31 Day of International Zine Month!

Hey Look a whole listing of Fanzine Festivals in Europe.  I can’t say how many of them are active, but it is nice to see them all in one place.

We have about a week until the start of International Zine Month! Last year I took a photo of myself in a different zine shirt each day. Do you have plans?  Well, we have plans for you!

Derek and I at Portland Button Works have put together this 31 Days Of International Zine Month! We have activities for you to do every day if you are ambitious! I’ll be adding these to the zine event Google calendar soon.

Play along at home with 31 Days of International Zine Month!

1 – If you have an account on We Make Zines (A social networking site just for zines)  login to talk about International Zine Month. if you don’t have an account yet, start one!
I love zines week
2 – Zine Distro appreciation day.  Order something from a zine distro, or write them a letter or an e-mail telling them you appreciate what they do.
3 – Organize your zine collection. We all know you have stacks of zines by your bed, maybe you should look into doing something about that.
4 – Teach yourself a new skill: how to make a one page zine, a new binding technique, photocopier art, etc.
5 – Check out a different type of zine than you normally read. Why stay stuck in the same box, try something new. It might just surprise you!
6 – Re-read your favorite zines! We all have our favorites, why not sit down and read them again.

7 – Zine reading day! Host, attend, or participate in a zine reading. No zine readings around you? Read outloud to your pet!
8 – Try something new day.  If you draw comics, try writing a personal story.  If you write fiction, try non-fiction.  If you write poetry, try drawing comics.

Postal appreciation week!
9 – Buy some stamps, envelopes or postcards or make your own (envelopes and postcards, that is, not stamps.)
10 – Write a letter to a zine person that you have never written before to let them know you liked what they made.
11 – Create a care package to send to a zine friend filled with neat zine stuff (rub on letters, glue sticks, clip art, etc)
12 – make some mail art, decorate some envelopes, or make an Artist Trading Card.
13 – Send your zine out to be reviewed.

14-  ValenZine’s Day Write your zine crush (we know you have one!), or write to Zine Crush about your zine crush.
15 – make plans to make a split zine with someone.

Zine Library and Education week
16 – Leave a zine in a public place: tacked to a message board, on a bus, in a coffee shop
17 – Teach a friend or family member about zines.
18 – Send your zine to a zine library.
19 – make a zine flyer to send out with your orders and to trade with other zines.
20 – Host a zine workshop or zine party at a local library or community center.

21 – International Zine Library Day! Visit your local zine library! Start a zine library.
22 – Check out Zine Wiki! Add your zine or edit an entry.
Zine Distribution week
23 – Zine Trade Day! ask someone if they would like to trade zines with you.
24 –  Send your zine to a distro for consideration.
25 – Order from a different zine distro than your normally do.
26 – Review a zine in your zine, on your blog, or on your facebook page
27 – Look into consigning your zine at a shop that sells zines.

28 – Free Zine Day! Give the unexpected gift of a zine!
29 – organize a zine event, even if it is a small one

30 – Zine shop appreciation day.  Support your local zine friendly shop today!
31- Take a photo of you with your zine (extra credit if you post it online)

Extra Credit!
-Read a zine everyday
-take part in the 24 hour zine thing
-draw a comic everyday and release a diary comic at the end!

 

Zine Stuff!

Greetings! I have a few zine things for you this week:

-Wanna participate in an interview about Riot Grrrl fashion? (Zine related because Riot Grrrl and zines are inextricably linked in my head)

-Can’t make it to Paris? Want to have your zines on display in Paris? Send them to the Fanzines! Festival. I really love all the photos of the mail they have gotten!

-Do you have an event to add to the Zine Event listing page? Let me know! Did you know that you can actually add the Zine Event Google Calendar to your own Google calendar?

-We are 18 days away from International Zine Month! What plans do you have?

New Zine Podcast!

Just a short update to direct your attention to Postage Paid Zine Podcast that is airing in about a half a hour! Sage (Sweet Candy Distro) and Sarah (Once Upon A Distro) will be discussing things to consider when throwing a zine event! I’m so glad to see more zine podcasts. Fun stuff!

Zine Summer!

 

I’ve been busy but I have been keeping the Zine Events page up to date. As always, let me know when I’m missing  a zine event. I only have 2 eyes and they can’t see the whole world.

I attended the Woman of Color Zine Symposium last weekend. Jenna, the Lower East Side Librarian, was in town and we got to hang out. I saw a lot of old zine friends and met some great people. I think the event was awesome and I hope they do another one.

Registration for both the Philly Feminist Zine Fest (so bummed I can’t go!) and the San Francisco Zine fests are open now!

This weekend is both the Flint Michigan Zine Fest and the Scranton Zine Fests proving that awesome zine fests CAN happen in your city if you are creative and motivated!

And in zine new in my home city of Portland:

June 21 The Portland Zine Symposium is also sponsoring a Zine Bike ride and Bike-in movie during Pedalpalooza!(it starts at our lovely Portland Button Works shop! check out all our zines! Check out all our buttons!)

June 23 AmaZINE Day!- A new mini zine fest hosted quarterly in conjugation with the Portland Zine Symposium! Table space is limited and all table registration is to signed up for physically at the IPRC. Up the mini zine fests!

Did you know that July is International Zine Month?

What are you plans?I’ll be adding events as YOU send them to me.

The Portland Zine Symposium is hosting a 24 Hour Zine Challenge for the 4th year in a row! It will work as a fundraiser again where you have an opportunity to sponsor a zinester. You only pay if they complete the challenge AND you can even get a copy of they creation.

Also, July 21st is International Zine Library Day!

How will you show love for your local Zine Library?


What’s up zine land?

Greetings! I have returned to dreary Portland after a few days in the dessert teaching the glory of zines in the Art Studios at Coachella and yes, I did see hologram Tupac and it was creepy. But more importantly I hung out with the fine Zine Works folks and taught people to make zines! I made two tiny zines about my experiences, more on that another time.

So, what’s up in zine land?

First, The next Zine Librarian (un)Conference will be held 27-28 of July in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA . Registration has opened so get in there! go here. Hang out with two awesome things that get even more awesome together: Librarians and zines!

I added 6 new dates for zine fests to the event listings! Go check it out. Including the Leeds Zine Fair that I will be attending in November! We are making it a date around out Copy Scams tour. So stoked!

Now for some talk about some of my pet peeves. First, my very least favorite question is “Didn’t blogs kills zines?” as if they are mutually exclusive. I have a blog. I have a zine. They both server different functions. The second is people who think zines are dead and talk about them like a eulogy of the 90s. Articles like this article or this one feel so dismissive. If you notice in the comments there gets to a point where contemporary zine folks speak up…but no one really seems to listen. I like to tell people that write this articles that zines didn’t stop existing just because they walked away from them. Thousands of us have been happily cutting and pasting, penpal-ing, and putting on zine fest for years. I guess I just hate seeing all the years of hard work, dedication, and connections that have enriched lives the world over dismissed as something that doesn’t exist anymore.

Another of my pet peeves is the term “e-zine” . E-zines are not zines. To me, zines need to be tangible. That is why I find this “Zeen App”  so annoying. The really horrible thing that a friend of mine brought up is that even if you hate it, you might want to secure your zine name now. ugh.

In super awesome news, Someone has created a Zine Crush site! It hopes to become a zine someday and I think that is amazine. I totally agree that  the consummation of a zine crush is a split zine! Go send your stories!

One more thing…

My friend Derek and I are combining our two button companies to make a mega-button company called Portland Button Works and last week we signed a lease on a brick and mortar store front! It is super exciting. We are going to to offer custom buttons, magnets, keychains and bottle openers. We are also going to offer our catalog designs for sale as well as starting a zine distro as well as sell zines in the shop! We have started getting distro stock and bought a bunch of lumber to start building fixtures but we still have a long way to go before the shop is operational in all of its awesome glory! We would really really appreciate your help with our indiegogo campaign!

Please go here and help out with our campaign and get yourself some pre-ordered buttons, bottle openers, or magnets. You can also get the newest issue of Brainscan Zine, or even discounts on buttons for life!

My top secret project revealed!

First, I wanted to direct you to the Events page. I’ve added a few more. It doesn’t look like there are any this weekend, probably because of Easter I guess.

Second, I’ve been knee deep in a new project. I’m starting Portland Button Works and Zine Distro with my friend Derek Neuland. Derek is a fellow zinester, an organizer of the Portland Zine Symposium, and my co-host on Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast. He also makes his own buttons and we have decided to team up, make buttons, and open a physical shop in Portland! I wrote about it on my blog here. Our website is here, our Facebook, and Twitter.

We have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser campaign.   We wanted your contribution to be an investment for you to get something you would already want so reward levels range from copies of our zines, a Portland Button Works bottle opener, pre-orders of custom items, and lifetime discounts on custom orders.  While your monetary contributions would be greatly appreciate, we would also love it if you could help promote this project and spread the word about our fundraiser.

Please donate to our fundraiser here!

 

 

3 zine events this weekend!

There’s a trifecta of zine events this weekend!

24 – Loosely Bound Zine Extravaganza (Bradford, UK)

24 – Vermont Small Press and Comic Fair (Winooski, Vermont, USA)

24 – Buffalo Small Press Book Fair (Buffalo, New York, USA)

 

I also added two more events to the Zine Event Calendar page this week. As always, let me know what I’m missing!

mid-week worthy causes

I just wanted to post something about some fundraisers that I think deserve your attention.

The first is this Sparkplug publishing project. Sparkplug is run by some awesome Portland folks and past Portland Zine Symposium volunteers and that could really use your help to publish some awesome project and you can get your mitts on those awesome projects by donating.

Next up, Show and Tell Press could use your help in publishing the reprint of issue #6 of Craphound. You know you love Craphound for all your zine clip art need. DEATH! TEPEPHONE! SCISSORS! The scissors alone make this worth it. I can’t believe I don’t own my own copy of this. I always borrowed mine from the IPRC, but I think some Craphound back issues were stolen, grrrr. Get in on this now!

The last project is near and dear to my heart. The Roberts Street Social Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada houses the Anchor Archive Zine libray and is moving. They have lost their lease and have to relocate. They are raising funds for the move. The site says that are funded but every little bit more is totally helpful. The Roberts Street Social Center hosts the Anchor Archive Zine Residency. I was a resident in October of 2009 where I lived in the shed and came inside the house to create Brainscan #24 &25 (available here) Here are some photos of my time in Halifax. I met lots of awesome dedicated people and I really hope this project lives on forever and ever.

FYI, I have donated a bit to each one of these. Do you know what else I have donated to? My own zine…

And in pure self interest, I thought I might post about my new zine, Brainscan #29. It is a split from Chicago based Ben Spies. He challenged me to do a fiction split with his fiction zine, No More Coffee. We released it onto the world at the 2012 Chicago Zine Fest. Maybe you might like to check it out?

There are no zine fests on the calendar this week but….

Greetings! I’m battling “ConCrude” or possible “ZineFestCrude” or “the zine flu” after getting back from the Chicago Zine Fest. It’s not so bad but I had the same thing after the L.A. Zine fest! That being said, I don’t have much in the way of zine news.

Chicago Zine Fest was awesome! Look at photos here. A lot of them are from the Zinester Olympics. I’m pretty sure that my team, The Paper Sharks, won with our 2 gold and two silver awards!

Table registration for the Portland Zine Symposium went live today at noon! Get your table now because they always sell out!

There are no zine fests on the calendar for this week but that doesn’t mean there are any. If you know of any zine events this week, let me know and I’ll add them to the calendar!

Zine News for 3 March, 2012

-If you missed the L.A. Zine fest or you would just like to check out how awesome it was you can visit this Flckr pool of photos.

-Andrea shared with me the lovely drawing which  includes Stolen Sharpie Revolution that she added in this blog post about zines.  In the post she included a link to this video talking about the awesome-ness of zines.

-Another article talking about how blogs almost killed zines but there has been a resurgence. It seems like there is an article written about this every year.  I say that if you think zines died then it was probably you who walked away from them. There has been a vibrant and thriving zine culture just under your radar for decades.

-An article from the Chicago Tribune about zines and how if you don’t like someone’s blog you can’t rip it up and that blogs foster real community….and fleas.

The Chicago Zine Fest is next weekend! They have released their table chart and workshop schedule.

-The Denver Zine Library made their goal of raising $5,000! I was going to make a video for their video campaign. I was going to be filled with excuses as to why the video took so long that included getting this site up and running, working on my new zine, all my shelves falling off the wall in my office and making it a disaster, getting some larger button orders in, and preparing for the LA zine fest and Chicago Zine Fest. But, I didn’t get around to. I’m glad they made their funds!

I’m leaving for Chicago on Wednesday and it looks like my new zine will be dine! Brainscan #29 will be available at the Chicago Zine Fest. I’ll post more when I get back home.