Avery Plummer was finishing her Master’s degree in Art History at Ohio University, considering her thesis, and the COVID-19 pandemic obliterated all opportunities for interpersonal community. In the spell of isolation, she was figuring out her own identity as a queer woman in an increasingly terrifying landscape to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community. And then she found On Our Backs magazine. 

On Our Backs is a vintage lesbian porn magazine, starkly contrasted with its smutty contemporaries (like Playboy) that centered on women, sexual health, education, and advocacy. She channeled this inspiration and created the first issue of nymph(o) magazine to serve as her masters thesis, and still continues the project today. nymph(o) is a modern, sex positive print-only publication that centers queer experience, joy, sexuality, and a masterfully vast breadth of diverse voices on glossy paper in a visually breathtaking delivery system. 

Nothing is off limits in nymph(o). Photos, interviews, poetry, and comics find themselves snugly nestled within its pages. Life is given to the voices of people across gender identities, sexual spectrums, ability levels, ages, and experiences. This is a matter of ethics and principle for Plummer, who conducts herself with this posture in all aspects of her life, but especially in this area. 

When asked about how she navigates the sometimes-problematic attitudes and ideas of our queer forebears, she waxes about honoring our collective past and looking to these blueprints for context and inspiration while building the world we desire to live within. 

Cover Art by Maddy McFadden

“Constantly looking at things through a critical lens, we can’t accept everything as fact. I had to do this specifically with On Our Backs, it was very white. It was not as trans as something you might see today …There can be a gentleness in that critique, but not accepting it as fact,” she says. 

This is a hard line, and clearly a well-protected boundary for Plummer. It’s of critical importance for her to include as many stories as possible in nymph(o), and to do so with veneration. Utilizing so many elements in this magazine not only makes it a significantly more fun read, it serves the purpose of capturing the work of its subjects exactly as the artists intend their words to be shared; however a contributor wants to tell their story is how it is told within her pages. 

Each issue begins with a loose theme. Concepts like “fighting for joy” or “queer spaces” become the backbone of a deeply collaborative process. She opens submissions for contributions, but will also seek out specific people if there is a topic she knows she has to cover. This duality of reliance on community, while opening the scope, results in multiplicity of content that leaves readers with a satisfyingly juicy experience. 

Between her acting as curator, her partner, Maddy, serving as creative director, and a network of artists, there is “room to devolve,” as she says. This is a piece of art, showcasing the miraculous ways queer people can work together, challenge each other, and craft something cohesive and celebratory. 

While this project may have started as her thesis, it has evolved into an antithesis of the way media is consumed in the modern timeline. In times where endless scrolling is seen as the work, and reposting is tantamount with organizing, nymph(o) is a defiant, stunning piece of revolutionary art that begs us to slow down and immerse ourselves; to linger awhile, languish in textures, and move our eyes across its substantial pages. 

She says, “Context gets left out of many conversations [on social media],” and print media is a way to create a larger body of work that exists only within the spaces it’s meant to belong. The Internet has its virtues of accessibility, which has certainly activated many members of the community, and saved the lives of queer people all over the world. But print media can be something by communities, for communities, away from normative gazes. Creating and preserving spaces for our eyes only bears importance, and can serve as a pivotal organizing space. 

Cover Art by Denver Bastion

“That’s how you move in stealth, that’s how you get these large groups of people to know about things, but not the groups you’re targeting. It’s free from the constraints of a social media platform that is run by the oppressor. There’s a lot of power in it. Where the struggle happens and it falls flat is the ability to access the information,” she says. Plummer laments the lack of grassroots gatherings in the era of social media, and how organizers prompt us to check their social media to know when things are happening, but the exposed nature of that can be a pitfall. Print media is powerful, because it’s made (often by hand) by us, for us, and only has to be seen and loved by the people whose power it is meant to uplift.

Yet the main motivation for nymph(o) being a physical piece of media seems to be rooted in Plummer’s abiding love for archival work. We met to chat in the Ohio Lesbian Archives, a treasure trove of books, magazines, and ephemera meticulously assembled to document the movements of queer people in Ohio. She volunteers at the OLA, and it’s abundantly clear that ensuring the preservation of our history is the key to unlocking a future of liberation. 

The Ohio Lesbian Archive was the womb that birthed nymph(o), and feels very much like a hallowed and sacred ground from which to birth the next queer freedom movement. Its original home was above the iconic Crazy Ladies Bookstore, and has independently housed thousands of pieces of history for over thirty years. 

When I asked Plummer about how archives are activist spaces, she brings up what she calls “The precarious imprecarity” of LGBTQ+ communities. She says, “Archiving is activism because archivism is proof. We have been and always will be here, it’s literal proof of that. When we’re seeing increasing efforts to erase that history and evidence, these grassroots archives become so important. They can’t erase that. Keeping pieces of proof outside of a higher institution. We’re not connected to a university that can cut their DEI funding. We’re keeping this open to the community.” 

Art by Mallory Stowe

The OLA is home to “Jill’s Journals”, which are quite simply the personal journals of a lesbian named Jill. They’re only available to be viewed in the archive, and they’re a real treat. Plummer loves these journals, saying “[we have been] amazing, whimsical creatures throughout history,” and capturing these seemingly mundane moments are powerful ways to remain connected to the humanness, whimsy, aesthetics, and humor of our people. 

When we look upon the world-shattering efforts of Act Up and are inspired by culture-shifting work done in the past, it can be easy to forget that queer people are hilarious, queer people made grocery lists, queer people ran errands. A reminder that there has always been a resilience resting within the daily movements of life is how revolutions are carried out. Archives preserve that, and do so in a physical space where community happens. Collective knowledge and skills are shared, strengthening the solidarity between us all in a way human beings can only do when sharing the air of a room together.  

nymph(o) magazine’s next issue is in the works, and the Ohio Lesbian Archives has open visiting hours biweekly on Wednesday from 6:30-8:30 & Sunday from 11:30-1:30.