If you've stopped inside The Meteor Cafe, The Daily Beet, Ozark Natural Foods or Puritan Coffee in the last week, you may have noticed a small blue handmade zine. “milkweed” is a new free publication founded by Sophia Merced and Paige Serzen, featuring work from more than a dozen contributors across Northwest Arkansas. Paige recently joined me in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One to discuss its launch. She says the idea grew out of her return to Northwest Arkansas, where she had previously lived as a graduate student.
Serzen: And what drew me back to this area was that I saw this lovely community and a lot of opportunity to connect with other individuals and make a life for myself that felt tangible. I had originally come here for grad school and I lived here for nearly three years, and then I left and I lived abroad and I lived in another big city.
And when I moved back to Northwest Arkansas, I always had this underlying sentiment that I wanted to make something here. But I didn't know what it was. I was like, "if I moved back to Fayetteville, I think I could do something there." But I truly didn't have a real tangible idea. And so for about a year, I doodle bopped around, I traveled, I saw a lot of friends and was just trying to come up with that idea, knowing that landing in Arkansas was this space where I wanted to grow something.
And after spending some time in New York City with a good friend, I was really inspired by all of her pals that were making things of their own. And one of them was really into magazines and writing. And I was on the flight home from New York coming back to Fayetteville last fall. And I was like, "what if I made a magazine that wasn't my own?" It was a collection of voices and art that all of the incredible people that I've reconnected with or that I've met since I replanted back in Northwest Arkansas came together and was in print.
And it was an immediate thought of, "I'm not doing a Substack. I'm not doing something digital." I want it to be physical in print, in the hands of people, in the cafes, in the local businesses, on the coffee tables of longtime residents. I wanted it to just be everywhere.
Moore: Why “milkweed”?
Serzen: I love the name “milkweed” Thank you so much for asking. I am a bit of a nature lover myself. That's something that's important to me in an environment in which I live in. I need to have access to the outdoors and be able to spend time outside and get lost in the woods. Maybe not really actually get lost, but go on a walk in the woods.
And when I came up with the idea for this community publication, I knew I wanted the title to be something associated with the natural world here. And so I just rifled through a list of mountains, streams, rivers, plants, animals local to Northwest Arkansas. And my eyes connected with milkweed. And I was like, "yes." I knew about the milkweed plant actually because of one of our contributors here who is very passionate about local plants.
And I was like, "wait, milkweed?" And then I remembered that it's a pollinator. It's super important for all of our pollinators, especially monarch butterflies. And I was like, "okay, wait, pollinating arts and culture like milkweed," the intent and our tagline now is pollinating arts and culture in Northwest Arkansas. So milkweed is a plant native to the area. It attracts pollinators. Our publication is called “milkweed”. We are ideally pollinating ideas and connectivity in this region.
Moore: What do you think it is about Fayetteville that inspired that physical creativity that these other places didn't?
Serzen: I think that Fayetteville attracts a certain populace of individuals who are super intentional with their time and energy and also very open to connection with other people. I have not found exclusivity here. People are very welcoming. When I moved back, people that I hadn't talked to in four plus years that I went to grad school with once that might have stayed, were like, "oh my gosh, let's grab coffee." Or my grad school professor that I saw at the farmer's market remembered my name.
So I think the lack of exclusivity and just the nurturing sort of welcome community is something that I don't feel like is as present in other large, sprawling cities that I've lived in. It's interesting because you'd think if you were in a larger city, there'd be more opportunity to make friends. But oftentimes I think people get a little bit more in their lane because of that.
And so here it just feels like there's a little bit more opportunity with individuals who notice that in this community and stayed or came back. Actually, majority of my best friends now in Fayetteville have moved away and moved back, which I think is an interesting piece of the puzzle and speaks a lot to what exists here.
Moore: When you think about your professional life, you work in PR, you work in marketing. It feels very structured. It feels like creativity with a capital C. And when I think about...
Serzen: One of the articles in our issue is literally called "Creativity with a Capital C."
Moore: I did not realize that. That's amazing.
Serzen: Creative with a capital C, I love that. Read about it in “milkweed”, folks.
Moore: Well, this is my take on it. Maybe I'll read this after the interview and we'll know for sure. But to me, it seems like when you think about corporate creativity, it can feel overly prescribed and very structured and very, "we have to make sure we hit all of these points." And I imagine it can be pretty liberating to do something like this. That is not necessarily the polar opposite, but it is an extremely different framing of creativity.
Serzen: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that there is a lot of structure in my professional life and a lot of KPIs and goals that I have to hit for the business, and therefore, certain ideas might be vetoed because they're not in alignment with revenue goals. Right? So the creativity at hand there doesn't have the freedom that doing something like a personal project, like starting “milkweed” does.
What was so liberating about this project and that I think myself, and I don't want to speak for all the contributors, but we have a collection of, there's 18 of us that were involved in this first issue. And I think we all needed this in some way to write about something, to make something that didn't have any limitations based on trying to contribute to capitalism, to be honest.
So actually coming up with this idea and then creating some rough frameworks behind the process, and letting people and myself just go has been so cool, and I'm really happy with how it came out. And I think it came from the freedom that all of us felt to just create and say what we wanted to say and make things.
Moore: Yeah, there's a catharsis in just the act of creation.
Serzen: Absolutely.
Moore: That doesn't often get felt when you have to do it professionally or you get paid to be creative.
Serzen: Yeah. And it's really interesting too, because a lot of people have asked, "okay, so how can I buy an issue? Or what's your business model?" And to be honest, right now, I don't have a business model. I'm figuring things out as we go. But the main thing for me was that I just wanted other individuals to get their hands on this and hear from other community members and be inspired and connect. And I felt like if we put a paywall to something like “milkweed” from the very beginning, that would be almost impossible to do. Distribution would get tricky too. As far as a lot of friends that have shops and cafes and things. But we just wanted to get it out in the world.
And so I felt passionate enough about this project that I just wanted to fund it and work with local people. Everything was done locally. Everything was done by hand. We printed it with Kudzu Books. They have an operation in West Fork, and every single issue that we printed in this first batch was stapled by hand. And I was pretty intent on that being the case even after so many people were like, "well, you just need to start, you need to charge X amount for each issue from the start." And I was like, "I don't want to." And we haven't.
So that's what's happening now. And I don't know what the future is going to hold, but I hope that we can continue to sort of produce this and get it in the hands of people to connect and create space to create together.
Moore: Would you feel okay if this was the only version of this that ever came out? If issue one is the only issue of this.
Serzen: I think I would feel okay. But I would, I think, always ponder the potential.
Moore: It's got to be fulfilling for you to have this idea on a flight home and to literally be sharing it with someone and talking about it on the radio. But even more so than that, of just vulnerably sharing this idea with friends or people who you admire, whose taste you trust and say, "I've got this idea." And it could have easily just been, "that's dumb. Yeah, that's lame." Right? And instead they yes-anded you.
Serzen: They yes-anded me. And also there's one friend in particular. Hi, Anna, if you're listening, who heard about my idea the moment I touched wheels down in Northwest Arkansas on that flight. I was like, "wait." And she would bring it up with me. She's like, "What's going on with ‘milkweed’? When are you sending out the assignment?" And to have friends that not only yes-and, but they're also, "hey, let's do this." And are shipping it, as the kids would say, the whole way is really, really powerful.
And Sophia is a few years younger than me. And she just heard my idea and was like, "yeah, I want to be a part of this," and literally built the whole thing visually, which was so amazing. We've worked so well together in tandem, but I think it's still a little surreal to me. We just finished printing them not even a week ago. And then we had a launch party in my backyard. So again, everything is pretty homegrown and that's intended that way. But it's been amazing to just think about all of the little things that had to happen and the process that was figured out as a collective.
Moore: You talked about the importance of having a physical manifestation of this, the idea that it is created by humans and for humans, that technology, as much technology as it took to put it on a computer and then print it, it was as much technology as you wanted to have incorporated into it. As you think about the professionalization of creativity, we think about how it seems like the thing that we see AI doing the most is trying to do creative ventures. What is it about this that you hope inspires people to think more critically or think more whimsically, perhaps, about the importance of human creativity?
Serzen: Yeah. So there's actually an article in "milkweed" about AI. It's called "Let's Chat About AI," and it's by Anna McCorquodale and she speaks on this. And so we've actually talked a lot about in our friendship, we're dear friends. And she contributed to "milkweed". But we've talked a lot about how when you turn towards technology to create things, it's not free. It is at the expense of a lot of different things. And I think that's something that we need to keep in mind.
It's at the expense of self-expression when you just rely on a machine to make the thing that you might have the idea for. It's like you are releasing the idea that came from your brain to then be interpreted by something that is not organic. And also, our earth is crumbling at the hands of technology. So whenever you go to use those tools to make something that you could do in a more creative, personal or community pursuit, you have to consider the impacts that are happening on a larger scale as well.
We live on a planet together. We need water to drink. We need food to eat, resources that are really important and not endless are being sort of, I think, overlooked in those circumstances.
And as we create as humans, we're connecting with one another and we're expressing ourselves and we're processing our existence as individuals and as a society. And I think, again, as we turn towards technology and AI to do those things, we're eliminating the spaces for ourselves to be more thoughtful on our own existence and process the world in which we live in and how we might feel. And all of those things are really, really important to be at peace and alive and well.
Moore: Yeah. And to be a person.
Serzen: Yeah. That's what separates us.
Moore: Literally.
Serzen: Yeah. And so when you just hand it off, you're kind of just releasing a lot of magic that could be had at hand in the process itself. You're eliminating the process. And there's so much that comes in the process that's really, really important. And I think “milkweed” definitely showed us that.
Paige Serzen is the co-founder of “milkweed.” Fewer than 300 copies were handmade of issue one, so keep an eye out around local cafes and shops for a free copy. You can keep up with “milkweed” on Instagram at @milkweed.nwa.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
