DIY feminist zines since 2001
It’s been a while since I posted one of these big updates with news and upcoming events. But I’ve got some exciting things to share with you.
So here is news about my newest zine/craft/music projects, radio shows that played my songs, libraries that acquired my zines, reviews, an upcoming exhibition, and more…
Continue reading “Echo news (March 2022) – Lost Luna, zine libraries, reviews, and exhibition”
A few weeks ago I visited the Kunstenbibliotheek or “Art Library” in Ghent (Belgium) to consult their zine collection. It’s a relatively new and small collection but it includes beautiful and interesting publications. I had donated some of my zines before and during the pandemic and felt excited to finally take a look at all the zines they have…
Today is Zine Library Day, part of International Zine Month! Stolen Sharpie Revolution says:
“Zine Library Day! Search for a zine library in your area and make plans to go someday or contact them about how to include your zine in their collection.”
For this occasion I’d like to talk about the zine library of the Girls Go BOOM Clubhouse in Ghent (Belgium), the only zine library I’ve visited in the past 1,5 year!
Continue reading “International Zine Month 2021 – zine library day”
It’s been a long while since I’ve had any news to share here beyond the zines I’ve been making during the lockdown in the past few months. But now the end of the summer is approaching, there is some exciting stuff happening and not just online!
These announcements include a zine workshop I’ll be doing in October, zine library donations, news from my band Lavender Witch, and… an upcoming zinester anniversary!!
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Continue reading “News & updates: zines, libraries, workshops, band, and my zinester anniversary”
Last Saturday I visited the new Girls Go BOOM Clubhouse in Ghent (Belgium). Girls Go BOOM is a DIY collective who put up shows for female(fronted) bands and organise other feminist activities as well. They were offered a space at the Meubelfabriek, a huge building with lots of rooms that are going to be used by different organisations and projects including a bike repair shop, a community garden, and an anarchist boxing club! Saturday was the official opening of the Meubelfabriek during which all the residents could introduce themselves. Girls Go BOOM built a rehearsal space there and has a living room-like space with a library and distro. It looked really cool!
What struck me most was that there were zines EVERYWHERE in the Girls Go BOOM Clubhouse! So I had to take lots of pictures. 🙂 In the library you can read zines like Vinyldyke, Artificial Womb, and Ladyfuzz, and even zines by yours truly as well as books about feminism and women in rock. For the opening of the space, Girls Go BOOM organised a “zine jam”, meaning you could just come by and make a zine. I used this opportunity to draw for upcoming issues of Same Heartbeats (yeah, I’m working on two issues at the same time…).
I’m already curious for what kind of activities Girls Go BOOM will organise in their clubhouse in the future! For sure it’s amazing to have such a space for your own project and I’m sure they’ll make good use of it!
More photos…
Continue reading “Opening of the new Girls Go BOOM Clubhouse”
Last week, I went to Berlin where I visited one of my favourite zine places: the Archive of Youth Culture! Thanks to Guiseppina and her colleagues for the warm welcome and interesting chat! This place is a pure treasure cave so be sure to stop by when you are in Berlin.
More photos…
I was so excited to learn that my zine series Same Heartbeats is in WorldCat, thanks to the University of Washington Libraries who seem to have a few issues in their collection. I don’t know how they got there, but zines travel in mysterious ways…
My old zine series Flapper Gathering is in WorldCat too, thanks to the LSE Library in London. Yay!
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Here is a list of libraries (and distros and shops) where you can find my zines. But there might be others, you never know!
Last weekend I travelled to Swindon Zine Fest and North West Zine Fest together with Jessica of ESCzine. Both zine fests were a lot of fun and I was so happy to be there: lovely people, nice atmosphere, great zines, interesting locations, cool workshops (at NWZF)…
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Swindon Zine Fest was organised at the Central Community Center. It was the first time I ever visited Swindon and apparantly it’s known to be the “railway town”. The zine fest offered lots of awesome zines and delicious cakes (mmmm lemon drizzle!!). Jessica and I had our shared table in the middle of the room as you can see on the photo. It was so nice to see some zinesters I had met at Swansea Zine Fest again like Kirsty, Cath, Morgan, and Phoebe, and also to meet Russell of Lunchtime for the Wild Youth for the first time. We had some adventures getting to Swindon and to the fest but you’ll have to wait to read about it in Same Heartbeats #16… 🙂 (Hopefully out in autumn or early winter so be patient). For now, have a look at some photos of the zine fest:
Continue reading “Some photos of Swindon Zine Fest & North West Zine Fest 2019”
Today is/was the last day of International Zine Month… I’ve been quite busy this past week so this is a short summary of all the zine-related things I managed to do:
While I was in the UK, I visited the Salford Zine Library in Manchester as well as the bookshop Housmans who sell a lot of zines (and who bought some of mine) – that last place together with friends while brainstorming future zine plans…It was an awesome 7 days (well, not the heat wave, but the rest of it). I’ll post more photos and stories of the zine fests soon! And of course you’ll be able to read about all my zine adventures in more detail in the next Same Heartbeats zine (#16).
So all in all I’ve enjoyed this zine month, doing some fun and creative things and not really stressing about completing all the prompts. And I’ll just continue reading and making zines in August…
How was your IZM?
There exist a bunch of zine libraries in Belgium. I define “zine library” here as: “a library or archive that keeps zines in its collection”. Some are historical archives, some are libraries specialised in certain subjects, and others are part of DIY autonomous spaces. Some have mostly artzines and books, some focus on comics, and others collect mainly anarchist pamphlets and political zines. Languages may vary too. Here are the ones I know of:
Do you know of another zine library in Belgium? Please let me know!
I haven’t actually been to all of these Belgian zine libraries yet so I’d like to do a little “tour” to visit them to find out more about which publications they have and enjoy their zine collections. [Actually I really love the idea of a zine tour too, with zine readings and zine fests, as I wrote in a previous post. But in this case I just would like to visit the libraries one at a time].
Echo Zines 