A strange mix of feelings swirled inside Mal, mingling in their mind with the smell of dish soap and the informationEmerson just shared. Options like these were options Mal had never considered. Much like Sam’s Interdisciplinary Studies program, it was simply information that life hadn’t given to them. And while Mal was glad Emerson had this plan, and IOP, and their moms, andthem, there was also a small part of them that was envious because they’d never had any of it. Like fancy coffee, it felt like all this came with a price tag Mal couldn’t afford.
Still, the overwhelming feeling that settled in them was a warm gratitude.
“Thank you for sharing your lore with me,” Mal said, their head still gently stacked on Emerson’s. “And for letting me be part of your support system.”
“Thank you for being part of it.” Beneath their temple, Emerson laughed, a sweet, low thing that sent both of them shaking. “And for helping me keep up with Rule Number Six. Let’s finish up, because I feel like I am, like, contractually obligated to kiss you after a moment like this.”
They did both. And Mal felt so close to Emerson that they didn’t even mind the pruny feel of her fingers on their cheek.
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November 4
Local Students Build Community and Break Barriers with Teen-Led Zine Lab
By Sam Russel
The back room of the Haus on 3rd Street had not been in use for years. Though the rest of the building’s sprawling, often disorganized layout filled organically with useful spaces—a community queer library, a slam poetry stage—the back room always eluded functionality. There was something about the drab white walls, the mismatched furniture, and the out-of-place utility sink that made it unwelcoming to the other patrons of the community space. It sat unoccupied, the odd room out.
And so it is perhaps fitting that it was Mal Flowers and Emerson Pike who found its purpose. Students at Holmes High School, they too were the odd ones out: This year, their school’s funding was cut, and as is so often the case, arts programming was the first on the chopping block. Their literary magazine,Collage, was canceled after a fifty-year run.
“I considered self-funding it,” says Donna Merritt, teacher and longtime staff sponsor of the magazine. “I’d been supporting at least half of the cost on my own for the last couple of years because I believe in what it gave those kids. But I couldn’t shoulder it all by myself, and so we had to let it go. It broke my heart, telling them. Some of those kids didn’t have anything else to go to.”
Left out in the cold by their school’s funding, unable to be supported by the teacher who kept them afloat for as long as she could, it looked like the end ofCollage.
But instead of allowing this to be a defeat, the students came together to make something new, and from the magazine’s ashes roseMixxedMedia.
“MixxedMediais something totally new,” says Emerson, the managing editor of the project. “Instead of being confined to the traditional format of a magazine—which a lot of us thought was growing stale anyway—we took it in the direction of a zine.” A zine, she explains, of their own design. “I liked that there’s an element of punk-rock, do-it-yourself spirit to it. Because that’s where we found ourselves, you know? Pushed out by the institution, so we had to make it work with what we had ourselves.”
ForMixxedMedia, that was the back room of a local community space, a public library card, elbow grease, and a whole lot of talent.
“It’s much more informal,” explains Stella Willen, whose serialized fantasy novel is a monthly feature in the zine. “And definitely not as polished asCollagewas. If I’m honest, I thought it was a bit of a mess at first, but I really love the process we’ve developed here.”
“We meet several days a week—to work on our pieces, to figure out the layout for the zine, to put them together,” says Nylan Hassan, a poet and photographer for the project. “It’s entirely on us to get it all done, which is different, I think. Our old teacher used to do a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff.”
“There’s definitely been a learning curve—and a lot of papercuts,” jokes Parker Washington, who makes comics. “But it’s been heckin’ rad to build this together. It’s a lot more responsibility, and a lot more time, but we get to make it whatever we want.”
Whatever they want is currently a thirty-two-page zine, released monthly, that features prose, poetry, personal essays, and dramas, as well as photography, art, and experimental forms, each of which is folded by hand and sold for $2 at their school and select local businesses.* Recently, the offerings have expanded to include single-page mini zines on subjects ranging from Covington’s coffee culture to queer vampire romance, which they sell at local events to fund future print runs.
Without the oversight of a school-funded program, these rebel students have flourished, expanding both their staff and the subjects they cover.
“I put that down to Mal,” says Emerson. “They’re our editor in chief, but they’re also the heart of what we do. I joke that as an editorial team, we have two brain cells between us and they’re both Mal’s, but really—we couldn’t do this without them. They have the sheer get-it-done ability to make things happen. It’s like they were made to do something like this.”
“I didn’t really want to do this,” confesses Mal, the project’s editor in chief. “But I had to, so I did. And I think out of that necessity, we’re making something really Important. With a capital I.”
And Important it is.
“I was ready to give up,” says James King, a literary fiction writer. “Collagewas my safe space, the place I fit in. It’s hard to find a place like that as a queer person, and as a fat person. Mal and Emerson make space for people like me—even when the school wouldn’t.”
Community and growth are at the heart of whatMixxedMediadoes, and the office they’ve set up in the back room of the Haus, fondly referred to as theMixxedMediaZine Lab, teems with both.
“It just seems like a cool place to be,” says Alex Sanchez, an essayist who joined the project after the release of its first issue. “I think it’s going places.”
“I wantMixxedMediato keep going,” Mal confirms. “Sometimes I wish it didn’t have to—that we hadn’t been canceled. Colleges take official, school-sanctioned activities much more seriously than hobbies. But if there’s not a place for us there, I want to keep building one for us here.”
And they have: the back room, formerly a storage space, is now alive with color and chatter and the smell of fresh coffee. The furniture is still cobbled together—a collection of mismatched chairs, a secondhand toaster, an old Carnegie table rescued from the local library—and the decorations are decidedly handmade. But what it has now is purpose—and a community of kids who find theirs within it.
“It feels like our space,” Kodi Jones, a mixed-media artist, shares. “Something that we made. And no budget cuts can take that away.”
