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If you got a zine kit in the mail or are picking one up at DH Hill, it includes: embroidery thread and needle, pre-cut paper for pages with longer colored paper to fold over as a cover, and images to collage with. You can use it to make a simple hand-sewn zine, or not! Here is a technique for stitching the book if you choose to go that route:

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Making Zines: Bound Zines, Part 2: 4-hole Stab Stitch Binding

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Zines, collage, world-building, & the digital publishing revolution 

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Zines, collage, world-building, & the digital publishing revolution 

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Collage is everywhere now. We live in a culture of sampling, linking and layering references in both literal and metaphorical ways. But this practice was once subversive, and a way to push back against normative culture. The practice of slowing down with analogue materials, cutting them up & splicing them back together in new ways can be a way to meaningfully and deliberately engage with the layered nature of reality by repurposing existing cultural artifacts. It is a hands-on way to open up space for world-building and new perspectives.
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Zines have a long history of pushing against the status quo and of engaging with alternate possibilities for reality. They began as fan fic in the 1930s, when carving out a niche community meant relying on the US postal service. The term was picked up and reimagined for different communities. The current association of zines -- with their DIY ethos and anti-establishment underpinning -- is often attributed to the feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl

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How to make a one-page zine using just a piece of standard printer paper

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How to make a one-page zine using just a piece of standard printer paper

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Many people believe print is dead. Here at Shwood we beg to differ as we are always creating new physical things with our hands, and printed matter is no different. Creating a zine is an awesome way to express yourself and showcase your artistic talents. No matter what your artistic capabilities are, you too can publish your work and be in print! This is a quick guide on how to make a zine with one sheet of 8.5 by 11 paper.
Send your own personal zine to greg[at]shwoodshop[dot]com we'll post in on the site!
STEP 1

You will need one sheet of 8.5 x 11″ paper, scissors, and anything else you will need to create the content of your zine. *Note: You can never go wrong with a pencil.

STEP 2

Fold your sheet of paper in half hamburger style.

STEP 3

Unfold the paper. The sheet is now split into halves. Fold one side of your paper into the middle to meet the crease.

STEP 4

Repeat step 3 for the other side of the paper.

STEP 5

If you unfold your paper you should have four equal sized vertical columns.

STEP 6

Fold your paper in half again but this time vertically.

STEP 7

Unfold your paper you should now have 8 equally sized rectangles.

STEP 8

This is a very important step as cutting your zine correctly will ensure it folding properly. Fold your paper back in half like above. Now cut halfway in at your crease, this cut will create a opening in the middle of your paper.

STEP 9

Now you should have a sheet with 8 sections and a slit in the middle. Open up your paper, fold in half like above. Then simply push the ends of the paper in and fold like a small book or pamphlet.

STEP 10

This is what your small one page zine should look like when you are done.

PART 2 - GET ARTSY

Now that you have mastered how to fold up your zine the fun part begins, putting stuff in it!

This is how the pages and covers should be laid out. Remember that you are folding the paper in half so the pages have a top and bottom, so one half is not upside down.

Add a poster to the back side of your zine so your reader can fold it out and enjoy!

Once your zine is created, make copies and give them to your friends and get famous.

My Zine:

Front cover of my Ballin Zine. A cut and paste zine featuring various basketball cards and fun facts about the players.

Inside contents.

Back cover, be sure to make it limited because people will be more interested in it.

Back poster.

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Many people believe print is dead. Here at Shwood we beg to differ as we are always creating new physical things with our hands, and printed matter is no different. Creating a zine is an awesome way to express yourself and showcase your artistic talents.

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began we were thinking about trying to write a thing about zines that talk abut using herbs and DIY abortion. Then came the pandemic, and in the U.S., the confirmation of another anti-abortion supreme court justice, who, it's speculated, will work to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized pregnancy termination.

We kind of hate that we have to write this at all, but the ongoing attacks on reproductive freedom and healthcare across the world make this necessary. Everybody should have access to the healthcare they need, full stop. This means being able to make informed choices about reproductive options including different methods of contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, and the ability to end a pregnancy as desired.

A couple of notes:

1. The following links were not digitized by us at QZAP. Abortion and reproductive healthcare are absolutely queer and trans issues, but these zines are maybe outside of our collection policy scope. As such, they are not necessarily up to our standards for digitization, nor can we assure that the original creators permissions were sought before these were put online.

2. These zines are intended to be informational and not "how-to" manuals. If you need to get an abortion or know someone who might, try contacting Planned Parenthood (in the U.S.) or The International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion (global)

3. A lot of the research for this (short) list came from Jenna Freedman's article Unreproductive: Zines on Herbal Abortion and Menstrual Extraction at Zinelibraries.info, which is focused library holdings, and the Let's Talk About DIY Sexuality Zines handout (PDF) by Emily Bee that was prepared for the 2015 Milwaukee Zine Fest.

The Zines

Hot Pantz: DIY Gynecology / Herbal Remedies By Isabelle Gauthier & Lisa Vinebaum (1994)

Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom by Catherine Marie Jeunet

Wives Tales

DIY Doula

Wow! It's been almost a year since we've posted anything to the blog. And what a fucking year. As we're still in the midst of a global pandemic, we're not doing a whole lot these days. At least, not in person. Luckily, online events are a thing right now, and we're super happy to participate in them.

Coming up next week, we're co-sponsoring a film screening at the Northwest Film Forum of It's on Liebigstraße 34. The screening will include 3 films about the (in)famous feminist-queer squat Liebigstraße 34 in Berlin, Germany and how it was forcibly closed last autumn.

The screening is sliding scale from $0-$25 and will include a Q/A with the film-makers. The links above and below have info on how to get tickets.

Incidentially, we were asked to co-sponsor this by our long-time friend Elliat, who made the amazing doc Travel Queeries, which you can see here.

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it has really only been about two months since we partnered with our friends at the Milwaukee Zine Fest and The Milwaukee Rep to produce a zine from their Queer Love Stories event. Just as things were ramping up here with the COVID-19 preperations and prior to the Safer At Home orders, we got copies of the community made QLS zine from our local. That was three weeks ago (it's 13 April, 2020, a Monday, as we post this.) Since the production of this was funded through the partnership and our initial intent was to make them available during the Milwaukee Zine Fest, we thought we'd do that minus the fest.

If you would like a copy, all you have to do is send us 3 First Class U.S. stamps.
Queer Love Stories c/o QZAP
2935 N. Fratney Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Please be sure to include your name and address.

If you are not in the U.S. and would like a copy, please contact us.

Please take care of each other.

Love,

QZAP

He was an early editor of Gay Comix, and his breakout work, Stuck Rubber Baby, explored queerness and racial justice through a Southern lens. Perhaps his most well known character, Wendel, represented a bit of Howard himself, with optimistic, simple charms. We honor the legacy of gay comics artist Howard Cruse, who died on November 26, 2019, and share our condolences with his husband, daughter, and chosen family.

Howard's work began during a time of tremendous social change in the US in the early 1970s, when he utilized the energy of the underground comix movement to create gay characters and stories with love, laughter, and poignant drama.

Most importantly, Howard worked at a time where he established the frameworks of gay comic storytelling himself, truly a pioneer where few visual artists were creating work by, for, and about queer people. To meet him in person, you would encounter a gentle soul, a very kind and thoughtful human being, in some ways an 'anti-celebrity' of sorts. He was candid about how drug use sparked his creativity, and he told human stories in ways that made them universally relatable.

Thank you, Howard, for the path you created, the artists that you inspired to create their own queer work, and for leaving the world with a rich legacy of queer visual stories. Your memory is a blessing.

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began we were thinking about trying to write a thing about zines that talk abut using herbs and DIY abortion. Then came the pandemic, and in the U.S., the confirmation of another anti-abortion supreme court justice, who, it's speculated, will work to overturn the 1973 Roe vs.

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Short for 'magazine', zines are created and self-published by an individual or a group people. Zines aren't for profit; zines are vehicles to make art, to engage with your community or subculture, and to elevate voices that otherwise don't get heard. They allow people to connect, to ask questions, to stay up to date on events, or to spread awareness of issues. For this reason, zines have been particularly popular in feminist, punk, and queer circles that are generally anti-establishment or anti-capitalist. Sara Century believes that political pamphlets - from as far back as the 1700s - and sci-fi fanzines are the spiritual ancestors of modern zines. She points out that "the PoC Zine Project cites infamous literary magazine Fire!! - founded by Langston Hughes and Richard Nugent - as a potent example of an early zine".

"Zines run the gamut in both quality and subject matter, but they all share a common and salient thread - they speak for their time, they are unedited, they are personal, and they deal with things you would never read about in major publications, from the personal to the political and beyond. "

- Sara Century, writing for The Establishment

Joey Gray, creator of Hardy, emphasized that "queer zines during the 1980s and 1990s were so much more than just queer creative content...they were acts of protest, of activism, of preservation and communication". During the 80s, this means that "at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when the U.S. government wouldn't so much as publicly acknowledge the crisis, queer people made zines, they spread information, they provided resources for each other, and they told their stories." Today, zines like S.Kills, created by Lisa J. in Vienna, Austria, carry on this tradition by spread awareness of issues such as consent.

Zines allow us to tell our own stories, by and for each other, while creating real, tangible things that prove that we were here, that we had full rich lives and a community to share them with. Of Hardy, Gray writes that it is "a platform with which I'm able to create and share space with my broader LGBTQ community and, as a result, provide physical evidence of queer perseverance. We stand up. We fight back. We resist. We do it together. We are family."

Zines have been and are being produced across the world, but preservation - let alone digitization - can be a roadblock to uncovering all sorts of aspects of our heritage. While undertaking our research, for example, we found Australian zines to be particularly elusive. Many references were made to important zines such as Queer Zine and The Daily Plague, but no issues are easily accessible online. Florent Routoulp wrote that The Daily Plague was "an Australian fanzine that wrote about AIDS and how to live with it...I don't really feel like adding any commentary to their manifesto, which was "To badly go where no publication has gone before in providing/stealing information, humor, and humanity about the Great Adventure, aka HIV," because I think it speaks for itself." Such zines document moments in our history that are vital to learn about. This is why projects such as the Queer Zine Archive Project are invaluable. The archive was instrumental to our research, and is highly recommended for a delve into our cultural heritage.

Below are some of our favourite prolific LGBT+ zines, but if you have a favourite - or if you make one! - send us a link!

According to Erica Davies at Out History, Vice Versa was North America's first lesbian zine. "Lisa Ben" - an anagram of "lesbian" - covertly created and published Vice Versa in Los Angeles beginning in 1947, using equipment at RKO studios where she was a secretary. Davies describes the zine as "a forerunner for gay American publications, providing a more wide-ranging audience with upbeat short stories, editorials, book reviews, and a letter column to entertain and inspire readers to perpetuate the existence of gay editorials and preserve the pleasure of their lifestyle." Only nine issues with a handful of copies each were ever produced, but each copy was read and passed along to other gay women. Edythe Eyde - aka"Lisa Ben"- remained active in the lesbian community throughout her life, joining the Daughters of Bilitis in the 1950s, but her legacy truly stems from Vice Versa. Many lesbian magazines, zines, and newsletters have been published in its wake, including "The Ladder" and "Lesbian Connection", and Malinda Lo at After Ellen proclaims that even "sites like AfterEllen.com are simply high-tech extensions of those carbon-copied issues of Vice Versa that Lisa Ben used to pass out at the local lesbian bar."

It is difficult to express how ahead of its time Vice Versa truly was, or the influence it has had on LGBT+ publications since. Rodger Streitmatter has written extensively on LGBT+ media in the United States, and according to his 1998 article, Vice Versa published short stories depicting a lesbian wedding, while Eyde herself maintained that there would be a time in the future - though in 1947, it would be difficult to predict exactly when - gay people would be accepted in society. Streitmatter asserts that the format of Vice Versa provided the blueprint for the gay magazines that followed. He writes that "[Ben's] written words did...express hope about the future of gay Americans - and, subsequently, the nascent genre of periodicals that she founded. In a prophetic editorial, Ben wrote: "Perhaps VICE VERSA might be the forerunner of better magazines dedicated to the Third Sex which, in some future time, might take their rightful place on the news stands beside other publications, to be available openly and without restriction.""

You can read more about the influence of Vice Versa in Streitmatter's book " Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America", listen to Edythe Eyde talk about her work and life on Making Gay History's podcast, and read the issues of Vice Versa on Queer Music Heritage's website.

Kraximo was published in 1980s Greece by Paola Revenioti, a trans artist, former sex worker, and activist. Revenioti is somewhat of an iconic figure in LGBT+ history, and her adventures include running a pirate radio and organizing the first pride in Athens in the 90s. According to an interview with Revenioti, "the zine pioneered the fight for gay and trans rights, combining interviews with Greek poets and intellectuals alongside Athens street hustlers and her own photography".

"I started my magazine Kraximo because there was a need for another voice to be heard. They were tough times: the police would arrest transvestites for fun. When it's illegal to be yourself, you have no option but to fight back. I published police brutality reports - remember there was no internet then. In slang, Kraximo translates as 'gaybashing'. Those were conservative times. People would scream names like 'whore', 'scum', 'antichrist'... I wanted to guide people afraid of their sexuality and values, create something fresh and revolutionary. I gathered articles, paid friends to write or translate, spent hours creating the layout, blackening my fingers, copying and cutting. I remember one issue sold out in a single day. It was like an action movie, getting unique interviews with intellectuals and combining them with artists and photographs I took of boys around Greece. "

- Paola Revenioti, Dazed Magazine

Kraximo had a profound influence on the LGBT+ community in Greece and abroad. Of her time running Kraximo, Revenioti says: "I never thought I was documenting my city, I was living my city, wildly."

You can read interviews about Kraximo at Dazed and Vice.

Published in Appalachian region of the USA, Electric Dirt i s "a celebration of queer voices and identities from Appalachia and the South". Their vision for the zine truly embodies the philosophies behind zines:

"With under-documented cultures and communities, there is often a gatekeeper. An archivist, sociologist, anthropologist, or historian decides who and what is documented and who or what is omitted from history. Someone with access to higher education and resources that many folks, especially in our impoverished region, do not have. That does not happen with Electric Dirt. We rely heavily on submissions. The underrepresented and misrepresented get to represent themselves. We get to define Queer Appalachia and the Queer South with our own images and truths. By embracing a combination of contemporary technology and social media, we are in a constant state of documenting our culture, community, lives and history/herstory. Electric Dirt is a place for us to share those truths and find each other. We survive and even thrive through sharing tales of wildcrafting our queerness, foraging for pieces of ourselves within the intersections of coal mines and class, race and religion, food justice and colonialism."

- Queer Appalachia

Some more zines to check out:

Barra Magazine, from Beirut, Lebanon;

Un Bruit de Grelot, from Lille, France;

LESBO, from Ljubljana,Slovenia, which was allegedly replaced by Narobe;

Shotgun Seamstress, from the U.S.A.;

S omos, from Buenos Aires, Argentina;

Freaky Queer, from Cardiff, Wales;

Mouthfeel, from NYC, U.S.A.;

and Straight to Hell, which deserves a special mention: it was first published in the U.S.A. in 1973 and is still going today.

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Short for 'magazine', zines are created and self-published by an individual or a group people. Zines aren't for profit; zines are vehicles to make art, to engage with your community or subculture, and to elevate voices that otherwise don't get heard.