Shanice Rhule of CT Public sat down with Magik Press' Aly and Tyasha/ Ty to talk about zines, accessibility, and the financial challenges of self-publishing.

The New Haven Pride Center at 50 Orange St. was decked out this Saturday with colorful flags and even more colorful artwork. 

Magik Press, a micro-press and arts studio run by Aly Maderson Quinlog and Ty/Tyasha Pace, was hosting its first-ever zine party and punk show. It was an event, the two stressed, about community, and the community was out in full force.

New Haven, CT – Saturday, June 1, 2024 - This year, join us in taking back pride at Magik Press ZINE PARTY! Happening on Saturday, June 1, at the New Haven Pride Center, this event is a pride celebration for us, by us, embracing all things queer AF, protest, and punk. This event aims to reclaim Pride Month from pinkwashing and corporatization, and to break the silence surrounding the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Magik Press co-organizers Aly Maderson-Quinlog and Tyasha/ Ty Pace were each awarded funds from the CT Office of the Arts Artists Respond Grant program for the 2024 fiscal year.

“I ask my subjects to look directly at the camera so that the viewer must look these beautiful people in the eye,” the artist (Aly Maderson-Quinlog) writes. “Too often queer folks are ‘accepted’ only if we stay in the shadows and shame. That time has passed. We are here. We are queer.”

"Art saved me," Aly said in a recent interview. "Art is part of my identity. It's the first identity I had that didn't have a gender. Being 'The Artist' gave me a place that was mine."