First, a little announcement: the outdoors zine-making gathering that I’m organising tomorrow in Ghent will be cancelled due to rainy and chilly weather. Sorry about that! I hope to be able to organise one in October if the weather spirits are in our favour. 🙂 If you still want to do creative stuff tomorrow, I can recommend going to Girls Go BOOM’s button-making workshop at the Meubelfabriek!
I guess tomorrow will be more indoors zine-reading than outdoors zine-making weather… So here are some recommendations: Last month I read a bunch of lovely zines again. This time they talked about exciting topics such as music, herb foraging, graveyards, ageism, aromantic plants, and ghost towns, and featured comics, collages, photography, travel stories, interviews, and more… Discover them all here:
As you can see on the photos there were big zines as well as mini-zines among my monthly stash. The big A4 size (maga)zines – 90s stars where are they now and Psst, vrienden! Hebben jullie al over Pulp De Luxe gehoord – feature comics by Belgian artists, some linked to LesVoizines, the Zine Happening zine fest and Tieten Met Haar collective. It’s cool to see all that local talent in these publications and get inspired to make more comics of my own.
Four of the mini-zines called Today are made by MissMuffcake and include photography from her local graveyards. Very spooky and atmospheric blue-ish photos of settings where you can imagine Buffy slaying the vampires that pop up at night. 🙂 On the inside of each mini-zine there’s a letter which gives personal updates on MissMuffcake’s life and gives the mini-zines a perzine vibe.
Meeni Levi and I recently swapped (mini)zines and I was super happy to receive Things Therapy Taught me About Trees and A few aromantic plants. The first has some lovely reflections about nature, self-care, and well-being in a beautiful black-and-white layout. On the inside you can find a thematic playlist. The second is a little fun zine that uses word play and humour to inform readers about aromanticism. This includes a poem and collage if you fold it open. Both are hand-written which make them feel even more personal and ziney. 🙂
More mini-zines were made by participants during the zine/collage workshop I taught at Antwerp Queer Arts Festival in August. These were written on the topic of ageism. The blue collage on the top right in the photos is not actually a zine but a poster made during that workshop. I felt very excited and proud to see all these amazing results (and more because I don’t have copies of all the mini-zines) at the workshop. You’ll be able to see the mini-zine I made myself verrrry soon.
I bought a few zines online as pdfs which I then printed: The zine Spring Foraging online as a pdf . It features detailed illustrations and information for those interested in herbs, plants, gardening, and foraging. A great start to get you on your way to discover these hebrs. Another herb-themed zine is Dandelion: Migration is beautiful which is super well-researched and explains all you need to know about dandelions from history and identification to benefits and applications as well as what we can learn from this plant. I can highly recommend this zine as well as the other herbal zines by the same author. Also by the same author: About a Ghost Town Bike Tour is a super intriguing read about exploring and reflecting on ghost towns and empty houses. Both poetic and political.
Finally, I read a few music fanzines too: the most recent issue of Mäd Mäm with interviews with the bands Proper, Dives, Ganser, and Riot Spears (2 in English and 2 in German) and some really cool Medusa imagery, and the first issue of the riot grrrl inspired fanzine Marina is Red which introduces the zinester’s blog/zine/research/music project, describes her musical adventures in Spain (which includes interviews and concert reports), and turns out to be a great contemporary punk zine.
So, which zines have you been reading lately?
Echo Zines 