Publishing As A Practice | Suryah Studio

In 2025, I really just had the itch to not only write more but also publish those writings, both digitally through platforms like Substack and Medium, and tangibly as paper zines and other small-press goods. I’ve written a bit already about my journaling to this point, so I won’t take up too much space on that specifically, but I want to make space for reverence and celebration of myself, my desires, and my goals accomplished in the writing space. I’ve published 10 original written works and 5 physical, limited, and open-edition paper zines. And as a special thank you, I even added the artist talk for my 2020 zine “Distances” to the Free and Unlocked Section of the Patreon. So yeah, thanks to you all for holding me down.

(Cover for "The Story Of Iya's Water" c/o Suryah Studio)

Something that’s been sitting on my mind in the random moments of stillness I’ve been experiencing lately is a proverb given to me by Sharayna Christmas of Necessary Tomorrows in 2019. “Tell your story or someone else will do it for you and without you.” She was visiting me in Mt.Vernon to tour the newest retail installation for a local branding initiative I was running there with Harrison Daniel and Joshua Slowe called “The Combine”. Sharayna was one of the first people I told when I became the Creative Director there, and though she was impressed with the work. She wished I would prioritize telling the story of my work more, because she knew how important it is to control one's own narrative. The organization Sharayna was leading at the time published the first-ever written piece of press I was ever featured in, and it’s pretty ironic that I ended up being misquoted at various points in it, but that had absolutely nothing to do with her and really just further proved her point.

(Cover for "My Spirit Is Full - My Skin Is Blue" c/o Suryah Studio)

My first attempt to tell my own story started in 2015, when I compiled a collection of digital works I had been starting and stopping since 2009 called “Trippy Fest 2009,” the name of the app on my iPhone 3gs I used to make each piece. In my mind at the time, it was a better idea to set up a fake communications company, media house, and publishing house to publish and distribute these poorly stapled stacks of 28lb white sheets with offensively low-resolution images. But I was so young, naive, and committed to the project that I didn’t care, and you couldn’t tell me shit about it because it was mine, and I presented it unapologetically and proudly because I was, in fact, very proud of myself for publishing my work. I had never even heard of what you would picture in your mind as a random zine. It was just my little book thing: I had someone close to me risk their federal government job and freedom to secretly print an 80-edition run for me under the table.

(Cover for "The Child" c/o Suryah Studio)

Fast forward exactly ten years later, and I’m just now really processing it as I’m writing this, just how much I’ve grown and the immense amount of depth I’ve been able to discover in myself through publishing as a practice. Writing now feels like such a nourishing activity for me that it feels so silly remembering a version of myself that thought writing could never be something I was good at. I’m holding so much love and grace for the version of me that called this something I could never accomplish. In my experience, it requires a monumental amount of heartbreak to find yourself settling into such a position. Regardless of the fruits I’ve grown to bear, the journey here is paved with a grief I’ll be carrying for the foreseeable future. Being able to claim that with an earnest resolve is something I don’t take lightly, and grateful is definitely an understatement for how I feel in my own mind, my own body, my own spirit.

What I’m taking into this year when it comes to writing is worrying less about the rules and giving myself space to be “incorrect” and “improper”. I want to use my voice with as much expression and abstraction as I see fit, and I won’t be confined to properness, legibility, or academic structures. Something I love so much about my diaspora is our augmentation of language. The ways we’ve taken “proper” English, broken it down, and transmuted it into hundreds, if not thousands, of localized and colloquial communication methods. Being from Baltimore City, I used to be really sensitive about code-switching. Speaking “good” and “well” was an illusion of safety I let myself get lost in, for the sake of maybe some small moments when I wouldn’t feel as deeply “othered” as I knew I was. The TLDR is that, of course, that illusion would never come to be true, and being so depressive with my relationship to language only robbed me of the joy and pleasure I bask in now.

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. I’m so thankful we’ve crossed paths in this way. Whether you loved it or hated it, I would encourage you to stay on this journey with me and become a sustaining member of this practice through a monthly subscription on patreon.com/suryahstudio or a one-time donation via Square. Monetary contributions help push this work forward and sustain my involvement.