Flavortown Zinefest Table Map 2023
Adrian is a multimedia artist based in Columbus, Ohio who specializes in illustrated zines, comics, and book making. Their work explores gender identity, mental illness, grief, belonging, and the liminal space between life and death. All of their work derives either from their own experience, the fictional experience of popular mythologies and stories, or from the fictional experience of their original characters. They work in both digital and traditional illustration and figure drawing art for hand-bound books, zines, and comics.
“Hi there! I’m a zine artist, writer, poet, and creative based at OSU in Columbus, OH. My art and writing centers around personal relationships, nature, entomology, and neo-fantasy, with heavy themes of LGBT identity and feminism. I value social awareness and education above all else, and a lot of my work seeks to provide information about the natural world, and developing a more positive outlook and understanding with one’s self.”
Easterday Editorial is a small press and publishing services company based in Columbus, OH specializing in zines, comics, and anthologies.
Eric Clift-Thompson is an Ohio transgender artist, storyteller, and educator whose zines combine poetry and short stories with printmaking and illustration to tell macabre fables that connect a horror niche of the LGBTQ community. Vampires are often at the center of these narratives; their place in folklore as both the hunter and the hunted create a complex dichotomy that are utilized as a vessel to discuss the challenges that marginalized people often face. By indulging in subjects surrounding death and the grotesque, Eric becomes comfortable with the uncomfortable aspects of life and extends that same opportunity to the potential audience. The conversation and community that the work evokes is core to its purpose; this interaction is where it becomes complete.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is a Palestinian-American, Alabama-born Appalachian journalist, zinester, and soon-to-be author who calls Columbus, Ohio home. Through perzines and personal essays, they explore the intersections of their identity and family history.
Andrew Miller is an essayist, poet, and photographer whose written work includes two books, one chapbook, as well as many published essays and articles in several journals and newspapers. His photography has appeared in multiple print publications and displayed in juried exhibitions including the OAC Riffe Gallery, the Ohio State Fine Arts Exhibition, and Blockfort Studios. He splits time living in Chautauqua, NY and Columbus, OH.
Andrew holds an MFA from Miami University. For more visit Andrew-Miller.com.
“Hello ! My name is Max and I make zines and bookmarks, and I also write poetry! I tend to focus on my personal experiences and the struggles that my friends and I have gone through. My goal is for at least one person to look at me work and feel understood, and if only one person feels connected, that's good enough for me!”
“My name is Diana! I am a college student, collector, artist, restaurant manager, and amateur zinester! My zine, The Goose Chase, is a new zine that details first person experiences, thoughts, and opinions in the form of essays, reviews, drawings, and other forms of media. My zines focus on both lighthearted topics, such as infodumping about my latest hyperfixation, as well as serious issues (with appropriate trigger warnings), such as parental issues.”
AnahitaCreates is an umbrella for the creative works of Anahita Sharma (she/her/hers), a Columbus, Ohio artist and creative. Her process is fueled by her experiences in a multiply-marginalized body, with her work often depicting life as a fat and disabled woman of color. Anahita prefers not to be limited by medium, but some of her favorites are acrylic gouache, zines, sumi ink, watercolor, collage, and bookbinding.
Mortimer is a creator from Florida who makes comics and zines about fantastical beasts, weird worlds, interpersonal relationships, and the queer experience. He is also a ceramicist, printmaker, poet, and a craftsman of many kinds.
“I'm Margarita! I'm a Bulgarian-American digital illustrator currently based in metro-Detroit. I like My Little Pony, Jeff Buckley, and blueberries. I graduated this year from CCAD as an illustration major with a minor in comics. I love to experiment with my zine/comics work from eco-punk horror stories to silly surreally little things. CONTENT WARNING: GORE/VIOLENCE”
“My name is Pippin; I'm a very autistic, trans artist based in Columbus, OH! While mostly focused on printmaking, I also have a pretty long list of art forms I've dabbled in. Most of my work revolves around my own feelings of alienation as an autistic trans fag, as well as my interest in bugs, fungi, and general decay.”
Nick Stellanova is a cartoonist/comic artist/zine creator from the midwest. His work focuses on queer and trans identity, the natural world, and how those often intersect. Nick likes to work with collage and ink drawings, as well as digital creations. He lives in Columbus with his wife and his cat.
Aria Crawford is a Columbus-based artist fascinated by the natural beauty of the Midwest. Her work portrays the native flora and fauna that can be found in the Columbus area. Her poems grapple with emotions such as grief and joy, as she draws parallels between the tangible world and tumultuous emotional landscapes.
Lexi Ramos is a comic artist based in Columbus, Ohio. Her main work is an action adventure webcomic, The City Under Saturn. She loves making comics and hanging out with the local comic community. If she isn’t busy working on her webcomic then you can probably find her bothering a household cat.
Mullet Turtle Comics showcases humorous comics, cartoons, and other assorted self-published zines and books, all written and illustrated by Steve Steiner. His current series is Odd Clods, strange graphic design comics printed in an oversized newspaper format. Special thanks to his loving wife and partner, Jennifer, who assists with editing, proofreading, and reigning in his more terrible ideas.
Howdy! Xavier’s a comic artist and illustrator here that hails from the far far away city of Columbus. And grew up in the even farther city of Omaha! His interests range from fantasy, action, mystery and horror but you can always count on muscle men to be a constant.
Queer, Colorful, and Counterculture, my work is both a throwback to the hyper pop aesthetics of the Y2K era, as well as the gritty grungy vibes of modern day punk and graffiti. Whether it's a science-fantasy take on 2000's internet culture and necromancy, or a joke-filled conversation between two friends in a surreal photo-collage world, you'll always come out of it with a THOUROUGHLY ErosOxide experience.
AgoraphobicAlien creates Comix and Art centered around black LGBTQ folk and mental health through surreal, funny and afrofuturistic/sci-fi lenses!
“I explore energy geographies through an eco-crip theoretical and methodological lens, focusing on embodied experiences of energy and alternative epistemologies of social movements inside communities at different intersections of the energy commodity chain. Growing up in an oil community, I was surrounded by the ways in which this complex substance has become intimately entangled in our lives through systemic and everyday material and discursive encounters. I have come to utilize the energy humanities to critically engage my own petro-subjectivity as a means to challenge the logic of oil and deindustrialize my sense of self. From the carbon trapped in our atmosphere, to the politicians captured by fossil capital, to the petro-plastics nested in our blood, our fossil fueled present continues to reshape us in every conceivable way. Yet, as it reshapes, it also buries damaged bodies, polluted ecosystems, extractive histories, and alternative futures. My work largely deals with digging up these graves and considering the impact of how the violence surrounding them have become so profoundly decontextualized."
“My name is Daisy Ahlstone (they/them) and I am a folklorist, cryptozoologist (and legend scholar), eco-philosopher, mycologist, and collective-joy-enthusiast. I am the current director of WiseFolk Productions, producers of the YouTube and Twitch streaming channel Folkwise, which explores the study of tradition non-traditionally through digital content creation, public education, and direct community engagement. I am also a PhD Candidate at The Ohio State University Comparative Studies Department and study the occupational folklore and research methodologies of humanities organizations. I am interested in questions about community formation, systems thinking, and more-than-human community members contributions to the transmission of everyday knowledge.”
Jaromir is a queer and nonbinary comics maker. Their work focuses on the ineffable in life - with self-published autobio comics like Dear Denver: On Moving from Denver to Ohio - and autobio short comics in anthologies like Rainbow Reflections: Body Image Comics for Queer Men and Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating. Their most recent work combines a meditation on grief with comics poetry in Someone Left and ecological loss through poetry in The End of Your World: Poems for the Apocalypse, respectively. They also publish fan-oriented zines of illustrations, including Previously on X-men with Zak Kinsella and a forthcoming zine of pin-ups of rad-as-heck indie wrestlers.
Jamie John
Jamie John is a trans and queer Anishinaabe and Korean-American artist from so-called Traverse City, MI. They are a dually enrolled tribal citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and the United States of America. Jamie makes prints, zines, poetry, and films based on their lived experience as a young queer and trans Native person connected to their culture and nation while under 21st century settler colonialism.
J.M. Hunter originally hails from Oceanside, CA and other parts of SoCal.J.M. Hunter is a Sagittarius and left-handed. Hunter doesn't enjoy long walks on the beach but likes shrimp. He is flat-footed and double-jointed .M. HUNTER is an MFA in Comics graduate, writer, artist, painter, and advocate for the arts and comics, especially dealing with memoir and speculative fiction amidst marginalized groups and people. He continues to advocate for space as well as pursue hybrid mediums and expression.
Maryanne Rose Papke has been self-publishing short comics since 2010. Her comics are usually weird, often silly, typically cute, sometimes sad, and occasionally epic. She has more than 10 minicomics in print, and sometimes dabbles in webcomics and prose.
Robby "RAW!" Melendez left a marketing gig as a creative director to pursue art and storytelling full-time. In 2021 he won the Negative Space Comic Script Writing Contest and he's assisted in the pitch development of multiple animated projects that never got picked up, but hey, at least he got paid! His home base is in Pickerington, OH with his absurdly charming fiancée along with their two dogs and two cats. When he's not writing or drawing, he's making stickers on his Cricut machine or taking apart old Game Boys.
Welcome Wastoids! As always we're proud to present some of the best articles, comics, and art that our ~~fair~~ city's punk/diy scene has to present. Even though Garret and Jacob are both newcomers to Columbus, this place feels like home and we're proud to be behind this scene zine. Remember, this scene has no space for hate and you better remember that!