1977. Christian and Berson ended their relationship in 1976 which led Berson to transition from managing and touring with Christian to working with the record label’s distribution network and eventually leaving Olivia Records in 1980. Berson went on to write a book titled, Olivia on the Record: A Radical Experiment in Women’s Music, published by Aunt Lute Books in the fall of 2020.

Career in radio After her work within Olivia Records, Berson began a career in radio, working for KPFA-FM first as the Director of Women’s Programming and then the Program Director. In the mid 1990’s, Berson worked as Senior Producer for Live National Events for Pacifica Radio. As part of her work at Pacifica, she collected radio content by attending marches, conventions, concerts, and Nelson Mandela’s triumphal visit to Oakland after his release from prison. She later went on to become the Director of Federation Services for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.