MOTHMILK ZINE ANTHOLOGY: experiments in queer storytelling
order at https://mothmilk.bigcartel.com
222 pages, full color, professionally bound paperbacks full of queer resilience and community care, expressed through poetry, prose, essays, visual art, photography, and collage by over 40 contributors. Printed at the Gloo Factory, a union print shop in Tucson, Arizona. Three years in the making, though lifetimes of love, hurt, celebration, grief, power, and healing comprise these pages. So many incredible people have contributed to this project directly and indirectly; I am beyond honored to have been trusted to put this together and hold the deeply vulnerable and moving work of so many trans and queer folks across the country and internationally. We did it y’all!!
There are a limited number of copies left.
Order yours at https://mothmilk.bigcartel.com!
All $$ goes to a pool that will be used to pay each contributor, and any more beyond that will be donated to QTPOC individuals/orgs (tbd – would love recommendations!)
The core of this project is tapping into, building, and strengthening a network of people across lines of time, space, and identity through sharing vulnerability, connected by threads of queerness and what it means to take care of each other under conditions functioning to fragment our relationships, communities, and our sense of ourselves. Fundamentally, this is about healing, about connection. It’s messy, imperfect, and never enough – and the flaws are what gives it weight. The history of people on the margins of society getting together and creating something – be it policy change, direct action, art, music, alternative forms of media, or a warm meal – run deep. Within queer and trans communities, creativity and radical media have long shaped and transformed the conversation. This project is a tiny part of a huge historical and contemporary tradition.
This is only possible because of every single person who ever submitted their work, had conversations about it, told their friends about it, donated money and editing and time and care to it. This is for every single one of us who have participated in Mothmilk. I am astonished by how this has all come together, and never want to lose this feeling. Deepest gratitude to everyone who has contributed, donated, submitted work, edited, interviewed, given feedback, critique. From close friends in 2014 who sat in the library with me and frantically glued, taped, copied, and rearranged the earliest pages to my childhood friend’s high school teacher who sent me her 7th grade student’s comic about gendered desserts. Friends of friends who run infoshops thousands of miles away. Best friends, exes, and vague acquaintances who have both hurt and nurtured many of us whose work is included in the anthology. Most of all, the deep history of countercultural media production within and outside of queer traditions that have made this kind of work possible.
Ultimately, the Mothmilk Anthology is a snapshot of a moment in time; a tangled web of relationships, trauma & healing, critical social/political theory; a documentation of the time, places, people, and culture that led each of us to share ourselves with each other within these pages. It is imperfect; this work will never be complete. Starting now, Mothmilk is going on hiatus until at least December 2019. But that doesn’t mean it’s over. A week ago, I started an MA in Social Justice and Community Organizing program at Prescott College. I am excited to transition from this project into something broader, to take the experience and knowledge I have acquired from Mothmilk and learn how to be more useful as an organizer, artist, and friend. If you didn’t get the chance to participate and still want to, or if you have any ideas for the future of Mothmilk, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Thank you all for making this possible. I am endlessly grateful.
love always,
kye
do you make zines? collect them? do you make art? write? like to talk about queer politics and feelings? do you want to tell me about your projects? do you know where the infoshops are? the zine libraries? the punk houses? that one friend you haven’t talked to in a while who might be into it? should we hang out? do you know where I can sleep?
MOTHMILK ZINES 