Last November, I floated the idea of creating a micropress. To some, it felt like a random idea; to the people who knew me best, it was inevitable. I have always found myself attracted to the concept of running a publication. Black Girl Does Grad School, my blog from 2016-2022, was at its peak from 2018 to early 2020 when I had a team of editors, regular columnists and guest bloggers, in addition to my weekly postings. In 2019, some friends and I tried to jumpstart a Black feminist popular culture online magazine called The Iola Project, that never got off the ground due to an overambitious crowd funding goal. Before that, I was the graduate advisor to a short lived Black undergraduate online magazine and I’d hoped to be the editor for a small publication for The Lemon Project, which never fully materialized. In college, I’d wanted to started a magazine, too, but I abandoned it when my most trusted collaborator graduated, and then I found my appetite for collaborative art sated through Black Monologues.
And before that? I was ten, convincing my classmates to join me in creating a fourth grade wide magazine, where we even held a bake sale to cover the printing costs. When designing the magazine proved too difficult, we ended up donating the money to the library for the AR Carnival we held each year. I was also regularly creating The Stringfield Times for my Dad, my way of making sure he didn’t feel left out of the day’s events when he had to go to work and my mom and I were home alone in the summer.
All this to say, no one was surprised I wanted to make a micropress. I think everyone was just waiting for the light to turn green.
Unfortunately, the only speed I have is “now” when I am ready, so I’m just grateful when I started texting folks to send me their scraps two weeks ago, everyone readily obliged.
That was the idea: scraps. Everyone I know and am friends with is an artist of some kind. They have lots of public, published work, but I also know these are the people with notebooks full of abandoned lines, Notes apps full of fragments, pictures lost in the Cloud. They are people who capture beautiful things, regardless of whether or not they go anywhere, and so I asked them to let me give them a home.
Without intending it to have a theme, the project started to be about “love.” Tyiana sent me a mini essay on Megan Thee Stallion’s break up, Kay sent a dozen poems about love self and others, Autumn sent affirmations. I had art I’d made for Valentine’s Day I could add, Shira made a playlist inspired by Tyiana’s essay and Kay’s poems, and Keisha sent a book review for a book that felt like a love letter.
SCRAPWORK, vol. 1, came together like a bolt a lightning. I designed it to be a newsletter, printed on 11x17 inch paper so it only required printing four pages and folding twice. No staples. Ease to print, assemble and distribute. When it was done, I emailed everyone a link to all the files so they could print them out and distribute themselves if they wanted, and sent off their contributor copies. Most of them bartered with me for their scraps. I sent some folks money; others I did a birth chart reading for and I owe a couple people art.
It’s perfect. Our little quilt of a project.
It reminds me how much I love making art with people, just because.
Then, this morning, Exodus Oktavia Brownlow’s review of Nikesha Elise Williams’ The Seven Daughters of Dupree went live on midnight & indigo. m&i had previously done book reviews and got away from them, but now we’re back with this glorious piece of writing. It never gets old, seeing how much we accomplish at midnight & indigo. It feels good to celebrate Black women’s writing and our work in books, with reviews of our literature, interviews with people who work in and around books, as well as publishing original fiction and essays. We have an impeccable classes division and a soon to be formally established editing agency. The print magazines themselves are a work of art.
This is a literary institution of which I am proud to be a citizen. I am proud to work alongside these people: editors, writers, teachers, students, and readers alike.
I’ve known I love making art with other people since I did Black Monologues in college, and sometimes it feels like I’ve gotten away from that.
And other times I look around and see just how beautiful of a garden I’m in.
The thing about me is that when the creative tap is on, it’s on. It’s overflowing. I’m creating with no sign of stopping. The last couple of weeks I have been on. And it’s been so easy to create when it’s with people and for others. I create from a place of love—the more of it I have, the more I create. While large areas of my life have been hard, I’m surrounded by people who inspire me to make beautiful things—because they are people who I think should have all the beautiful things.*
The Habitual Disregard for Creative and Intellectual Work as Labor
·
Feb 23
Someone recently asked me what I do “besides writing books.” I gave my usual answer, which is that I center writing, all types, but I also freelance teaching and editing. They asked what I wanted to be doing, in the future. Again, my usual: I quite like what I’m doing now. I love the freedom I have over my time and my location. I can spend much of my ti…
Black Women Writers and Note Taking Practices
·
October 14, 2025
“Part of this essay is a substitute for an entry or series of entries in a journal or notebook that I have never kept. The kind of writer’s journal, many of which I have read, which contains ideas for future work, sketches of scenes, observations and meditations. But especially the thoughts that undergird problems and solutions the writer encounters dur…
If you’re new here and you don’t want to do all that clicking to find out what I’m about: I’m Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield, a writer, editor, artist and former Peanut Fest Queen from Suffolk, Virginia. I am the author of two novels for young adults, Love in 280 Characters or Less (Feiwel & Friends, 2025) and Love Requires Chocolate (Joy Revolution, 2024). I am a product of Virginia public schools (Suffolk Public Schools) and universities (University of Virginia), all the way up to my PhD in American Studies from William & Mary. I’ve been published in a variety of venues for the last six years—book collections, magazines, scholarly journals—but most importantly, I’m a life long reader and a maker of beautiful things.
*
I just can’t get behind putting my Substack behind a paywall, but I do respect that sometimes folks want leave a little something in the plate for a good post.
Here’s my Ko-Fi. If you feel moved to leave a dollar or something, thank you! My personal blogs have been free for 10 years, I’m not interested in changing that now. You can also buy physical and digital copies of my zines there!
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.