Ben Charles Trogdon is the creator of long-running punk fanzine NUTS! The entire publication is handmade by Trogdon, who has been sticking to a pretty similar ethos and method since he started making the fanzine in in high school as just one photocopied sheet. Since then, NUTS! has evolved into a large-format newspaper, publishing a mix of interviews with hardcore punk bands, scene reports, underground “news” columns, illustrations, paintings, comics, and more. Ben assembles every issue entirely by hand using 35mm photos, artwork and text that is all cut-and-pasted together. The paper is even hand-delivered to the local newspaper factory in Brooklyn.

Over the years, NUTS! has covered artists such as Dawn of Humans, Hank Wood and the Hammerheads, Pharmakon, Sex Vid, Hysterics, and countless others. Ben has also started releasing other publications like Rock And Roll Forever, a photography zine, and more recently Tattoo Punk, a fanzine about "outlaw and underground tattooing and culture." Tattoo Punk #1 is available now and Tattoo Punk #2 will be printed this fall. When we chatted with Ben last year, we spoke about the history of his publication, what makes a good fanzine interview, the importance of doing things by hand and the minutia of putting together one issue of NUTS! . . .

The Bedroom Witch is my sister, Sepehr Mashiahof, an LA-based music/video/performance artist and trans-femme empath, whose body of work has evolved over the span of 10 years, making her a cult goth angel in her own right. This past Trans Day of Visibility, she released a three-panel short film titled Triptych out into an undeserving world. In this powerfully executed visual album, the Bedroom Witch uses limited resources to manifest a prismic noir containing themes of sensuality, murder, and hysteria. Triptych is a triple threat against the dismissal of trans women’s autonomy in romantic love, as The Bedroom Witch creates a goth pop dimension that enables self-materialization in a world that thought it could leave her behind. Cutting open the void with campy, melodramatic mystery, the Bedroom Witch’s emphatic delivery makes her a fresh face in the new New Wave of Queer Iranian Film-Making. Around the release of Triptych , I spoke with her about the power of visual representation, storytelling, imagination and more. “The older you get, the less active the imagination becomes because real life is monotonous garbage, and we realize that more and more with each day that passes,” she told me. “Living as a queer adult means that maintaining the power of the imagination is crucial to surviving this wasteland.” . . .