The Power of Zines

How to make your own zine! Plus my new zine: Trillium Watch

Thank you so much to paid subscribers for helping to bring this newsletter and community to life. We’re going to do our first Creative Fuel Studio Session next Thursday, March 21, 5-6pm PT, a perk for paid subscribers. I hope that you’ll come join us for this new virtual creative happy hour.

Hello,

This week marked the launch of the new Create+Engage series, with the first workshop, Micro-Media: The Power of Zines workshop. My friends Marta,

Anjelika Deogirikar Grossman

, and I have spent the last couple of months putting this series together, and it was so exciting to actually get it launched and have so many people gather together for a workshop devoted to combining art and activism.

The reality about making stuff—whether that’s a piece of art, a workshop, music, a presentation… essentially any kind of creative endeavor that you are going to share with the world—is that that inevitably, you never really know how it’s going to be received. You can of course make guesses, and in this case, you can check registration numbers. But no matter what kind of envisioning or guessing you’ve done, in general, once you make a Creative Thing™ you must release it into the world and trust that it will have a life of its own.

And so that’s what we did on Wednesday, the first of a monthly series featuring different artists and speakers. There were over 80 of us, which is the largest group that I’ve ever facilitated as an online workshop! Gathering together like that felt so restorative and empowering, a reminder that all the small actions do add up to something larger.

The focus of the evening was zines, and a big thank you goes to

S Mirk

and Christina Appleberry for sharing their knowledge and creativity and guiding us through the process of making our own zines.

“Zines are super democratic, super responsive. You can decide that you care about a thing, then make a zine on the spot.” - Christina Appleberry

In a lot of ways, a zine is the ultimate creative medium. For one, it’s very much a medium of constraints. Whether you’re making a small one-pager, or going to a print shop to photocopy (yes you can still do this!) on a small budget, making a zine is all about navigating constraints, and seeing all the possibilities within them.

The act of making a zine is also a challenge to the status quo, a method of disseminating information through non-traditional means. In our digital age, simply the act of making something with our hands even feels revolutionary, like a tiny act of resistance. As Appleberry pointed out, zines are “a huge umbrella of content and creativity.”

They also encourage us to stay engaged. In a world that can often feel so overwhelming, so beyond our control, making a zine offers a way to do something about what we care about. “They are super democratic, super responsive,” said Appleberry. “You can decide that you care about a thing, then make a zine on the spot.”

I personally love this idea of taking direct action. You could argue that we do that all the time in digital spaces, particularly on social media. But there’s something so much more tangible about using art to take a direct action that feels deeper than just posting a quickly-consumable online reaction to something.

Making art requires reflection, and the act of creating allows us to respond and share what we care about in such a different way. “I love making zines in print… it feels like a special object,” said Mirk. “It’s a really nice thing to hand to somebody and have them read it and engage with it. It feels so much different than say, sending somebody an email.”

The DIY, non-commercial aspect of zines not only makes them accessible, but also requires an act of intention from the maker. In the workshop, I asked Shay if there was anything that wouldn’t be considered a zine. “I’m not so into semantics about it, but in my mind it’s more about the intention behind it… you’re making something for passion, primarily, and not profit,” said Mirk. “It’s more about the spirit and the ethos of it than it is about the physical product or how many of them there are.”

Above all, this lovely medium asks you to be curious. To focus your attention, to explore a topic in a way that feels exciting to you. It lends itself to serious topics, and to more fun ones.

I decided to make a zine about my current annual seasonal activity: Trillium Watch.

This line was dreamed up in a text chain last week, so thank you to Gretchen and Roshni for being on call for trillium puns.

Now, it’s time for you to go and make a zine!

I’ve gathered up a bunch of zine resources for you below, and I hope that they inspire you to go make one.

-Anna

Upcoming Creative Fuel workshops + events

• Next Create+Engage workshop is April 17, 2024, 5-6:30pm PT. We’ll be announcing speakers soon, but you can register now and get it on your calendar. Full schedule is here. All of this programming is free, made possible by paid subscribers and other supporters. Thank you!

• I’m teaching a spring papercutting workshop next Tuesday, March 19th. It’s 5-7pm PT on Zoom, and it will be recorded, so if you can’t make it live, you’ll have 30 days to watch it. More info here.

• There are still a couple of spots open for the spring session of DIVE, the seasonal Creative Fuel writing group facilitated by

  Kerri Anne
  . It kicks off in April and is a cozy and supportive place, so if you want to make spring a season of writing, snag a spot.

• Mark your calendar for our first Creative Fuel Studio Session! This is actually a new iteration of something I had going last year, and it’s now an offering for paid subscribers. Consider it a virtual creative happy hour of sorts. We’ll be gathering on Thursday March 21, 5-6pm PT. Add it to your calendar, and I will send the Zoom info via email to paid subscribers the day before. If you would like to join us, you can upgrade your subscription right now.

• A portion of paid subscriptions this month will be donated to two organizations chosen by Shay and Christina: The Trans Justice Funding Project and The Free Black Women’s Library.

How to Make a Zine

All you need for a zine are a few simple supplies, and a dose of curiosity.

To get you started, Shay has a great template for a one-page zine that you can download here + lots of other zine resources. If you want to watch a video of how to fold it together, here’s one from

Austin Kleon

.

Now, what to put in the zine?

What is something you care about? What is something you’re curious about? What is something that you think people should know about? Pick a specific topic and see where it goes.

Zines are the perfect vehicle for imperfection. Truly: you do not need to be an excellent artist to make a fabulous zine. There may very likely be some mistakes, it’s handmade after all!

You can do anything you want in your zine. You can draw, you can write, you can collage, you can scribble. You can be serious, you can be silly. But no matter what you do, be sure to share your zine. That’s the beauty of this creative action: it’s meant to be passed around.

Some more zine resources

• A printable zine about the history of zines from Christina Appleberry

• Queer Zine Archive Project

• POC Zine Project

• Internet Archive Zines

• The Seattle Public Library’s Zine Collection

• Washington friends: there’s currently a statewide zine contest!

• Send your zines to the American Library Association’s (ALA) Zine Pavilion and if you’re in the San Diego area at the end of June, sign up to volunteer at the ALA Zine Pavilion

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