ASU Zine Fest

Welcome, Indigenous Land Acknowledgement, ASU Zine Fest Diversity and Inclusion Statement

Rachel Leket-Mor, Lourdes Pereira, Danielle Du (Friday) and Emilie Lu (Saturday)

Queer Chronically Ill Artists. Zines- and Arts-Based Research: What lives at the Intersection of Chronic Illness, Queerness, and Art-Making

Bri Noonan

How do queer, chronically ill artists view art-making? During their masters work, Bri Noonan stumbled upon what felt like a void in academic research when they asked this question and a project was born. Come hear about Bri’s journey from project inception and interviews that shed light on the importance of art making as a therapeutic tool as well as a method to create understanding and change through moments of vulnerability and the impending zine that will capture these voices and serve as an accessible home for this research.

Failure, Feminism, and ZINES

Charissa Lucille

Charissa Lucille will dissect how failing, losing, unmaking and not knowing has led them to find creative freedom in the expansive world of self publishing and zines. They will discuss the lessons they’ve learned while publishing over 20 feminist zines, such as Fem Static Zine, Survivor Zine, and Femme Fotale, opening Wasted Ink Zine Distro, and launching the annual Phx Zine Fest. They will explore how their personal and business experiences in the past six years have expanded their fourth wave feminism to include zines, community organizing, intersectionality, and transformative justice.

Q & A

Keynote Presentation

Margins: Writing as Magic-Making, Self-Publishing as a Literary Tradition

Ariel Gore

As writers and artists, we are both outsiders and insiders, margin-dwellers and margin-creators. Luminaries like Ida B. Wells, Anais Nin, Rupi Kaur, Walt Whitman, Margaret Atwood, William Blake, W.E.B. DuBois, WB Yeats, and Gertrude Stein all self-published—sometimes out of necessity, but often for the sheer joy of it. Writing, editing, illustrating, layout and production, publishing, and distribution are all about conjure and manifestation. While some who self-publish dream of someday “breaking in” to the commercial publishing world, I believe there is glory in doing it all ourselves sometimes. We’ll explore it all.

Building Better Zine Collaborations Panel Discussion

Devin Kate Pope, Charissa Lucille, Denise Dominguez, and Amber McCrary

When collaboration goes well, it’s amazing -- people joining brains, talents, and resources to make zines is hope in action. Collaboration is also a unique relationship that isn’t always easy and deserves careful consideration. This micro-talk focuses on setting a collab zine up for success or streamlining a partnership that’s already in motion. Devin will facilitate the conversation with three panelists experienced in collaborating in the zine community. Charissa Lucille runs Wasted Ink Zine Distro, Amber McCrary runs Abalone Mountain Press, and Denise Dominguez runs Pachanga Press. The panelists will share guiding principles, hard-learned lessons, and questions collaborators can ask themselves and each other. After the talk, you’ll be prepared to approach a new collaboration with excitement or sort out issues in current collaborations with confidence. Your skills, knowledge, and resources are ready and waiting for a collaboration that’s built on mutual respect and trust.

Handout

 Comics are zines too

Damon and Tatum Begay

Comic book stores have created a loyal community that do not like change. This has left a lot of independent comic artists that want to make unique stories lost in the shuffle. However, the zine community is more accepting of all types of art styles and stories, and alternative comics could thrive better in the zine community.

 Zines, Queerness, Writing and Performance: on the insistence of the body on the page and beyond

Joy Young

During this talk, Joy Young will discuss how the body occupies space and explore the following:  How do we create tangible work like zines that carry with them the insistence of the body on stage? What narratives and techniques do this well? How do we think about space and conceptualize ways to assert our voices within it? How, in a digital world, might we create dynamic platforms that amplify a myriad of queer voices in compelling ways? Why are zines and tangible artifacts still relevant and/or critical?

A Glimpse into Being a Native Zinester

Amber McCrary, Alex Soto 

In this presentation we will examine a couple zines created by Indigenous artist, writer and zinester Amber McCrary. We will also examine one all indigenous zine collaboration co-edited by McCrary titled Constellations of co-resistance. We will then hear from the Labriola Center curator/ librarian, Alex Soto, who will share his work with incorporating zines into the Labriola collection. 

The Big Impact of Small Press Comics

Russ Kazmierczak

Everybody knows Marvel and DC Comics, but some of the most important comic books in the past 50 years were self-published, like most zines are today. This talk will share that history in the hopes of inspiring self-publishers with comics’ coolest tales of surprisingly successful small press!

Punk Poetry Zines for Micro-Attention Spans

The editors of rinky dink press: Shawnte Orion, Rosemarie Dombrowski, and Tonissa Saul 

Punk defied the bloated rockstar excess of the 70s in style and attention span. Punk was concise and direct, and that’s a good description for the micropoetry collections published by rinky dink press. Each of our micro-chapbooks is like a good indie EP—5 or 6 poems under 40 words each. Microzines are also accessible to both audience and creator, so we believe that we’re putting poetry back in the pockets of the people again.

rinky dink press 

Wellness and Empathy through Zines

Tiffany Harmanian, Emilie Lu, and Danielle Du of the Medical Humanities Club at ASU

Making zines can be a great way to navigate the stresses of college life, daily life, or even a pandemic. Because zines have historically given voice to marginalized populations, poetry and reflective writing zines can also be an important tool in healthcare, empowering patients to voice their unique stories. On this panel, the inaugural members of the Medical Humanities Club will share their wellness zines—from doodling to poetry to reflective writing exercises, zines (and creative expression) may hold the key to wellness in a world that seems devoid of it!

Art Zines: Playing with Form

Heather Green and Angie Dell

The zine is, at heart and in origin, an anti-establishment and category-defying haven for creative expression. At the same time, zines can also be viewed as celebrated art objects and are increasingly being collected and preserved by libraries and other institutions, drawing new makers and fans from all over. In this session, two artists will explore the intersections of zines and artists’ books. They’ll share examples of different art zine approaches, and some tips and instructions for borrowing from fine art practices in your work while staying accessible, affordable, playful, and raw.

Zines and Teens

Megan Atencia, Sophia McGovern, and Michelle Salcido

While many educators have embraced more and more technology in the classroom, we have found that students respond positively to a simple piece of paper, scissors, and glue to express their ideas and creativity. In this panel, three high school teachers will describe how they use zines in an educational setting. They will detail how to use zines as educational tools in the classroom for alternative assessment as well as to build agency and community outside of the classroom. Ideas for digital zines will be shared along with student examples of individual and collective student-produced zines. Q&A will follow the presentation.

Resurrecting a Radical Feminist Newspaper in Zine-Form

The Revolution (Relaunch) (TRR) editorial team: Rosemarie Dombrowski, Pamela Stewart, Walonda Williams, Devin Kate Pope, and Michelle Salcido

The writers/editors of TRR, which is a descendant of The Revolution (1868–72), one of the most revered suffrage-era newspapers, believe that social justice can (and should be) more creative than polemical, that it can pay homage to its radical, independent predecessor while being radically more accessible, intersectional, and representational. TRR considers itself a zine-style newspaper that publishes a monthly web-zine and produces a mini-newspaper-zine a few times a year. Editors for TRR will talk about the array of genres and styles that they curate and why they think creative activism is more important than ever.

FlyPaper’s Illustrated Bar Flies

Presenters: Estrella Esquilín, Amy Silverman & Annabelle Stern, and Deborah H. Sussman

Bar Flies is a reading series held at Valley Bar in downtown Phoenix, featuring true stories with a different theme each month. Our last live show was March 11, 2020. Until we can meet again in person, we’re telling illustrated stories – published online and as zines. Tonight’s theme: BAD HABIT.

PALABRAS BILINGUAL BOOKSTORE PRESENTS: A POETRY PARTY WITH F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS

Palabras & F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS will host a phx-based poetry party featuring a rapid-fire multilingual reading by the full FIIK//BOOKS family, including Chawa Magaña, Mary Hope Whitehead Lee, Vida de Jesus Lopez, Félix Castro, Antonieta Carpenter-Cosand, Raquel Denis, Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta, Shaunté Glover, and Amber McCrary! We will celebrate the power of community-rooted bookmaking to foster cultural cross-pollination, constructive disruption, and community [re]formation. Plus, all zine fest attendees will be invited to collaboratively contribute to a live-designed zine that will be made available for DIY print assembly at the conclusion of the reading! For more info on F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS and all of our authors, check out www.fiikbooks.org