Hazel Newlevant

It’s that time of year! 🌈

Updated COVID vaccines are mostly for preventing severe acute illness, but it modestly reduces your chances of getting COVID at all! (54% less symptomatic illness in the following 4 months, in this recent MMWR report.) Best paired with a respirator! People who always wore N95 masks in indoor public settings had *83%* reduced risk of testing positive for COVID, in this 2022 MMWR report.

COVID is still a threat. Getting sick sucks, plus your risk of long-lasting symptoms—aka long COVID—gets higher each time you're infected. Fortunately, there's a lot you can do to lower the risk of transmission! Protect your ability to party—and protest—this Pride!

Get a Booster. Like Drag Race spinoffs, new COVID variants are dropping all the time. Antibodies from your latest vax or infection wane after a few months. Get a booster matched to the latest variants, and your resistance will peak in a couple weeks!

Mask up! COVID virus spreads through the air like the smoke from a fag [British]. A well-fitting N95 mask gives great protection! More reasons to mask up: sexy and mysterious, shows community care, avoid all the other airborne diseases!

Take it outside. The more fresh air to disperse the virus, the better! Transmission is still possible, especially in a crowd, but going outdoors is a major safety update!

The Annotated Edition of Gender Queer is out today, May 19 2026 <3

I'm so grateful to all of these smart, wonderful people who contributed their thoughts, notes, and comics to this edition:

⭐ Jadzia Azelrod (author of Galaxy: The Prettiest Star) ⭐ Andrea Colvin (original editor of Gender Queer) ⭐ Alex L Combs (author of Trans History From Ancient Times to Present Day: A graphic novel) ⭐ Dr Sandra Cox (English Professor, Southeast Missouri State University) ⭐ Eli Erlick (author of Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950) ⭐ Mel Gillman (author of Other Ever Afters, Stage Dreams, As the Crow Flies) ⭐ Ashley R Guillory (contributor to Queers at the Table) ⭐ Justin Hall (editor of No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics) ⭐ Kori Michele Handwerker (author of Tiny Book Science) ⭐ Phoebe Kobabe (my sibling and colorist of Gender Queer) ⭐ Tara Madison Avery (publisher, Stacked Deck Press) ⭐ Ajuan Mance (author of Gender Studies: True Confessions of an Accidental Outlaw) ⭐ Hazel Hewlevant (author of Queer and How We Got Here) ⭐ Matthew Noe (Librarian at Harvard Medical School) ⭐ Hal Schrieve (author of Out of Salem, Vivian’s Ghost, Fawn’s Blood) ⭐ Matt Silady (Comics professor at California College of The Arts) ⭐ Rani Som (author of Spellbound, Apsara Engine) ⭐ Shannon Watters (co-creator of Lumberjanes)

They all have impressive credits but more relevantly, all of them are friends. 🧡💛💚💙 Order here, or pick it up at your local bookstore or comic shop! This month, Gender Queer has been out for 7 years, and it has spent 5 of those years in the top 3 most challenged books in the United States. This has only strengthened my resolve to keep writing, supporting, and defending queer and trans comics for the rest of my life. 🧡💛💚💙

My book comes out in a week, May 12!! 🤯

Some of my faves gave lovely quotes about why you should read it. 💗

I’m doing a bunch of author events and conventions—if you’re in the area, I’d love to sign a book for you!

you can preorder my book for 25% off from B&N, thru 3/26!

Here's some more context for the post above (a generous offer I hope some can make use of!) On Feb 23 2026 trans people in Kansas started to receive letters saying that their driver's license had to match their sex assigned at birth, and that any driver's license with an updated gender marker was not valid. Trans folks were directed to surrender their current IDs at the DMV, where they would be issued a new driver's licence that matched their sex assigned at birth. There is NO grace period to handle this ID change, so even if a trans person decided to comply and drive to the DMV the very next day, they could be caught driving without a valid license, they could face a class B misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Kansas already requires county jails to house inmates according to sex assigned at birth. (Read Erin in the Morning's piece above to see a scan of the letter and more info).

One organization seeking to help trans people leave hostile states and relocate to Colorado (which borders Kansas) is the Trans Continental Pipeline, which accepts donations:

I wanted to throw together a short tutorial on how I print zines using this excellent COVID safety zine by @newlevant as an example.

Printing

First make sure you are clicking on the printable file. When you open it, it should look slightly jumbled. I always look for seeing the front cover and the back cover on the same page.

Then click "print" (usually a printer icon) and open "more settings".

The key things people tend to get wrong when they try printing zines is they forget to make sure that it is double sided and flips on the short edge. If you tried printing one and it came out looking wonky, make sure to check this.

Also, it will make your life infinitely easier if you use the collate option should you have it available to you.

Fit to printable area is a helpful setting to have on if you're printing zines who use a different paper standard than you. This zine didn't for me but I leave this on out of habit.

When you've got this all set up - print as many copies as you want to assemble.

Assembling

When you get them out of the printer they'll look like this. Just a big old stack. I highly recommend parsing out each individual copy before you try assembling any. I have made that mistake before.

This is how I stack mine.

I like to leave the cover side up as it makes for a clearer division as I'm assembling.

As you're flipping through these to parse and stack them, check them over for any issues with printing. I ran out of printer toner on the first three so I'm glad I checked.

Imperfections are fine but you're looking for anything that makes critical information unreadable.

To assemble a copy, get them lined up by tapping them on the table along a short and a long edge.

Both hands is a lot easier but I was trying to take a picture lol

Then fold them hamburger style and smooth down the spine as best you can. If you have a bone folder or similar use that.

Again, let go of perfection. We are looking for good enough here. Minor errors here should not make info unreadable so don't sweat the small stuff.

I recommend doing all your folding in one go to prevent errors. Or at least it really helps me.

Now it's time to staple. You will see my fancy stapler in the background - you do not require it and I would not recommend it. Unhinging a normal stapler is way easier to use in my opinion and this one gets jammed fairly easy. Use what you've got.

If you don't have staples, but you do have sewing supplies - check out this tutorial for a way to bind it with thread.

If you have no staples and no thread, you don't have to staple every zine. Smaller ones (~5 pages or less) do fine with no staple. They can be a little tougher for some people to use and don't hold up as well being taken in and out of places so I would consider that when thinking of where to leave them. They're still well worth printing and putting out.

This zine is small enough that one staple in the center should be enough to keep it together.

I opted to staple in two places - one about an inch in from either edge - mostly out of habit. It does add a little stability and will make them a little better for putting in Little Free Libraries and other places where they'll be removed and placed back.

Here is my partner looking over the zines to make sure my stapling didn't cut off any important information in each copy. It's a little tedious but it's pretty important. A quick flip through can mean the difference between someone getting the info you want them to have or not.

And here's the finished product

I made 15. I'm pretty privileged and have been making zines for over a decade now so it's almost like knitting or crochet for me. Feel free to make fewer copies or just one for yourself. It still counts.

I will stick some in each car and my bag. I have some medical appointments coming up so I will for sure be leaving some of these in the waiting room.

I'm also going to keep an eye out for Little Free Libraries and other place where people are looking for something to read. I might also toss some on the tables of a coffee shop I pop into sometimes (masked, take out only) and the library to pick up books (also masked).

I tend not to give them to specific people, even people I know, because people are way more open to information they've picked up themself than something it feels like someone is pressuring them to read. But if people bring it up in conversation, I'll be sure to offer a copy to anyone who is interested.

Hope this is helpful!

Thought I'd share the Palestinian colors version of my MASK UP! poster 🍉😷🇵🇸 Thank you so much to everyone who shared and downloaded the FREE MASK UP! poster pack!

Hypothetically, you can print this on a risograph by download the design in separate color files and using red, black, and green, and it'll look basically like this mock-up. Let me know if you actually print it in any way, I'd love to hear more C:

We CAN take care of each other, and a better world is possible. If you're feeling alone and helpless, masking up with N95s/KN95s when around others, indoors AND outdoors, is a great place to start. Masking helps protect us from deadly pathogens (like viruses and smoke) PLUS it stymies police surveillance and makes events more accessible to disabled people. All our struggles against fascism and genocide are united, and Palestine will be free!

New zine that's free for anyone to print and distribute! Read the whole thing at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the rest of this post.

UPDATE 4/11/2023: