The inaugural issue of The Queer South will be published soon with the deadline for submission approaching. Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Mourani recently talked with Reid Pinckard, founder of the zine and a senior at the University of Arkansas, and Bryland Cole, the publication’s visual director, to discuss the zine’s mission and content. Reid says the zine is designed to uplift and empower queer southern voices.
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation:
Reid Pinckard: As well as combat the erasure that LGBTQ+ southerners have been experiencing basically since the dawn of time, but also in the past few years, since there's been a heightening of political attacks from legislators across the country, but more specifically in the South. And the reason this project came to my mind was because I actually have experience in other organizing spaces, so I'm predominantly an organizer in the sexual violence prevention space, but with that comes the intersections of my identities as a queer person and someone that's also from the South and the history of the sexual violence. But when I became a survivor my freshman year, I was looking for stories to kind of find solace in, and those didn't necessarily exist. So over a couple of years, that's kind of sat with me, especially as I've continued researching, and not finding myself in research and applying for grants and other things, and not being able to actively tell my story, because there's no quantifiable evidence that these people within these institutions identify as important. So I had this idea for the zine, put it in my notes app, and then reached out to Bryland because we were friends. I also reached out to Addie Jones, who is helping us create this as well. But that's how it came to be, and that's really my story.
Bryland Cole: Hello. My name is Bryland Cole, and my pronouns are he/him. I am a major in sculpture, and I was super interested in seeing how I could bring this design and art element to the zine. Obviously, zines are rooted in design, and I thought it'd be really cool to step in and see what I could do there.
Sophia Nourani: Perfect. Yeah. So where are you in the process right now?
RP: Oh, we have a lot of submissions. I mean, our submissions are still open, and I'll let Bryland talk more about the design part. But as far as development and operations go, we're still in this hunt for grants and stuff and trying to find a way to fund this project. So if anyone's listening and wants to fund this, please reach out to us at some point. But we're really doing that, and we're still accepting submissions. Right now, we have over 65 submissions from people across the country, which I did not expect to happen. We launched in March, and we've gained over 1,000 followers and that many submissions, and I think we're going to have a huge boost in that in the future. And we're also just setting up community events. I think the zine is very centered on the idea of community care and mutual aid and the fact that we only have each other, and by relying on each other, we're able to tell our stories.
BC: Yeah, we're super excited to start putting this together. As Reid mentioned, we have over 60 submissions. How that's looking now is we're reading over those, seeing what art we have, some of the writing we have, and looking at it from a curatorial lens on how we can arrange these stories to fit into this larger narrative of what is the queer South? What does the queer South mean to you? From there, hopefully, we're going to have some people help with the design and do our own printing and everything.
SN: That's super exciting. Yeah. So do you think it's going to be a multi-issue zine, and will they be based on themes and certain discussions? You kind of went into that a bit already.
BC: Our first prompt for the people who are submitting is, what is the queer South to you? We've received great responses. The goal at the moment is one zine per academic year, and then hopefully we plan to change themes, prompts, and everything.
RP: Yeah. My goal with this is to engage with communities that have never felt like they're able to talk about those intersections of their Southern identity and also the other intersectionalities of all of this. I think when I talk about my organizing work and where this zine comes from, it is about the intersectionality of the people that exist in the South and that are also queer. Our roots run deep here. And I think that our work, as the people who came before me, is completely understated when we talk about the history of organizing movements and where this comes from, and a lot of other things. So, as we develop the zine even more, our goal is to make the themes even more specific. We started broad because we felt that would be the most accessible, and we still think we can provide that accessibility aspect by lessening the scope and telling more specific stories. But really this was just a launch plan that felt like a good idea to start at and then continue from there.
BC: I think it's important to highlight that this is our first time doing a zine, and it's really just three of us leading through the design, the organizing, funding—it's all on us. So we're growing with the zine, and that's going to continue with our future publications.
RP: And with that growth comes these ideas for new projects and policy work. My start has always been in policy work, which is very community-oriented care. We're hoping to reach into different areas and see how we can better serve our community and better include them in this project. So one, getting funding to pay people for their submissions, but also starting a new project that is kind of like a zine archive, but not one that already exists—one that allows current people, specifically in queer southern rural communities, to create zines and then scan them and send them back to us so that we can have a living archive of stories that exist today and stories that people are not able to tell. This won't even go through a vetting process as long as it doesn't spread hate. We would love to have that in a living archive, but that's just some other things we've been thinking about as we progress.
BC: We have so many projects on the burner, and I think that's what's been so exciting for me with this project. We are three friends who come from different backgrounds and different skill sets, and we're all really driven, so it's been nice just to reach out in a group chat and be like, ‘Hey, what if we did this?’ And then being able to just jump straight in, it's great.
SN: Are you still accepting submissions for this first zine?
BC: Yeah, we are accepting submissions until August 31. People can find a way to submit through our link in bio on Instagram. Our handle is the Queer South Zine, and we're really looking for everything—art, written pieces.
RP: Yeah, no, I've been looking through them right now, and they're very emotional. Again, this comes out of a place where I didn't see my own stories. And that goes to say something, too, because no one can see this, but I'm a very male-presenting, white queer person. And the fact that even my stories in the South were not portrayed, I think, is an issue because I can't even imagine, like, talking to my friends who come from different places where those stories aren't represented. So please submit your stories. Our goal is to also create a team of people who will probably put out applications soon for this—people from diverse backgrounds in the South who are able to help us go through these and provide their perspective because we also recognize that we have our own biases in this whole project, and we're doing the best we can to provide stories that are not only accessible but to represent the South, the queer South specifically, as best as we can in this first issue.
The Queer South, led by organizers Bryland Cole, Reid Pinckard, and Addie Jones, has received over 65 submissions from across the country since its launch in March. The team is actively seeking funding and is open to submissions until August 31. For more information on the zine, how to submit or get involved, you can find the Queer South on Instagram.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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