Artist Spotlight: Capsule Community

by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North, Senior Editor

Prints by Capsule Community

A few years ago, in the fall of 2024, I wrote a pantoum about the moon for the very first issue of Capsule, Stories & Starlight, published in December 2024:

Months before I wrote this poem, I’d followed Capsule’s Instagram page, a nourishing collection of posts to taste and savour rather than consume in one bite. I felt a sense of disruption—rest and ease—each time I encountered their work, even on a screen. In practice, I saw what social media could be. 

If “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing,” as Raymond Williams says, then disruption has more than one necessary definition in the fight; it can replenish hope.

Capsule’s social media presence is a tapestry of literature, climate sustainability ethos, decolonial frameworks, artwork, and more. They turn each square into a patch, and their grid into a quilt rooted in storytelling that changes perception and lives. Their work influences popular culture and shifts public opinion, all stitched to a vital core: Stories as community. 

“As a creative consultancy and agency, deeply passionate about and focused on climate and sustainability, we are storytellers, creatives, activists and artists who leverage our creative skills and talents to boost climate narratives, encourage sustainable systems and outcomes, and help foster stronger connections to nature and the planet.” 

—Sabaah Choudhary & Misha Dhanoolal, Capsule Community Curators & Editors

Beyond Capsule’s digital quiltwork, the idea for a print publication brought together the threads of art, nature, and community. 

“We loved toying with the concept of leveraging our platform as a space to create and inspire, for our own unique voices and ethos, but also for our community. There are so many talented writers, thinkers, artists and storytellers in our communities with little or no access to platforms to tell their stories and share their ideas and work.”

Stories & Starlight, where my poem appeared, leaned on the themes of winter and the light we find at night. It featured several poems, art, and photography from members of the Capsule Community across North America. 

Sabah and Misha also design “Prints for Palestine,” featuring plants and words from the ever-brilliant James Baldwin and Mahmoud Darwish (two of my all-time favourite writers—check out “Untitled” by James Baldwin and “Think Of Others” by Mahmoud Darwish). 

Coming in August 2025, Capsule’s Summer zine, in collaboration with the Toronto Flower Market, will be available. You can pre-order it now. 

“Collaborating with the Toronto Flower Market was an ideal next step, and our way to truly walk the walk of creating a community zine; where spaces and ideas are shared, and different communities are connected, taking our smaller community circles and creating an even larger one. Community is the anecdote to scarcity, and we dream of a world where community, connection and art are a never-ending source of abundance.”

This issue blooms beyond the rebirth of past issues, reminiscent of summer daydreaming with the Earth’s sense of play, love, exhilaration, and creation. 

“In Mother Nature's maximalist season, we find so much inspiration for art and connection—to nature and each other.”

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About Capsule Community

The Summer 2026 issue of Capsule Zine

At Capsule, we believe that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for influence and change. Stories change perception, lives, move popular culture and can shift public opinion. As a creative consultancy and agency, deeply passionate about and focused on climate and sustainability, we are storytellers, creatives, activists and artists who leverage our creative skills and talents to boost climate narratives, encourage sustainable systems and outcomes, and help foster stronger connections to nature and the planet.

—Capsule Community Website

Connect with Sabaah, Misha, and Capsule Community on their website and Instagram.

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Artist Spotlight: Feels Zine

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

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About Feels Zine

A collage of Feels Zine issues

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

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