Shooting Up and Making Out

From Jennifer Finch (1966-2026), the bassist of L7, comes a disarmingly candid memoir that stands apart from the rest with its grounded perspective and bracing, edgy wisdom.

If overcoming obstacles makes for great art, then Jennifer Finch was the consummate artist. She was a recovering addict, a photographer, the co-founder of an influential pro-choice advocacy group, and the bassist for the groundbreaking all-female hard rock group L7. Driven to express herself despite neglect and abuse, Finch carved an artistic path and pulled herself out of a personal hell. This is the story of how she pulled it off and lived an extraordinary life, in her own words. 

Finch was twelve when she dove into LA’s hardcore punk scene, fourteen when she first started shooting heroin, nineteen when she joined her first band with Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland, and in her early twenties when L7 got caught up in the maelstrom of the grunge phenomenon. She shared stages with bands like Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in between overdosing, dating Dave Grohl, and coping with the tragic, early deaths of some of her closest friends. And she re-defined herself through sobriety, photography, and her courage in the face of a deadly illness. 

Jennifer Finch was a beloved pillar of strength and compassion in LA’s creative community, and her death on July 18th, 2026, was an irreplaceable loss. Shooting Up and Making Out was completed just before her illness took hold, and every word of it–hard-hitting, funny, profane, and wise—is what she intended it to be.

• “A memoir as raw and searing as the music she put out in the world. Finch was one of a kind, with a voracious intellect, her path always colliding with adventure, danger, music, and art. A sensitive and generous spirit, I wish she were around to feel the love and appreciation this book will surely garner.”
  Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney / Portlandia / author of Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
• “With Shooting Up and Making Out, Jennifer Finch has left us with a memoir that reads like a Fear and Loathing for the punk rock generation. An inspired account of resilience, determination, and unwavering courage. Her legacy defined. A hero’s journey turned up to eleven.”
  Dave Grohl, Nirvana / Foo Fighters / author of The Storyteller
• “Shooting Up and Making Out is a self-portrait of a woman moving through a scene, a movement, an era, and a sound, with a voice that is as unguarded as it is unrepentant. This book is evocative, profound, and an absolute thrill.”
  Lili Anolik, author of Didion & Babitz
• “I knew Jennifer and I thought I knew her well, but this book unfurled entire universes in her life that were a total revelation to me. The term ‘fearless account’ may land as a cliché, but I think it’s an apt description of this incredible examination of a life.”
  Ian MacKaye, Minor Threat / Fugazi / The Evens / Dischord Records
• “Jennifer Finch was a FORCE, and her memoir is the powerful story of how her radiant goodness emerged from the depths of the LA underground to shine brightly around the world.”
  Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine
• "A glorious and gratifying testimony from one of punk’s greatest bad-girls-gone-good. Finch’s essence, her vitality and indomitable feminist spirit, pops off the page and plunges us into her life on and off stage. I am hugely grateful for this book and that this account of her artistry and activism is here for all of us to study.”
  Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
• “Shooting Up and Making Out never romanticizes punk, fame, or addiction, and it never asks permission. It’s Jennifer telling her own story, through her own lens. The story of a woman who fought to be the author and archivist of her own life.”
  Brett Gurewitz, Bad Religion / Epitaph Records