What’s a Zine?

A zine is typically defined as a noncommercial, nonprofessional, small-circulation (maga)zine that is distributed by zinsters themselves. Easy access to Xerox technology helped invigorate zine movements in the 1980s, though there is a longer history in print and DIY culture that connects zines to little magazines made by mimeograph, pamphlets, newsletters, and broadsides. Now, digital zines, or digital access to zines, has somewhat altered the definition of the zine as ephemeral print media. However, what unifies zines and distinguishes them from “magazines” is the fact that they are independently produced, written, and designed, with an aim to exist outside, or on the fringes of, the “mainstream” and mass consumer culture (ie, they’re not using their pages as a vehicle for advertising). Within the broader movement and genre of zines there are many sub-genres, including but not limited to: fanzines, sci-fi zines, music zines, sports zines, television and film zines, political zines; personal zines; scene zines; network zines; fringe culture zines; religious zines; vocational zines; health zines; sex zines; travel zines; comics; literary zines; art zines etc.

Watch this video to learn more about the recent zine scene in Northern CA:

I make zines, read zines, attend zine fests, and have developed a hybrid critical / creative humanities course about zines and little magazines in 20thc American culture. Below are some useful resources for making zines, in addition to some images of my own zines, most of which are poetry zines. Contact me if you want a free zine.

Little Magazine & Zine Resources 

Online Archives

Pre-WWII / Modernist Little Magazines

• http://modjourn.org/journals.html

Post-WWII / Small Press Journals & Little Magazines

• https://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=p&p=home&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN—————1
• https://fromasecretlocation.com/table-of-contents-1/

Zines Available Online

• POC Zine Project: https://issuu.com/poczineproject 
• Queer Zine Archive Project: http://archive.qzap.org/
• Solidarity: Revolutionary Center & Radical Library: https://archive.org/details/solidarityrevolutionarycenter?sort=titleSorter
• Chicano Moratorium, LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/projects/chicano-moratorium/assets/pdf/chicanomoratoriumzine.pdf 
• AcornWiki / Ohlone Solidarity Zines: https://www.acorn.wiki/resources/

Other Cool Zine Sites:

• Art Zines http://www.artzines.info/
• Copie Machine: https://copie-machine.tumblr.com/ (xerox experiments)
• Mag Gabbert’s poetry zines: https://www.maggabbert.com/poem 
• Malaka Gharib’s Instagram (tiny personal & infographic zines): https://www.instagram.com/malakagharib
• zinedabaad collective instragram–women of color, queer people, trans and non-binary folx making zines, fostering zine-making spaces & finding community in resistance: https://www.instagram.com/zinedabaad/ 
• Rainbow Connection Collective– an art collective founded on zines and friendship in Sacramento, CA: https://www.instagram.com/rainbowconnectioncollective/
• BLACK LIVES MATTER, POLICING, & PROTEST GUIDES: https://www.sherwoodforestzinelibrary.org/copy-of-virtual-zine-library  
• Filler Zine  & Distro:  https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/archive/  
• Brown Recluse Zine Distro: https://www.brownreclusezinedistro.com/

Zine Review Sites

• Broken Pencil: https://brokenpencil.com/reviews-excerpts/
• Factsheet Five: Sample issue of the original zine review zine from the 80s and 90s: https://archive.org/details/factsheet_five_42/page/n11
• RazorCake: http://razorcake.org/category/read/zine-reviews/
• Xerography Debt: http://xerographydebt.blogspot.com/

Templates & Folding

Microsoft Word

• Word: Booklet Templates (between 4 and 40 pages). Download templates from this page: http://nuonis.com/book-templates/
• Zine-specific booklet templates: https://anatomicair.com/book-templates/
• Word: Booklet How-to : https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32759/how-to-create-booklets-in-word/

Paper / Folding

• Zine: How to Fold a 8-Page Zine (out of one piece of paper–Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ9Jw4HnJpw
• Zine: How to Fold a 14-Page Zine (out of one piece of paper–Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwspEWt9HIo
• Zine Folding Overview (wiki): https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Zine_Making/Putting_pages_together#An_8-sided_zine_from_1_sheet_with_1_cut
• Print / Fold Practice: Zines online
  • Blood Orange Zine: https://doublefurpress.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/bois-zine.pdf
  • The Small Science Collective (science zines!): https://asyang.wixsite.com/small-science
  • Skate zine: https://doublefurpress.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/doublefur-uruguayskatezine.pdf

Scholarship on Zines:

Piepmeier, Alison. “Why Zines Matter: Materiality and the Creation of Embodied Community.” American Periodicals, vol. 18, no. 2, 2008, pp. 213–238. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41219799.

Ramdarshan Bold, M. Why Diverse Zines Matter: A Case Study of the People of Color Zines Project. Pub Res Q 33, 215–228 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-017-9533-4

On Little Magazines

Kane, Daniel. All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s. University of California Press, 2003. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/25703.