About
What is Beloved?
Beloved is a print zine dedicated to the beauty of Butch & Femme identities, dynamics, and culture.
Beloved got its start during autumn of 2022, when our project head Lottie first began daydreaming of a ButchFemme themed art zine for Valentine's Day. This daydream gradually snowballed into the idea of a recurring art and writing publication, dedicated to uplifting the voices of Butches, Femmes, and Studs in their community. With a background in zine-making (political/info zines, fan zines, DIY zines...) and a long history of starting overly ambitious projects, they set out to make this daydream into reality. But knowing that this had the potential to be so much more than just another overly ambitious project, Lottie knew they needed to gather some reinforcements to make sure the zine came to fruition. They recruited Ripley and Avalon, two visual artists who were part of the same art collective as Lottie in Austin, Texas. Sunny was next, a writer who reached out with an offer to help peruse the written submissions. Self proclaimed "Poetry-Isn't-Really-My-Area" Sunny brought along Caelan with her, to handle just that. Next was Victoria, a talented formatter who emailed us a design portfolio we were immediately blown away with. Our tiny little team set out with the goal of putting together an old school style traditional zine, compiling art and writing submissions from a handful of Butches/Femmes/Studs around the world. And for anyone who's ever taken a peek into one of our releases, you'll know this project ended up being so much more.
What was originally intended to be a traditional handmade zine grew into a whopping 150+ paged collection (let's face it, book) of art and writing that felt far too formidable to be considered a zine. But the name stuck, and with plans to expand into handmade zines in the future, it only seemed right to keep it as Beloved Zine. Since Valentine's Day of 2022, we have grown as a team (hi Mars, Mar, and Venus!), as a collection (see you soon, Issue 04!), and a community (that's you guys!). As a fully volunteer run group, it means so much to us that all of our time, love, and energy has been able to foster such a beautiful project with equally beautiful supporters.
We are currently accepting submissions for our second issue, with the theme of "Renewal" for spring '23! We are accepting both art and writing, with the deadline of March 25th. More info on the submission process can be found here!
We are currently scheduled for April pre-orders with a late April-early May release, and are hoping to have all orders shipped out in time to be received before the end of spring. In addition to the release of the physical zine, we will also be selling merchandise like t-shirts, stickers, prints, and patches.