Dyke Queen's Origin Story

Los Angeles, 2017

Dyke Queen is a QPOC zine about style, art, and literature.

DYKE QUEEN started as a collaborative project between my friend, the illustrator and artist, Bridget Ore, and I.

I went to the L.A. Art Book Fair in 2017 and felt inspired by all the magazines, art books, zines, and art at each booth. Although there was queer representation at the fair, most of it wasn’t for queer women. I decided I would start my own queer art zine for women one day.

Originally I imagined DYKE QUEEN to be like the glossy teen magazines I loved as a kid, a-la J-14, that I used to thumb through and beg my mom to buy me so I could put posters of N*SYNC and The Backstreet Boys on my bedroom walls. But instead of posters of The Backstreet Boys or N*SYNC, it would be Christine and The Queens and Syd.

While walking around the L.A. Art Book Fair, I wrote this note down in my phone. DYKE QUEEN was born that day.

I’ve always made magazines since I was a kid. I recently moved from Los Angeles to my home state of Arizona for the quarantine. During the move I came across two of the first publications I ever made: YEZ NEWS and VILLA NEWS. They featured news about my family that I distributed to my family, lol. My middle school didn’t have a newspaper and I wanted one badly, so I made up my own and took contributions from my peers. We passed it around our classroom until my homeroom teacher confiscated it. Something in me is wired to write and make magazines.

In 2017, after living in L.A. for three years, I had a friend who I deeply admire, Melissa Ramirez, — who I met on a feminist basketball league! — reach out to me and ask if I wanted to make a zine because she was going to have a table at L.A. Zine Fest for her project, Stumble on Tapes. I remembered the iPhone note I wrote in my phone for this zine idea I had called “Dyke Queen.”

I told Melissa YES via Facebook message and started writing essays about the big life changes I went through that past year: a break-up, coming out to my mother, being a part of a queer feminist community, a feminist backpacking group, a queer brunch club, a queer feminist basketball league, and having a queer job! I know. My life was peak gay during that time. But isn’t everyone’s when they first come out?

I was 26. It was my first time having lesbian/queer women friends and being part of a community of queer women. It felt special.

I asked Bridget, who I also met through my basketball team and became friends with, if she would want to collaborate and make a zine together. It was a DIY personal essay/poetry zine and neither of us ever thought we would make another one or that it was going to become a continuous project. 

It featured: an essay about meeting Eileen Myles and feeling inspired by them, a dyke diagram of all the dyke connections in my life, a poem about buzzing my long hair off, a poem about the month of JUNE and the impact of the pulse shooting on me as a queer Latinx person, and a couple more essays.

After we made the first zine together, I decided to quit my full-time job and pursue creative projects instead. Trump had just been elected and I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to put my energy towards something I felt passionate about. During that time, I saw a post online about how Hello Mr., the gay men’s publication, had a residency for queer magazines and I applied. I loved Hello Mr. and had always wanted something like it to exist for queer women (see tweet below!).

We interviewed with Ryan Fitzgibbon, the founder of Hello Mr., about our concept. I was happy to connect with someone who I deeply admire, and was ecstatic when we were chosen to do the residency. With the support of the residency, we made a magazine we were all really proud of. It featured the fashion designer Barbara Sanchez-Kane, the multidisciplinary artist Teresita de la Torre, and the poet Alex Hall, among others. We had a big release party on the rooftop of a hotel in downtown L.A. I will never forget that day! It was amazing.

DYKE QUEEN has been on a hiatus for a while because putting together a print issue is challenging (and expensive), but I was inspired after seeing so many writers I admire having Substacks, like Saeed Jones, Daemonum X, and Jenna Wortham, among others.

I hope that that this newsletter can serve as a platform for us to post original content for Dyke Queen and have it exist here as it’s home beyond Instagram since most people don’t have access to our print issues. It will feature interviews, blog posts, and other fun stuff!

If you want to support a publication run by a QPOC dyke, please subscribe or forward this newsletter to your friends.