Blue Jay Walker has been trying to put down their phones and pick up physical work from writers and artists. And he’s found a way of doing that by presenting his followers with an analog alternative to the ‘digital slop’ that platforms like Instagram and TikTok provide: his monthly zine, The Paper Rag. His work embodies the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Responsible Consumption and Production.
Now, Blue Jay Walker has been expanding his project: from providing free PDF copies of the zine on his website, to posting a free poetry collection as a Christmas gift to readers, to now taking off on a cross-Canada bike trip with long-time collaborator Isaac Peltz to do reporting following the question, "Should Canada break up?”
Walker remains dedicated to spreading the message he originally intended when he created Paper Rag: to connect people, connect with other artists and poets, and get everyone to “escape the algorithm.” But Walker had been making zines long before the idea for The Paper Rag started brewing. He shared with Arts Help that he probably made his first zine before he knew what it was.
“I’ve been making zines for a long time. I probably made the eight-page fold zines when I was a kid and don’t even remember. I can’t remember them not being in my consciousness, like, "Oh yeah, that’s what you do; you fold things and share them around."
Many copies of Paper Rag incorporate work from freelance writers and artists. September 2025’s Paper Rag includes art about community care from creator Wolfie, or @sharpened.sticks on Instagram, and an article by Isaac Peltz about legacy media’s shortfalls in holding power to account. Many of Walker’s zines include poems, comics, and articles considered “gonzo journalism,” a type of reporting where the journalist is at the center of their story in a typically participatory way. Other zines have also broken the already fluid mold by being, for example, entirely dedicated to games.
April’s Paper Rag recounts Jay’s experience getting his wisdom teeth removed, as he reflects on the past in a way that seems to fall through the fingers of the present.
When describing hearing a cracking sound in the middle of wisdom tooth surgery, a sound that accompanies the severing of the periodontal ligament between the tooth and bone, Walker is transported back to his childhood. “That cracking is the same noise I heard when my father took the upright piano that had been living in our double-wide trailer since the day I was born, pulled it into the front yard, and smashed it to bits.” Walker writes. “The sound of something being separated from you that has always been there.”
Walker remembers making a photography zine where he dressed as an astronaut and took photos of himself in his normal life. “I made this zine about the idea of alienation and isolation even in physical spaces. This person is dressed like a dollar store astronaut, but it’s obvious they’re also from earth.”
What really drives his passion is storytelling. He told Arts Help that he thinks stories are the center of human connection. “It’s how culture develops, it’s how we understand each other, and it’s how you build relationships and also create norms and structure.”
He started working as a full-time artist in 2020. “A large part of that was working very diligently to engage the algorithm,” Walker says. “That is one of the main ways to make an income in our modern environment, and as much as it is paid unfairly and we are having to force things into boxes and create art that is not beneficial to the art itself, it is the hand that artists have been dealt.”
For him and Isaac Peltz, the friend he was working with at the time, it was just the reality. “We decided we are going to pursue this because we want to survive.”
Now to Walker, going viral is now old hat. He did it in this collaboration with friend and former bandmate Isaac Peltz in their punk-folk duo Walker and Wylde and once with a protest piece made in response to police blocking artists from busking in New York City’s Washington Square Park.
“I travel across North America writing poems, and everywhere I go the story is the same. The citizens love true and honest expressions of art.” Walker writes in the book’s artist statement. “The government and its enforcers do not. Washington Square Park is a historic site for artists, but even it is under attack. Those artists who make their living here face constant enforcement of unclear and unfair rules.”
Blue Jay Walker will continue to make The Paper Rag for as long as he is able. As many zines are, it has become a collage of many thoughts, images, feelings, and voices. The common thread, however, tends to be care for people and stories and a common anger about our collective indebtedness to digital and financial systems that leave us, palms empty, smashed to bits.
You can find more on what Blue Jay Walker is currently working on through his Instagram @blue.jay.walker