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Cristy C. Road, a Miami-raised, Brooklyn-based, Cuban-American illustrator, writer, and of course, total dreamboat, is no stranger to DIY, punk, queer, zine, and activist communities all over the place, and certainly no stranger to the pages of Bitch magazine. You might recognize her work from covers of books such as We Don’t Need Another Wave and The Revolution Starts at Home, or maybe you’ve caught her on tour with Sister Spit The Next Generation when they rolled through your town, or perhaps you’ve flipped through an issue or two of Green Zine, or you stole your ex's copy of Bad Habits, or you saw her band play in someone's basement, or maybe you've never heard of her at all, but basically, she’s a big deal, not to mention a badass. This is what happened when I sat down for a chat with her on a sunny Friday morning, pajamas on, and breakfast in hand. Cristy shared her feelings about everything from her art, to astrology, to racial dynamics in radical communities, to cats and brunch. It's all here for you to read, so let's get started!

You know when you come across a super rad zine artist and you're really into their work, then you casually waltz into a comic shop, and you find one or two of their zines from years and years ago, but you get pretty bummed that the zine and comic shops in your area don't have a sufficient selection, so you scour the Internet but can only find so many other things, then you realize you've wasted hours looking for who has the lowest shipping costs? You then proceed to read every interview with them, you learn all you can about their life, then you step back for a minute, and it hits you—maybe you're a little obsessed with the artist and you feel weird about it, but you end up e-mailing them professing your undying love for them and their work anyway? Please tell me this isn't something only I go through.

Regardless, starting right here, right now, I will be taking you on a journey, showing you why I love three incredible queer zine artists, and why you should love them too.

First up:  Edie Fake!

Bright and graphic illustrations, installations on bathroom politics, and back-page comics for the fabulous Shameless mag? Artist Coco Riot does it all!

Brooklyn-based artist Lorna Simpson produces visual works that both isolate and confront conventional views on identity, ethnicity, and history. A majority of her recent work portrays black American women casually posed in standalone scenes or everyday interactions, inviting viewers—herself included—to question what divisions exist between society's past and present.

Angela Singer puts buttons, beads, and a barrage of sparkly things on dead animals to make art.

As soon as I chanced upon Cotton Monster, I felt like I'd been waiting all my life for toys, art, and eyeballs to intersect.

I fall more in love with the work of Catherine Eyde every time I look at her art. Her colorful renditions of women, creatures and landscapes both ordinary and fantastical walk the line between twee and haunting, like a gorgeous, uneasy mixture of Grimm's fairy tales, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and feminist sci-fi.

"Buzz" is a current art show curated by Hungry Eyeball installed inside Tender Loving Empire, an impressively multi-tasking collective. "Buzz" contains works by five Portland, Oregon based artists: Chelsea Fletcher, Amy Ruppel, Rebecca Artemisa, Kinoko and Wesley Younie. Although it is too late to see Y La Bamba play an intimate show for the opening night (darn it!), it is fortunately not too late to see the art. "Buzz" will be in the Tender Loving Empire gallery until November 2nd.

More after the jump!

How, exactly, does one become an artist-in-residence at a sanitation department? If you want to do it the way Mierle Ukeles did it, first you get expelled from Pratt for making "pornographic" abstract art. Then you have a baby. Then you write a rad manifesto that redefines everyday maintenance work as fine art. Then you make landfills into beautiful public parks! Easy peasy.

She's been praised by R. Crumb and compared to Bukowski, but she still doesn't have a Wikipedia page. She's rather elusive, but she has a reason: "My paintings are the only place I feel that I fit in."