Our fine colleagues over at SOLRAD/Fieldmouse Press certainly piqued our interest with the declared intent of their latest crowdfunding campaign. With a rallying call to fight queer censorship, at a time when that is as important as ever, they’ve announced seven new comics works. Back the books here and check out fuller details in the press release below.
Fight Queer Censorship with Fieldmouse Press!
Fieldmouse Press Launches Crowdfundr for Summer & Fall 2025 Season To Publish Seven Comics
Grass Valley, CA-based Fieldmouse Press, a nonprofit comics publisher, is bringing its Summer & Fall Season to readers through a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdfundr, which launched on July 14th, 2025. Our latest season of books celebrates community and queer resilience, interrogates our desires, and challenges the insanity of the everyday. Four books, three minis: our Summer 2025 Season is seven works of art that will challenge and delight you.
In our last season, it was all about tariffs and their impact on our ability to print and make amazing comics for discerning readers. That pressure came from inside our own borders. Now, the shoe is on the other foot – our printer, based in Shanghai, refuses to print our books because of their queer content. We need your help to move production to a North American printer and keep the presses rolling.
The goal of this project is to raise funds to offset the print costs of seven total works. We are publishing four paperback books: Flea by Mara Ramirez, Cookies and Herb by Matt MacFarland, a root bound plant needs room to grow by Stacey Zhu, and A Strong Woman and Other Stories by Valentine Gallardo. We are also debuting 3 titles from our Fieldmouse Minis series; A Scientific Study of Transsexuality by Oscar Woodiwiss, Unrest by Jurijs Tatarkins, and Double Take by Kat Foyle. We’ve carefully budgeted printing costs, design costs, and accounted for hidden variables.
Here’s a closer look at each of our seven upcoming publications:
Flea by Mara Ramirez – 132 pg, perfect bound 5″ x 7″ paperback; black and white throughout
Flea is a young queer woman who simply wants to be heard. In a series of funny and sometimes harrowing vignettes, Flea must navigate her overbearing family, her clod of a boyfriend, and a world that sees her as invisible and insignificant. Alternating between expressive scribbles and naturalistic drawings, Flea grapples with her perceptions of herself and reality in an attempt to feel ‘real,’ and the results are both beautiful and horrible.
Cookies and Herb by Matt MacFarland – 72 pg perfect bound; color throughout
Matt MacFarland grew up in the Reagan years in small town California. The people who made up his life, like his elderly neighbor Herb, helped him feel understood in an indifferent, insecure world. With gentle humor and compassion, Cookies and Herb honors and memorializes those people who gave Matt support and care when he needed it most.
a root bound plant needs space to grow by Stacey Zhu – 96 pg perfect bound paperback, full color
In this deeply intimate collection, Stacey Zhu combs through the clues left behind by romance, lust, family, and melancholia to answer a difficult but human question — what is love? What she finds in a root bound plant needs space to grow distinctly captures the paradoxes of love and acceptance in human life, and in our reading, we are forced to reckon with our own relationships, decisions, and desires.
A Strong Woman and Other Stories by Valentine Gallardo – 112 pg perfect bound paperback, full color throughout
Myth meets modern life in this collection of new and previously published short stories by Valentine Gallardo. Blending humor and fantasy with dreamlike palettes and lived-in dialogue, these surreal vignettes explore the contradictions of modern womanhood through tales of COVID lockdown parties, werewolves, deserts, and self-sabotage. Absurd yet comforting, A Strong Woman & Other Stories is a mirror for anyone who feels out of step with the world.
A Scientific Study of Transsexuality by Oscar Woodiwiss – 44 pg saddle-stitched minicomic, full color throughout
Originally published as a part of the 2023 ShortBox Fair, an online digital comics festival, Oscar Woodiwiss’ A Scientific Study of Transsexuality is a satirical fictional scientific journal that explores the expression of transsexuality in nature. Woodiwiss moves deftly from the microscopic to the cosmic, interrogating cultural norms and affirming the sensual beauty of the trans body.
Unrest by Jurijs Tatarkins – 28 pg saddle-stitched minicomic, black and white
Wry and uncompromising, Latvian cartoonist Jurijs Tatarkins meditates on the uncomfortable, nagging realization that modern life is rotting at its core; his poetic ruminations in Unrest are funny and at times heart wrenching. Tatarkins’ work has been previously published by kuš! in their anthologies, and we’re excited to bring a full collection of Jurijs’ comics to the United States for the first time!
Double Take by Kat Foyle – 20 pg saddle-stitch minicomic, full color throughout
People often speculate what it would be like if they had a doppelganger somewhere out in the world. If you had a doppelganger, would they be cooler than you? More successful than you? Would they imitate you at the grocery store? Kat Foyle’s Double Take explores this idea and all of the anxieties and irritations that would surely come with it.
