#perzines

[fanzines]

'Bat Habitat - on being non-binary' is a queer perzine by zinester Tukru. Buy issue 29 (pictured) on their Etsy.

[jenniferleecopping]

new perzine in shop, this one about parental aging and loss and suicidal feelings.

link here to buy

[midwestperzinefest]

MidWestPerZineFest!

October 8, 2022

Columbia College 1104 S Wabash

Chicago, Illinois

Free!

[rustbeltjessie]

My favorite type of zine is the ‘perzine,’ which is a portmanteau of ‘personal zine.’ Perzines can include any type of content, but rather than just being a zine of, say, recipes or photographs or poems, that content is interspersed with stories and musings from the author’s own life. Other times, the author uses traditional fanzine ‘tropes’ to write about their own lives and feelings—for example: they write a film review that’s really about watching said film as a child, or they review non-traditional things like jobs they’ve had or shoes they’ve worn. And, many times, all the content is just straight-up personal essay or memoir, woven together around a theme or a particular span of time. I like perzines because one of my favorite things about zines is the chance to get inside the head of the creator(s), to walk around in their high-top Chucks or Dr. Martens boots. And because, since zines are DIY ventures without institutional approval or corporate funding, anyone can tell their stories in zine-form—and often times, the stories you find there are by people who would not otherwise be represented in more mainstream publications.

Certain zines have had as much impact on me and my writing as any mainstream or canonical work of literature I’ve ever read. There are zines I have read so often their covers have fallen off and their pages have torn. There are things I’ve read in zines that have etched themselves into my very marrowbones.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, from “International Zine Month” (July 2021)

[kdhume]

My shop is up and restocked! Also, if you're a witch or zinester, I do trades!

[hesitationss]

zines that bring me comfort.

Living Not Existing #3 by geoff

i love geoff's Living Not Existing #3 so much. although my experiences differ from geoff's, it is just so affirming to read through how geoff is thinking and reflecting on themself, their life, failures, anxieties, etc. it's comforting to know that i am not alone with my insane thoughts and that i am allowed to feel the full range of my emotions. when i first read this zine, i became so erratically emotional during my read. it really hit me that so much of my love for perzines is searching and consuming other's experiences in hopes of being understood by strangers. reading about their experience as filipinx, being a queer and trans person of colour, recovery from addiction, mental illness, past relationships, etc. is all so meaningful to me. i can't express how much this zine means to me. they have such an inviting way of speaking to their experiences, but in a way that prioritizes their care first and foremost. geoff's zines in general are such a generous document of living and experiencing life. i feel so lucky to have come across this when i did.

Same Place, Same Time by Ann Xu

i remember picking up this at TCAF with my close friend who is also chinese. when we became friends, we bonded over the fact that we struggled with being connected to our culture, and that apparently we both come from the toisan region in china. i remember that her grandfather had passed away in our first year and he had been her primary access point to her culture. for me, i have always known my paternal grandparents, but because of complicated family issues, i was never as close to my grandparents as the rest of the grandchildren, as well as having not met my maternal grandparents until much later in life. i think the reason why this zine about imagining what life would be like if the artist had known their grandmother growing up resonated with my friend and i so much is because of how much grief we have for "could be" relationships with our family. i frequently find myself thinking, "what if life had been less cruel to my younger self? would i feel emotionally close to my grandparents?", "what if the barrier of violence and poverty wasn't there? would i know my language better? would i talk to my grandparents like how all the other kids do?", "what if i had met my maternal grandparents earlier in life? what if i had grown up in china? what if my parents had better relationships with their parents?" but just like he zine says, i didn't. i wonder how many other people who have been affected by poverty, violence, displacement spend their time grieving over these possibilities...

[zinesiwontfinish]

hiya, so basically

My worst habit (at least I hope this is my worst habit) is having ideas for zines that I don't ever actually put on paper. That, or starting a zine, realising it's a bigger idea than I thought and abandoning it 'for when I have time'. Or maybe the very worst of all, taking so many months or even years to make a zine that my art, and sometimes even my opinions have changed by the time the day to print and staple comes.

I love that zines are in theory this diy, low pressure artform, but even now in my 30s, I struggle to get out of my own way and finish things and share them with people.

What I've decided to do then, is to start sharing the projects I know I won't ever finished here - on what I think of as the lowest pressure social media platform (hope that's still true friends, because its been a while!) - with the thought that if other people are compiling zines on similar topics, then the content could find life on a page as part of a submissions zine. Or maybe other people could be kind enough to steal the ideas outright, and make their own zines liberating my hoarded titles and blurbs from my notes app.

Maybe those things won't happen at all, but I still want to share my old bad art and half cooked ideas and things I don't have the spare time to finish.

Here's a taste of what you can expect:

Every thought I've ever had about Avril Lavinge

A review of an issue of Girl Talk magazine's pop feminism rebrand

A guide to the coolest places to go in lovely Wrexham ♥️

Over enthusiastic cheerleading for community radio

Terrible drawings

Possible drawings

Pages that look great, but I spelt like the main word wrong

Reviews of RTS games I played in 2017

Hope you'll stick with me (never getting over that there's no emoticon for a pritt stick) see you soon.

[bismutharts]

a zine transcribing a post by @spiderversegf , the post being this one. i really like that post, and i wanted to give myself an extra reminder of it

this is part of my project to make a zine a day in april

[frankenstein-garbage-dump]

It's Not A Phase, Mom! (Vol. 1)

I made my first big zine! It's about the emo subculture :> I spent a lot of time working on this thing and I'm so proud of it! It'd mean so much if you guys checked it out.

[goobersplat]

LIBRARY ADVENTURES ZINE FROG ADVICE ZINE

BEARY SAD ZINE SO-CALLED RABBIT ZINE

*Note: The zines are printables and in black and white. They are colorized in this ad, but feel free to print them on colored paper 👀

My Ko-Fi Shop :)

[fanzines]

Issue #40 of 'Proof I Exist' - a pocket-sized perzine by zinester Billy McCall.

This issue, they explore themes of fear, loneliness, depression and how to conquer it all!

Buy a copy from Behind The Zines.

[jenniferleecopping]

Something I’m pretty proud of this year, I won best Perzine at the broken pencil zine awards for my zine: The Bed Knife tm and other tales of Abnormal Psychosis. It’s finally reprinted and for sale in my shop again.

link to buy here

[mulchmouth]

Just a lil risograph zine about how much I love growing and eating tomatoes.

[arcadiiian]

my zine for @zinebash 04: medieval ⚔️🫀🌹

[lemonflavoredpepsi]

volume 2 of my new zine!!! an intoxicating experience turned into a fun time. careful with drugs and talk hard, rock on.

[cosmicdevilart]

Sleep Shadows is a zine that I've wanted to make for about four years now.

This zine compiles a collection of my "Sleep Shadow" block prints. Prints that were inspired by my real life sleep paralysis. I wanted to keep the zine a 1:1 scale to the actual block prints, so I printed it smaller.

I've added a few words to give you a vague idea of my experience with lifelong sleep paralysis.

Even the cover is a block print that I made specifically for this zine!

This will be available tomorrow 8/19 at 2:00 PM EDT.

*link to shop is in pinned post*