Hi.

My name is Mikkel Snyder. I am a non-binary, Filipino-American writer. In my past lives, I was a slam poet on Washington University’s premiere spoken word poetry group, WU-SLam, which later segued into becoming the architect of Button Poetry’s live streaming infrastructure and an editor and co-publisher of Freezeray Poetry.

These days, I make my living as a technical writer during the working day and then pursue a gamut of other creative endeavors depending on my exact energy during every other time. This has manifested in designing and teaching TTRPG systems, making escape rooms in my house, constructing crosswords, and dabbling in any art or craft that sounds remotely interesting. Right now, it’s a lot of zines and riso prints.

Additionally, I am a board member of SLICE, St. Louis Independent Comics Expo, a non—profit focused on arts education in St. Louis (that also puts on an annual expo with the same name in the fall) and a regular contributor to the 2025 Hugo Award Winning Fanzine, Black Nerd Problems as their “Asian American Correspondent".

And dear viewer/reader, as you probably guessed, being a contributor to a Hugo Award Winning Fanzine has managed to sparked something in me that was almost certainly always there, but is now very much at the forefront of my mind.

I will also preface this by saying that actually getting a Hugo Award is not actually my end goal. I won’t lie, it would be nice. But the real reason I have this newsletter is because I love writing and I love writing about media in a multitude of ways and I want to share that love with others and the framework of “trying to get attention to become well known enough to get nominated and eventually win a Hugo” is functionally identical to “trying to get attention” with enough egotistical flair that it will galvanize my brain enough to actually do the steps.

For those subscribed already, this won’t change much. It’s really just a call to action for myself. That I have to link the Buttondown to my BlueSky and making a tumblr since I think my content probably would vibe there. It means debating on whether or not to pay for automation or just do it myself until I have to justify paying for it (right now, I think this is gonna be a manual process for a while, but we’ll revisit the investment in July). That I need to reblog and repost and share and be kind of annoying about it. Because it’s numbers game. It’s all a numbers game. But eventually, those numbers add up or work out or something.

But, as is often the case, I’ve reached one of many plateaus in a creative endeavors. And while I’m happy with what I made, I also know myself enough to know that I am in fact greedy and that the next stage is right there and I just have to start taking the steps to actually start moving on up.

So, here’s to connection and trying and seeing what happens next. And if you’re new here. I hope you stick around.