As well as functioning as a sort of archival project, Nat’s interest in paving the way for queer futures is evident in their interest in science fiction writers like Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. “I read these writers for the same reason I research queer histories: they offer radical alternatives to the status quo,” Nat shares. They are even publishing a science fiction novella this fall, combining speculative fiction and the search for queer history.
The first font in the book, named Robert Ford, was born from Nat’s creative studies into queer “zinesters” and their desire to extend the research into the world – to push the past into the future. “I didn’t have a studio or materials, but I did have a laptop and a font design program. Fonts were something I could make and that other people could use,” says Nat. “I decided to turn it into a series and planned to make a new font every month for a year, so it became A Queer Year of Love Letters.”
Frustrated by “rainbow capitalists” and state-sponsored erasure of queer and trans people, Nat is pushing back against erasure, which “happens even in the best of times” – and they are using fonts as the push back. “Fonts disseminate the histories that they cite in name, form, and metadata,” says Nat. There’s also a poetic function – “Users of the fonts write with the forms of the past. Through writing, they extend that past and put it to new use. Writing changes us, we get transformed, via the creative act of reorganizing the world through language.” Nat’s book expands queer culture and goes above and beyond in creativity, respect and tribute. It’s moulded by every aspect of queer culture: love, hate, death, resistance, socialism, even times countercultural icons were “too much” for “a tolerant society”. So be it, the history may be kaleidoscopic, but one thing is for sure – Nat Pyper is collecting it all and sharing it with the world.