People have a lot of ideas about what it means to be creative. When I’ve asked participants in zine workshops I’ve hosted what creativity means to them, I’ve gotten answers like: trying something new. Problem-solving. Dreaming. Learning. Unlearning. (You get the idea.)
Some people have also mentioned that to them, creativity means making something with your hands to share with others. Over the past several workshops, there’s always been at least one person that already knows what zines are, but most of the rest have never encountered them before. Despite this, it’s been easy (and fun) to bring people into the world of zines.
But at the most recent workshop I hosted, after I’d set everyone loose to start brainstorming and crafting and expressing their creativity by making something, one of the participants approached me with a different kind of confusion than I’d experienced before:
It’s, of course, fair to wonder why something as paper-based as zines might still have a place in our digital era. When zines first started gaining traction as a format for people to express their ideas, the Internet as we know it absolutely did not exist. Before I started to even formulate a response, though, the participant returned to the core question:
This one I had an answer for.
In a few words, zines are small-batch, self-published booklets. That said, they can look like a booklet, or they can look like a house or a movie ticket or a cowboy boot. They can be made out of paper, cardboard, cloth, plastic, digital media—literally anything. I think it’s kind of fun that it’s hard to clearly define zines—they’re just that versatile—but a definition I’ve come across that I like (swiped from Reddit): “Zine are about using material you have to make a non-precious rendering of your ideas.”
People have been sharing their ideas via zines for years. “Little magazines” during the Harlem Renaissance, sci-fi fanzines in the 1950s and ‘60s, punk zines in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Riot Grrrl and Queercore movements in the ‘90s—and that’s just scratching the surface.
Enter further confusion:
Zines have been (and remain) a vessel for self-expression, advocacy, and documenting community stories. I love them for how low-pressure they are to create; zines, especially mini-zines, have helped me fight past art block time and time again for the past few years. They’re a great medium to experiment with, and to explore new ideas.
The first zine I ever made featured things I’d learned about redwood trees. It was terrible. (Side-note, I re-made it last year, and it’s a little better now.) And it’s okay that it was bad, because it captured what was on my mind at that moment in time and encouraged me to explore something I found fascinating. That in mind, what I’ve heard time and time again, and what I tell people in every single zine workshop I teach: Anyone can make a zine.
What makes zines different from magazines or books is primarily how accessible they are to make and share. You don’t have to go through a big fancy publisher, and you don’t have to have any art or writing or anything experience to make your own zine. With the increased capabilities from online print services, there’s a lot of discussion around where the line between “zines” and “books” is drawn (some say that if it has a spine, it’s not a zine), but I think that might need an entirely separate dispatch of this newsletter to dig into. For now, we return to the next phase of my conversation with the workshop participant:
Zines, with how easy they are to make and distribute, have become a way for me to share new things I learn about the world around me with both new and familiar people—I’ve met tons of wonderful and interesting people at zine fests, craft fairs, science museums, and more because I started creating zines. I can say with confidence that without them, I would’ve had a pretty dang hard time making new friends when I moved to Los Angeles last year. Zines can be offerings of connection, of friendship, and of community.
There is no right way to make a zine. There is no wrong way to make a zine. During zine-making workshops, I love seeing people unlock a little piece of their inner child (crayons are often the quickest craft materials to go from the pile). We were all kids who used to doodle and write and create. Some of us paused, but do we ever really stop?
I frequently make zines that are intended for people to learn something new about nature, but I also make a lot of zines that haven’t made it to the photocopier. Silly doodles of bugs I see out my window. Recipes from my mom I don’t want to forget. Nobody has to read my or your zines, and that’s kind of wonderful. Most of the time, when I tell my workshop participants this, I can almost see the weight lift off their shoulders as they realize they can just use the time as an excuse to create something that never has to see the light of day again.
But sometimes:
in other news …
My dear friend and I are soft-launching a new zine community we’re calling the Green Internet Librarians. We’re hosting our first casual, virtual, monthly zine-making session in Discord TODAY, 5/24, at 2pm Pacific Time, and you’re invited! The only real rules: be kind, have fun. Feel free to send this invite to a friend, too.
For those of you in the LA area: I have a table at LA Zine Fest on June 23rd, come say hi! I’ll be distributing my own zines (look for Filter Feeder Press), and I’m also curating a community zine display, so if you make zines and would be interested to share some at LA Zine Fest, let’s talk!