I got my first few zines free at the Cherry Bomb Comics stand at a craft fair, from the zine stall where there were a couple of freebies. I was curious. A homemade publication? How odd! But I took them, read them on the bus ride home, liked them and blu-tacked them to my wall. Then a year later when working at the Comedy Festival, I sat on the floor with the incredibly endearing Josie Long as we photocopied and folded countless copies of her zine, which she then gave each member of her audience. That night I read her ‘programme’ zine, and her larger more comprehensive zine ‘Drawing Moustaches in Magazines Monthly Magazine’ and I haven’t been the same since. She had the best human in the world, her friend David O’Doherty guest zine in it. Update: Holy crap, I just found them online. Download!
That weekend, I researched zines like a crazy person. I learnt my first folding techniques on youtube and some feminist site. I taught my friends to make zines. (Really I did. I can show you.) Then a few weeks ago, I went to Sticky, a zine shop in Melbourne’s Degraves Street Subway where as part of International Literature Conspiracy week, they held zine launches and zine fairs. It was fantastic, shelves of carefully hand folded, photocopied, doodled, scrawled and stapled zines, some pretty, some perverted, all quite unique.
This is how you turn a single piece of paper into a zine.
Project alert: Despite all the learning and teaching, I’ve never completed one myself. So I’m putting making a zine on my project list. Put your name down if you want me to give you a copy when I’m done.
