Introducing Our New Mascot, Varo
We greet you here at the beginning of 2026 with a long overdue announcement: after 36 years as a publishing house, Host Publications has converted to nonprofit!
You may be thinking—what a wild, reckless thing to do, in a time when the arts and education are under attack, when marginalized writers of all backgrounds are being tokenized, silenced, even denied basic human rights. When even writing the word “woman ” into a federal grant application disqualifies your project for funding. Let alone “queer.” Let alone “trans.”
But this is our time, and these are our circumstances. As a nonprofit, we have torn into a new era of our beloved press, and in this era, our claws are a little sharper. We’re keeping one eye on the skies, and one underground. We want to alchemize whatever we have at hand into food, into poetry, into care. We felt inspired to don a new face to represent who we have become.
So we rang up Eva, Austin's ethereal linocut print artist, and we talked with her about the power of images to generate real magic. About how we can resist functionality and productivity as the way we make meaning in our lives. And Eva transfigured these conversations: she carved a creature with her hands, and inked it to paper.
Meet Varo, our dazzling new mascot of the species Helioxenia katasterismos—a name blending Greek words for sun, hospitality, friendship, and the process of a creature being immortalized in the night sky. This is us, choosing how we want to exist in the world—as a queer, celestial lion with angel wings and a devilish tail, ready to pounce.
Like the sun, we want to host life, to beckon poetry to burst from the seed. Like the lion, we want to be courageous, to offer strength to our community. With seraphic wings, we honor the vital imagination of poets that carries us beyond our old ways of thinking. With the devilish tail, we commit ourselves to making trouble, we declare that fear tactics will not prevail here! We ally ourselves with those who have been displaced, and champion those who have fallen, joining the ranks of poets, monsters, truth-tellers, and “queer menaces rising from ordinary rooms”
So it may appear to be a “rebrand” but in truth, this is a rebirth. We choose to be resilient and connected to our shared humanity—so this is our love letter to you, dear reader. May you find fierce gentleness and deviant dreaming in this time. We are right here with you.
A Versatile Beast
Something about Eva Frederick's own creatures (aka Strawberry Milkweed) filled our minds with imagination. We envision Eva's creatures moving about their day, their personalities, the rhythms of a dynamic creaturely life. So, when we commissioned Eva to join us on this journey, we knew we wanted more than a logo—we wanted a beast that exists in all corners of Host. A beast that moves with us, that grows with us, that champions literature with us, that fights for justice with us. A complicated, beautiful creature. The first three linocuts of Varo we commissioned from Eva include our primary logo (top), our colophon which will appear on the spine of future Host Publications titles (bottom), and a whimsical Varo just for fun and merch!
Inspiration
In retrospect, our meetings with Eva began with a loose vision—we love all Strawberry Milkweed creatures equally! But our preferences really came through during our conversations and gathering of images for the mood board. There was a lot of discussion about our favorite surrealist writers-painters who made their own strange creatures, like Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Leonor Fini, and Ithell Colquhoun, but we also discovered kindred spirits in the works of contemporary artists Lou Benesch and Sergio Bustamante. Eventually, we narrowed down lion-adjacent features (but not a lion!), which as you might know has been an unofficial mascot for Host due to our proximity to our late sister-bookstore Malvern Books. After a couple of months and a little bit of Eva magic, we arrived at the species Helioxenia katasterismos and our very own Varo.
Behind the Scenes
We cannot stress how remarkable it is to work with an artist like Eva and the process of meeting in person, assessing sketches and linocuts and inky prints. Our sessions included exploring mountains of art books, discussing creature personalities and Host's ethos, values, hopes and dreams. What we arrived at is a beast that can hold our courageous poet hearts. As a friend said yesterday, "AI could never." It can't be this fulfilling, it can't invest in brilliant local artists and your local community, and it can't possibly be this much fun!