"Scrap Paper: Belonging & Resistance" explores methods of community-making and organization through art by showcasing The Ohio State University Libraries’ holdings of personal zines, punk show posters and calendars, Latin American political pamphlets (known as cartonera), and ephemera from independent bookstores. These physical artifacts of community, belonging, and movement-making celebrate collective efforts and creative output… questioning how the physical manifestation of community can build solidarity and momentum for social change.
Join exhibit curators, Courtney Hunt and Leticia Wiggins, for a gallery tour, beginning at 2 p.m. followed by a conversation with writers and artists Rose Zinnia and Mercurylion at 3 p.m. Hear about the panelists’ creative processes and publishing experience. They'll consider what small press projects look like in this increasingly digital age and how the physical form presents new ways of community-making and connection.
Event Speakers
Mercurylion “Merc” (they/them) is an Afro-Indigenous printmaker, poet and alchemist based in Columbus, Ohio. Since earning their BA in History of Art from The Ohio State University in 2017, their work weaves ancestral knowledge, speculative practice and embodied craft into visual and ritual forms. As of April 2026, they have launched their independent publishing press Mercurylion on Ko-Fi and released their first poetry zine Seedbone. In addition to their integrative arts practice, past roles include Liaison for the Greater Columbus Arts Council (2025) and cohort member (2024-2025), exhibition research assistant for Carlos Motta: Your Monsters, Our Idols (2022) at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and visiting curator of relational learning at the Columbus Printed Arts Center. Their recent curatorial projects include Potu faitautusi (2021–2022), a reading room dedicated to global Indigenous printed media at the CPAC, and BEYOND TRADITION (2024–2025) for GCAC’s Loann Crane Gallery featuring works by Indigenous artists of Central Ohio.
Rose Zinnia is a writer, editor, teaching artist and designer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she is the author of Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024), a hybrid chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. Zinnia’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in BRINK, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, POETRY, The Offing, CV2, Black Warrior Review, Poem-A-Day, The Journal, New Ohio Review, Gulf Coast, Split This Rock and West Branch, among others.
Zinnia’s essays and poems have won awards from BRINK, Ninth Letter and the Academy of American Poets. She is an alumna of Kenyon Review & Tin House workshops and holds an MFA from Indiana University, where she taught creative writing & literary editing/publishing. She has served in editorial or jural roles for Vermont Studio Center, The Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review and AWP. She works in production at the LGBTQ+ journal and press Foglifter and is an editorial assistant for The Cincinnati Review. A doctoral student in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati, Zinnia lives in Ohio where she is at work on her debut novel and debut book-length essay.
