2SLGBTQIA+ | The 44 North

Artist Spotlight: Feels Zine

Mikaela Brewer
Feb 9
5 min read

by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North

Senior Editor

**Photo of Feels Zine’s “Sexy” issue by Melissa Blackall**

“[Q]ueer romances have far fewer representations in the media, and often the ones we do aren’t written by us, and are rooted in pain and trauma. This, for me, is a huge part of why I believe queer love stories are so important to share–because seeing ourselves represented gives those of us who don’t yet feel safe or seen a place to have their experiences reflected back and honoured.”

Editor's Note: Recently, I had a chance to speak with the co-founders of a zine I've long admired. We chatted all things queer love, romance, reclaiming sexiness, and more! Please check out their newest issue, "Hunger," and many others here. —Mikaela

The 44 North (44N): Firstly, before we begin, could you share why you started something like Feels Zine? How do you, your families, ancestors, community, politics, and values braid into your work on these zines? Where/how would you like folks to witness/experience this when spending time with the zines' pages? Is there anything you hope people pay particular attention to? Take action with/from?

Feels Zine (FZ): FEELS started with a dream and a friendship! Hannah, our co-founder and creative director, has worked in magazine design for a long time, but always wanted to have her own. Sarah, the co-founder and editor, is a social worker by trade and a big fan of talking about feelings. After visiting the Toronto Art Book Fair about a decade ago, we made the decision to take the leap and try making our own.

Thematically, it comes from a couple of decades of friendship centred around a deep comfort with each other discussing challenging feelings in a culture that does not always support or encourage it. It is also deeply political in nature, focusing on justice, community care, and storytelling.

In terms of experiencing FEELS, one thing we’ve really loved is hearing the vast array of rituals people who consume it seem to have that are very personal to them. Just like feelings! We want people to sit with the content in a way that feels most true to them. The content is emotional and often challenging, and we want that to feel as safe as possible.

**Co-founders Hannah (left) and Sarah (right) at a booth offering Feels Zine issues**

44N: I love that your publication is about feelings. More specifically, I admire the message that our inner worlds aren't necessarily safest when kept private. As you say, "Having an open dialogue about what’s going on inside of us can foster meaningful connection and make us feel less alone, especially in the social-media era that asks us to curate and polish our lives and feelings before sharing them—if we share them at all." When you began curating & creating zines like "Sexy" and your "Queer Romance Mini Zine," I'd love to know how you thought about representing feelings, especially since so many other emotions are present & connected to queer sex positivity, health, and safety. How did these two zines, in particular, fit into the fabric of what Feels Zine is & hopes to do?

FZ: With those issues in particular, we wanted to move away from media representations of what it means to be sexy, or what queer romance looks like, and shift the focus back onto how it actually looks in our lives—far messier and more nuanced, but also more real. As a queer person (Sarah here, so speaking for myself), I’ve always found myself disappointed in the majority of representations of queer love and sex—so much so that when I find something I connect to, I won’t shut up about it and am so excited about it. I felt that way in receiving the submissions for those issues—so thrilled to see experiences that might look different from my subjective experiences, but also so similar in the feelings and the authenticity in them. I think this is really the epitome of what we want FEELS to be—a space for something we feel in our guts as true to life.

44N: Issue 18, "Sexy," explored feeling sexy, worth, and desire. Safe, positive sex & sexiness can empower us, as you say, and should be something to celebrate! Across the work included in this zine, how did you curate/capture this beautiful balance of feeling sexy—not only re: sex, but also in how we show up in the world?

FZ: One thing that people may not know about our process is that, once we put out a call for submissions with our overarching mission statement, we really let the submissions we receive guide the final product. We work hard to curate that mission statement to touch on different viewpoints and angles to a feeling and not lock in on any one element. But at the end of the day, the most important component is how people relate to that statement and that feeling. As much as it would be nice for our egos to say we captured all that, the truth is, the contributors did that work. We also worked hard to curate submissions that explored the spectrum of how sexiness shows up for us—in ourselves, with others, with the world, and how we communicate about it. We don’t want to showcase just one type of experience—we want as many unique experiences as possible.

**The front cover of Feels Zine’s “Sexy” issue**

44N: Your "Queer Romance Mini Zine" explored queer romance as an act of resistance & resilience, creating intentional space for queer love stories. I so admire this. And in conversation with what we've been discussing: romance, love, and desire aren't insufficient without sex, of course! Intimacy beyond sex is a vital part of queer love stories, and I'd love to know how this mini zine approached queer romance beyond or alongside sex?

FZ: The complementing mini zines are a concept we’ve used a few times over the years, and come straight from the submissions we receive. Every once in a while, when we’re curating an issue and reviewing submissions, a related but distinct emotion or topic jumps out at us that necessitates space-making. As we worked through our Pride Issue submissions, this became very clear as a topic that was resonating with a lot of people, and a huge component of their subjective queer identities. Romance can involve sex for a lot of people, but it isn’t a necessary component, and we hope that that rings true in the overall storytelling of the Queer Romance mini zine.

The other thing I would note, which I mentioned above, is that queer romances have far fewer representations in the media, and often the ones we do aren’t written by us, and are rooted in pain and trauma. This, for me, is a huge part of why I believe queer love stories are so important to share–because seeing ourselves represented gives those of us who don’t yet feel safe or seen a place to have their experiences reflected back and honoured.

**The front cover of Feels Zine’s “Queer Romance” mini zine**

About Feels Zine

Feels is a publication about feelings. It is a place to explore, to share, and to be honest. Having an open dialogue about what’s going on inside of us can foster meaningful connection and make us feel less alone, especially in the social-media era that asks us to curate and polish our lives and feelings before sharing them — if we share them at all. Feels believes there are no good or bad feelings — the value comes from how we relate to them, how we experience them, and what we learn from them.

Feels believes in inclusion and recognizes that certain voices have been given the lion’s share of the spotlight throughout history. Our pages are for everyone. We are a feminist, sex-positive, 2SLGBTQ*, anti-racist, anti-colonial publication.

—Feels Zine Instagram & website

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Who is Seen, Who is Heard, and What Happens When the Truth is Obscured

Gillian Smith-Clark
Feb 9
3 min read

by Gillian Smith-Clark for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

**“Tell the Truth” stamped on pavement in white capital letters**

This February/March issue of The 44 North is, at its core, about visibility: who is seen, who is heard, and what happens when the truth is obscured: by power, by indifference, or by deliberate misinformation.

Across these pages, you’ll find work that grapples with Black history and resistance, the freedom to read, women’s and girls’ safety, sexual and reproductive health, homelessness, and the quiet, daily ways communities hold one another together when institutions fail them. These themes may appear distinct, but they are bound by a single throughline: access. Access to knowledge, to care, to dignity, and to platforms that refuse to look away.

That tension feels especially sharp right now. In recent weeks, more than 300 journalists were purged from The Washington Post—a decision that lays bare how vulnerable even legacy newsrooms are when journalistic missions collide with corporate ownership. The paper’s slogan, Democracy Dies in Darkness—introduced in 2017 and greeted at the time with both praise and pointed skepticism—now reads less like branding and more like an unintended indictment. What does that phrase mean when an iconic publication is hollowed out by fear and corporate priorities, and when media power increasingly determines which stories survive, and which disappear?

This issue is our response to that question.

Independent media matters not because it is perfect, but because it is accountable. Because it asks uncomfortable questions. Because it makes room for more voices—especially young and marginalized voices—that are too often dismissed, underestimated, or filtered through institutions that no longer serve them. At The 44 North, we remain committed to publishing work that is courageous, ethical, and grounded in empathy, including, and more specifically, when doing so is inconvenient.

You’ll see that commitment reflected throughout this issue. Our review of All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews explores grief, agency, and the limits of language when pain resists resolution. In our Artist Spotlight, Feels Zine offers a bold and tender exploration of queer sex and romance, reminding us that intimacy itself can be an act of reclamation. Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Rosa Parks,” featured in Poet’s Corner, anchors Black history not in abstraction, but in lived courage.

Several pieces examine storytelling as both a mirror and an intervention. Our feature on libraries as vital “third spaces,” including Dear TPL: The Passport Project, highlights how access to books and community resources can quite literally expand lives. “Novel Idea: How Fiction Helps Us See Ourselves” reflects on reading as self-recognition and survival. In The Writer’s Room, “ICE Murders: Lives in Slow Motion” uses current-events-based fiction to confront state violence in ways conventional reporting often cannot.

This issue also includes my own essay, “Watching Minneapolis from Canada: When Power Stops Explaining Itself,” which wrestles with proximity, responsibility, and what it means to witness injustice across borders in an era of relentless images and insufficient accountability.

At the heart of this issue is the winning essay from our inaugural essay contest: “The Pathogen of Perception: Quantifying the Multi-Dimensional Cost of Medical Misinformation” by Jason Wang.

Wang’s essay embodies everything we hoped this contest would epitomize: thoughtful analysis, moral seriousness, originality, and something more: a refusal to treat misinformation as a harmless difference of opinion. “Misinformation is not a victimless exchange of ideas,” Wang writes, tracing how falsehoods about vaccines during the global pandemic translated into preventable deaths—often borne not by those who rejected care, but by infants, immunocompromised patients, and those who never consented to the risks imposed upon them.

What makes this essay especially powerful is its insistence that the solution is not censorship, but literacy: scientific, media, and civic. “The answer is not censorship,” Wang argues. “It is teaching people how to think critically about health information the same way we teach them to read or do algebra.” In a moment defined by fragmentation and distrust, this is a call not for control, but for collective capacity.

What happens to a society when it loses the ability to respond to shared threats? When truth is drowned out by noise, and institutions designed to inform either retreat or collapse?

This issue is our answer: we build capacity by telling the truth carefully. By amplifying young thinkers who understand the stakes because they have lived them. By defending the freedom to read, to question, to imagine, and to care for one another beyond narrow definitions of individual choice.

If we take the Post’s motto at its word and accept that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” it is worth remembering that darkness thrives in silence and isolation. It recedes when we insist on seeing the world as it is, clearly—and when we choose, together, to keep the lights on.

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Writers Room | ICE Murders: Lives in Slow Motion

Mikaela Brewer
Feb 9
4 min read

by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North

Senior Editor

**White chalk letters on orange tile. They read: “#LeaveNoOneBehind”**

Please note: this short story discusses targeted violence and death. It may activate folks with similar lived experiences, beyond what feels safe to spend time with. Please engage with this story how/whenever it feels safe for you.

For a preface to what’s been transpiring in the U.S., please read this article by Gillian Smith-Clark, our Editor-in-Chief.

***

“I’ll say it again and again: trauma is not what happens to us, it is the space between us.”

—Erotics of Liberation, “Accountability is not moral achievement but somatic capacity”

They say that in the last seven minutes of brain activity, approaching death, a person re-experiences their whole life. Others say it’s just surges of memory and awareness. Me? I’m a writer. At least half of my life happens in my head with characters I’ve never met. But they’re the residue of not only people I’ve known, but people I’ve passed in life—on streets, at schools, in restaurants. Mothers, poets, fathers, cooks. So I say, why not?

In some way, I know Renée Nicole Good, Keith Porter, and Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, because so many others did. Because ‘I’ is such a falsity, sometimes. It’s lonely before it grows branches into the ‘T’ of ‘Tree’ or ‘Together’ or ‘Truth.’

We breathe in what trees breathe out. And we walk and run. We’ve breathed in one another.

With that breath, I imagine Silverio’s seven minutes. Even in his focused severity, he relives the moment he dropped his two children off at day care and school. At each place, he does the same thing: moves their dark hair from their foreheads with a warm palm, and places a kiss. I picture him first learning to cook, maybe from a family member. Perhaps he remembers the scented smoke in a kitchen with windows overlooking beautiful Michoacán on the Pacific Ocean. I see his fingerprints across kitchen utensils in a restaurant near Franklin Park. His careful, responsible hands make art for eleven hours, and then, in the sixth minute, reach back to his children.

And after seven minutes, the world is without another father.

In her poem, “In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don’t lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down,” Andrea Gibson writes:

“I know how to build a survival shelter / from fallen tree branches, packed mud, / and pulled moss. I could survive forever / on death alone. Wasn’t it death that taught me / to stop measuring my lifespan by length, / but by width?”

Width. I imagine the width of Keith’s heart beat, soul, and smile. He relives meeting his best friend, Adrian, in 1996 as a teenager. He hears his nickname echoing, “Pooter!” He sees the laughter and life his jokes brought to parties, the students he supported, and the teens he helped Adrian foster parent when he was only in his twenties. Two beautiful girls’ faces sparkle for him here, as they always have. There are Dodgers games and rich conversations with God and family. In the sixth minute, his spirit never broke—love kept repairing any cracks.

And after seven minutes, the world is without another father.

“The role of us poets is to witness the world,” writes Danez Smith in “An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good.” But it’s the role of everyone.

I see Renée crafting her award-winning poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” which won the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2020. She relives the sparks of that better life in Minneapolis—maybe a drive from Kansas City with her wife, Becca, and her youngest son. The wind is warm and made of dreams. I see her feeling the joy, vibrancy, and safety of new friends and community—felt because she helped make it real. I imagine she ventures through moments with Timmy before his death, her second husband’s love. And her three children’s lives, like the once disparate strands now a fierce braid, tether together the expanse of her life. She revisits the moment, perhaps on a soft couch after school, where she and Becca taught their kids to “believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness.” In the sixth minute, she’s smiling. The sunshine she radiated is returned to her, and she feels its glow: every moment she stood up for others.

And after seven minutes, the world is without another mother.

Minneapolis, LA, and Chicago keep fighting amid the plummeting temperatures—the coldest we’ve seen in a long time. They will not be frozen. Together, they’re warmest. And we must keep the fire burning against what freezes; against the threat of ice build-up on bodies, hearts, and minds.

Laura Gilpin’s “The Two-headed Calf” reads:

And then, years later, Matthew Dawkins writes, “Even two-headed, the calf is mourned.”

Who is called two-headed? And targeted as such?

Maybe the two-headed are the people most balanced by two heads. That is to say, those who hold much more than themselves.

And what a beautiful thing this is. ICE may have killed one head. But beneath twice as many stars to navigate with, there’s another. And it’s always been us—each other, right now.

***