Recent contributions/mentions in books, diaries, magazines, and zines

I seem to have been quite busy lately and I’m very proud to announce that there are a few (semi)recent publications to which I contributed artwork/illustrations/articles, for which I was interviewed, and/or which mention my zines. I haven’t written about these publications on my blog yet so I decided to write about all of them in one post instead of spamming you with lots of separate ones. I also plan to make a list of all publications (books, magazines, zines, etc) I’ve ever contributed to here.

So here we go:

De As #199

I was asked by Rymke of the anarchist publishers Atalanta to contribute to this feminist issue of De As. She was the editor of this issue and chose to focus on anarcha-feminism and all things related to it. De As is an anarchist magazine from the Netherlands written in Dutch. It’s a more historical and philosophical publication, not news- or action-oriented, and each issue focuses on a different theme (for example #200 was about veganism).

There have been issues about feminism and women’s history before in De As (as this is #199 it’s not surprising) but I have to say that this is a particularly interesting one and Rymke did a great job bringing many women from the Netherlands and Belgium together to write something. There are articles about feminism in Kurdistan, white privilege, prostitution, online feminist platforms, and several historical figures. I contributed a bunch of illustrations and I also wrote an article about zines as anarcha-feminist media.

Anarcha-Feminisme

This is a pamphlet of several texts compiled and distributed by an anarchist collective based in Amsterdam. All texts in this publication are in Dutch.

The editors asked De Tweede Sekse Blog team if they could reproduce some of the blog posts about anarcha-feminism and feminist activism and the answer was: yes! (Read them online here: “Waarom Anarcha-feminisme” and “Enkele dingen die we nodig hebben voor een revolutie“.)

There is also a translation of a classical essay from the 1970s by Peggy Kornegger and some of my illustrations are used throughout the pamphlet.

There aren’t a lot of articles or publications about anarcha-feminism out there. Theory, herstory, and texts sharing anarcha-feminist practice are seriously lacking. So I hope this zine can contribute to filling that void and also stimulate some more writing and self-publishing. It’s a start anyway!

Ladyfest-Aktivismus, by Alexandra Ommert

I ordered Ladyfest-Aktivismus: Queer-Feministische Kämpfe um Freiräume und Kategorien from its publisher Transcript Verlag, who also published the amazing book Feminist Media (it’s open access so click here to download the free pdf!) for which I contributed illustrations. Because of that contribution, I got author’s discount, woohoo! Ladyfest-Aktivismus was on my wishlist for a while because I love(d) Ladyfests, went to a lot of them, and have been involved in organising some of them too (including the second one ever happening in Europe!). These international DIY feminist festivals have been pretty damn important in my life, you could say.

When the book arrived in my mailbox, I discovered that my Not Lady-like zine – about visiting Ladyfest Berlin in 2005 – was mentioned in the bibliography. That was a nice bonus. 🙂 I haven’t found out yet if and how it’s mentioned anywhere else in the book. As you could guess, the book is written in German, but I’ll do my best to read it anyway. It seems very well structured and researched with thorough analyses of the Ladyfest phenomenom and I’m very curious to find out what is written inside.

Queer Voices by Marion Wasserbauer

This book is the PhD thesis that Marion Wasserbauer recently completed for the University of Antwerp. For her PhD, she also built a website featuring playlists of the interviewees, which is pretty cool and makes the research more accessible and less ivory-towery. I haven’t read the book yet but glancing through it, it seems like such wonderful and valuable publication and as far as I can tell now it’s not even written in too academic jargon. Also, I think that the gender-based research coming from Belgium is usually so dry and policy-based so it’s refreshing that Wassenbauer got to study such an exciting subject! Yay!

Wasserbauer interviewed me for her research and it was very nice to chat with her about queerness & music. I talked about Skunk Anansie, Ani DiFranco, riot grrrls, queercore, and also showed off my zines. I think Queer Voices is gonna be a very interesting book and I’m happy to have contributed in some small way to it.

DIY Citizenship

This book was published in 2014 so not so recent but I ordered it from local bookshop Limerick a few weeks ago so I would still like to mention it here.

There are two essays in this book in which I was quoted and one also included some of my drawings:

– “Developing communities of Resistence? Maker Pedagogies, do-it-yourself feminism, and DIY citizenship” by Red Chidgey
– “Alternative media production, feminism, and citizenship practices” by Rosa Reitsamer and Elke Zobl

In Zobl and Reitsamer’s article some cartoons and comics I made for other publications are reprinted and their article starts with two quotes taken (I think) from an interview conducted for a research project on feminist media production in Europe. Chidgey took quotes from my Same Heartbeats #1 zine (published in 2007) on DIY activism and DIY feminism.

The book reminds me a bit of Feminist Media – mentioned earlier – which also had essays about DIY media such as hacktivism, adbusting, zines, blogs, etc, some by the same authors. (Feminist Media is open access so click here to download the free pdf!)

The Amazing Zine

The S_he’s Amazing booking collective organise female/queer-fronted concerts in Berlin. It was named after the Team Dresch song “She’s Amazing” so when they sent out a call for contributions for their very first zine a little while ago, I couldn’t resist and I made a drawing of Team Dresch and added some words about why they are amazing.

I also published that same drawing in my own zine Same Heartbeats #13, because there can never be enough Team Dresch love in print.

There is now a call for contributions for the second issue of The Amazing Zine, so get in touch with the organisers/zine editors to send your drawings and/or articles on the topic of what you think is “amazing”.

Also, keep an eye on the upcoming “zines I read in 2018” section(s) on this blog for a mini-review of this – well, yes! – amazing zine!

 

Ethical Sloth #9

This is already issue 9 of Ethical Sloth, a queer comic zine from Berlin. This zine is made by some of the same zine editors as The Amazing Zine mentioned above. I’ve contributed a few times to previous issues but I especially didn’t want to miss this issue’s prompt. With a theme like “animals anonymous” Chainsaw Bunny (the stuffed bunny-with-chainsaw that I make comics about) had to step up and be in my drawing.

Sad news though as the 10th issue of Ethical Sloth will also be its last. But I’m very happy to have been able to read all of them and contribute to a few as well. Thanks to the editors for having made this wonderful zine happen for several years!

See also the “zines I read in 2018 (July-August)” reviews.

 

Queerfeministischer Taschenkalender 2019

Hurray, the Queer-feminist Pocket Diary of Riot Skirts is there again! And I was asked to make the cover illustration again too.

Paper diaries in pocket-size are the best and certainly when they are queer/feminist themed with lots of drawings, articles, and info inside, so get your copy now!

Order the diary here from Edition Assemblage.