Vivien Jones was born in Kenya, grew up in Botswana, went to boarding school in the Seychelles, finished high school in Hong Kong, and spent her career working on fashion and lifestyle magazines across Asia before moving to the UK. Her co-founder Nicky Shortridge, a graphic designer turned editor living in Sydney, had been her friend since school. Both were mothers of daughters. Both were frustrated by the same thing: every girls' magazine on the shelf was about being pretty, being popular, and being pink. In September 2017, they launched a Kickstarter campaign for KOOKIE — as in smart cookie — and raised fifty thousand pounds to publish simultaneously in Britain and Australia.
The first 52-page issue appeared in December 2017 with interviews of retired ballerina Darcey Bussell and Anne-Marie Imafidon, co-founder of Stemettes. There was no advertising, no fashion, no beauty, and no plastic toys attached to the cover. Instead, there were profiles of remarkable women — robotics engineer Marita Cheng, children's author Kirli Saunders, Olympic swimmer Cate Campbell — all interviewed by the magazine's own pre-teen readers. There were original comics, fiction, debates, craft projects, environmental features, embarrassing moments, heroes from history, and a regular section called "Rad Girl" that profiled girls doing extraordinary things. Nearly half the content was created by the readers themselves.
The magazine won a British Society of Magazine Editors Award for Launch of the Year in 2018 and a Mumbrella Publish Award in Australia the following year. Jones, from her base in the UK, and Shortridge, from Sydney, ran the operation across time zones with the conviction that girls aged seven to twelve deserved a magazine that expanded their horizons rather than narrowed them. The editorial language was carefully composed to avoid gendered or ableist phrasing, and the formatting balanced visual appeal with accessibility for developing readers.
After six years, KOOKIE closed — its Instagram bio now reads simply "Kookie has closed. Big thanks for all your love and support." The economics of ad-free, independently published children's media are merciless, and even the most beloved magazine cannot survive on passion alone. But for the years it existed, KOOKIE proved that the audience Jones and Shortridge suspected was out there — girls who wanted to build, explore, question, and debate rather than shop and preen — was real, international, and hungry for exactly this.
Explore the archive of KOOKIE at <a href="https://kookiemagazine.co.uk/" target="\_blank">kookiemagazine.co.uk