WHAT'S A ZINE? Zines are self-published, often handmade publications of various kinds. They can look like and be about anything at all. Mine have been small books of poetry, first-person narratives, collections of interviews ... and then there's my eccentric serial zine about language, The La-La Theory.
OH WELL THEN TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR ZINES, KATIE. I sell my zines at fairs and on my etsy shop (above), and some of them are sold by distros (zine distributors), including Parcell Press and Microcosm, and independent bookstores such as Philadelphia's landmark anarchist bookstore the Wooden Shoe; Bluestockings, the fantastic feminist bookstore in New York City; and Sticky Institute in Melbourne, Australia. My zines also live in the collections of some public and academic libraries and infoshops, including Barnard College's zine library, the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University. My found poetry zine, Word Math, was included in "Dark Matter," a 2004 exhibit of underground art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and some of my other zines were included in shows at d21 Kunstraum in Leipzig and Space 538 in Portland, Maine. I once read poems from one of my zines on a public radio show called Live at the Writers House, and in 2009 I organized a zine reading on NEXUSradio, a low-powered radio experiment hosted by Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia. My zine The La-La Theory and this website (yes, this website), are featured in the big beautiful book Fanzines by Teal Triggs, published by Chronicle in October 2010. The La-La Theory was also included in this nifty report on the BBC News website. In the fall of 2010 I did a zine writer's residency at the Anchor Archive in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I finished the fourth issue of my zine White Elephants. In September of 2011 I participated in a pecha kucha discussion on zines at the NY Art Book Fair at PS1, MoMA's modern art museum. A pecha kucha is a fast-moving slide presentation: I had only 20 seconds to discuss each image, so I got to talk about 15 zines in five hyper minutes.
WORKSHOP. I have created a crafty-style how-to zine workshop, and so far I've presented it at Philadelphia's great big Free Library Festival, the Collingswood Book Festival, and for the students of Bryn Mawr College at their lovely Art Spectacular event. I've also done it for kids, tweens and teens at branch libraries, including the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philly Branch, the Haverford Avenue Branch, and the Tacony Branch of the Philadelphia Free Library. If you'd like me to do one at your school, library, community center or what have you just send me an email.
ARE YOU STILL NOT SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT A ZINE IS? Take a look at ZineWiki, that should help.
NOTE TO SELF: START USING WORDS LIKE MULTIPLES, CODEX, AND EPHEMERA, IT SOUNDS FANCY.
