on zines
& i'm leading a workshop
Happy Friday, all!
I’ve got a long one for you today—if you’re an email subscriber, please click on the title & open this post in a new window to read it in its entirety.
For those of you who have been here for a while, you know about my special interest in ZINES. They’re definitely writing- and publishing-related, so I’m going to go into depth about them below & just hope that you’ll be interested.
Here’s what I have for you today:
Information about zines
Examples
I’m leading a workshop on zine-making
Resources
A little more about zines…
1. What is a zine?
A zine is “a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation.” Really, it’s a self-printed pamphlet or mini-magazine wherein the designer writes about something they care about or want to share. Simple.
Here’s how Alexander Campos defines it in Zines+ and the World of ABC No Rio
Zines are commonly cheaply-made and priced publications, often in black and white, mass-produced via a photocopier, and bound with staples. The accessibility of production allows zines to be a tool for community activism and empowerment […] [or] artistic vehicles for self-expression, social activism, and political criticism.
Zines, in their most common form, are self-produced publications, usually short in length, that are hand crafted and typically photocopied for distribution. Zines typically contain anything from collages of images, short stories, poems, essays, or a combination of them all. Forms of zines were first being used in the 1700’s for marginalized citizens to express their beliefs and concerns and have been a way to spread word since. They were picked up by the punk scene in the 1970’s and used for sharing social commentary and punk music related articles or reviews.
2. What makes a zine distinct from a magazine, or a literary journal, or a chapbook?
From what I’ve learned: What differentiates a zine from other bookforms is 1) making one comes from a desire to build community rather than make a large profit and 2) it’s incredibly D-I-Y—it is put together from start to finish by its maker, fulfilling their vision entirely.
As Joel Biel writes in Make a Zine,
A zine offers a window into someone else’s fascinations without the clinical or academic distance that often comes in books and newspapers.
Indeed,
the ultimate goal with zines isn’t to make money, and zines rarely cost more than $10. Their do-it-yourselfness rather encourages wide distribution & accessibility. Zinesters write about what they’re interested in or can’t stop thinking about and hope to find a community of others with similar obsessions.
I, for instance, am obsessed with reading authors’ letters, which is how my microzine The Best Gay Shit Virginia Woolf Sent to Vita Sackville-West came to be.
(You can print it out for free here —just make sure to set your printer properties to “fit to paper” to ensure the spacing’s right.)
3. What else differentiates zines from more mainstream texts?
As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t a middle-man when you’re making zines. The author/artist doesn’t have to work with a press, and an editor, and a designer, and make the compromises that come with that collaboration. The author/artist also doesn’t need any major institution’s support or consent. This might allow for more risk-taking or radical ideas/forms to be shared.
Be Oakley articulates this well:
Higher value is assigned to books due to the resources that went into their creation. But, those who have access to resources are not always making the most radical scholarship.
[…]
Often, zinemakers and small publishers making zines can, and often do, explore radical pedagogies that those with resources in mainstream publishing don’t.
4. Is there a bigger emphasis on appearance?
In a word, yes. Now, that doesn’t mean that a zine can’t be “ugly”—as they often intentionally are—only that, because zines are homemade, cut and stapled by the creator, its appearance adds to its role as an art object.
Be Oakley writes:
In arts publishing, form is as important as the content within its pages.
&
Focusing on the physical form of a book within arts-based publishing and self-published works is what sets these objects apart from typical notions of what books are and must be.
And G. Thomas Tanselle opines:
There can be no books in which the format and other physical features are unrelated to the process of reading and understanding the texts in them.
Here are some examples of zines I’ve made over the course of the last year:
Most of these are for sale on my website here.
Do you want to learn more?
Here are some tiered resources for you, depending on your price point!
1. If you want to take a zine-making workshop—
and be walked through that process by a zine veteran—I’m teaching one via Zoom on April 2nd & 3rd. You can snag your ticket here for $251—or, you can choose the $50 option & sponsor someone unable to pay the $25. Yay for mutual aid & care.
I’ll also have worksheets, a free zine library, & other fun stuff available for those who choose to attend.
2. Alternately, you could buy a book about zines and bookmaking.
Here are the ones I have:
3. Finally, here are some free e-zines to check out:
You might check out the huge archive of zines available to download at archive.org. There are so many great ones archived there—ones with titles like “Dykes to Watch Out For,” “Queering Anarchism,” “TRANARCHY,” “A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World,” and “Getting Rid of the Shame n Shit.”
In conclusion:
I’ve really enjoyed making zines. I hope that you’ll enjoy doing so, too. Looking forward to gabbing about them more with some of you!
I hope you have a great weekend. And, as always, thanks for being here.
-Despy Boutris
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which ends up being about $7/ hour. Not a bad price.