About-
The Hye-Phen is a fully independent digital publishing collective that aims to connect and build community among Armenian artists, scholars, activists, and writers through providing a space to openly share stories, challenges, dreams, ideas, critiques of the present, and visions of the future, while embracing what it means to be Armenian in our own way. Founded in 2014, it’s been lovingly maintained by a handful of LGBTQ Armenians from around the world.
In addition to running an online space, The Hye-Phen has also published physical zines of our work that have been sold at several zine festivals. The Hye-Phen has had selective press coverage in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artsy, and Popsugar.
Our Values / Visions-
We envision and aim to help create a world that embraces the following:
> Expression – We are able to communicate in unique, radical, and unapologetic ways. We embrace multiple perspectives on complex issues. We are not afraid to be angry, weird, or confused. We value challenging and learning from each other. This is a platform for sharing.
< History & Futurity – We are free and invited to gather and share our respective and collective histories. We dream and create futures where we are all surviving and thriving. We build hope for the future for those who have been made to feel that there is none.
> Exploring Alternative Realities – We embrace the exploration of dimensions and worlds we cannot see. We welcome strangeness. We can imagine a world that is free of hierarchy, authoritarianism, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy by using our imagination, theories, and lived experience. We hope for a world where The Hye-Phen would not need to exist any longer.
< Love for ourselves and for each other – We value love, healing, imperfection, vulnerability, and inclusivity for ourselves, our community, and each other. We build each other and our community up instead of competing. We recognize accountability as an act of love, an opportunity for growth, a chance to dig deeper into ourselves and build understanding with our community. Community accountability is not a punishment, but transformation.
To find a more detailed explanation of community accountability, check out 10 Strategies For Cultivating Community Accountability by Ann Russo.
Team-
The Hye-Phen would not be possible without our original team members from all around the world. We deeply appreciate the work and effort from lee williams boudakian, Sophia Rakel Armen, Nora Kayserian, Nancy Agabian, Arev Pivazyan, Milena Abrahamyan, Hasmik Geghamyan, Zeytoun, Raffi, Razmig Sarkissian, and Ali Chavez for making this space and community real.
We’d also like to recognize Mariam Vahradyan for allowing us to display her photography throughout this website.
.ೃ Sevan Mujukian

Founder + Designer
Sevan is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator based on Los Angeles. Their work approaches pain in a playful way and they make music under the name Suzukian. Sevan created The Hye-Phen because it’s what they desperately needed when they were growing up.
.ೃ Kamee Abrahamian

Editor
.ೃ Sara Abrams

Editor
Sara lives and writes in Armenia with her dog. She plans to stay there until the wind changes course.
.ೃ Gabe M.

Editor
.ೃ Flo

Graphic Designer
Our Story-
Since starting out as a zine created by Sevan Mujukian in 2013, The Hye-Phen has since become publishing collective run by a handful of queer-identified Armenians from around the world. Our work has left an impact on countless people, and our team has shifted throughout the years. As a fully independent organization, we operate non-hierarchically and based on the capacity of our team members. Sometimes we nap and come back when we’re needed.
A note from the founder-
I named this platform The Hye-Phen because that symbol punctuates everything that Armenians are, as we are more often defined not by what we are but by what we’re not-not just in how we’re torn between homelands as diasporans, but as a symbol, a hyphen is a bridge between two worlds. It belongs to neither. As someone who feels as if they are in-between everything, gender and sexuality and race, I feel this lack of definition in every part of me. We will never be a constant, determined category. Initially, I used to be frustrated with this idea, and would rather have the comfort of knowing what I am. We are strong enough to hold this weight. We show the world that gradients exist, that the world isn’t binary, black and white or easily defined but exists in gradients–there’s always a gradient between night and day, when both can exist at the same time. We are infinitely liminal. We break boundaries. We confuse definitions. Our refusal to be easily defined is queer. This project has been a decade-long process of learning and accepting all of this.
The Hye-Phen was a response to a heavy soup of feelings (invisibility, isolation, rage, confusion, and erasure, desire) around being Armenian-American: to growing up in LA with the assumption queer Armenians didn’t exist; to searching bookstores for any sliver of Armenian representation and walking out empty handed; to the suffocating weight of gender roles and the impossible expectations of being a perfect Armenian woman; to making the choice between being queer and being Armenian; to the lack of solidarity between social struggles; to being freely told by others what Armenians are and what they are not; to wanting to be easily categorized; to not being white or brown; to not being in asia or europe; to feeling like an infinite question; to feeling irrelevant; to feeling like my most potent experiences never existed; to knowing that to not being one thing still means I am something; to finding beauty and sense and purpose in this chaos.
In 2013, I created a zine of comics around these questions and my personal experiences. After posting the zine online, I assumed that either no one would read it or if they did, I’d be ostracized for it. I was surprised when a woman with an Armenian name and an Oakland address purchased it. We connected online and through that connection created a web of queer Armenian artists, writers, and activists from multiple cities, states, and countries. Within the following year, we formed a collective and launched this platform so that we could all safely and authentically express ourselves and our visions for the world.
The Hye-Phen marked a turning point of what our collective spirit was capable of. Since that time, we’ve witnessed how these narratives have changed as more collectives have formed and more Armenians have been openly stepping into their authenticity. We’re now more critical, more intersectional, more expressive, more vocal, more fierce, and more openly queer and Armenian than ever before. It’s a privilege to know that our presence (and absence) has played a part in allowing this reality to take shape at a time when all of that felt impossible.
Contact Us-
For comments or questions that aren’t related to submissions, please send us an email.