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Dogbane Beetle

Zines aren’t a very old medium. The first one was probably in the 1930s, called “The Comet” and created by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago. To be honest, I doubt that was really the first zine, but regardless of that, it’s clear that zines are pretty young-- you just can’t mistake that short history for one that isn’t rich. Since zines are self published, the format has always held space for those whose voices weren’t or aren’t allowed to be heard in a more traditional format– those of Black Indigenous people of color, of queer and trans folks, of Disabled people, of poor people. It’s held the spirit of resistance in the same vein.

Getting to work with zines, I feel their energy in everything I make– especially when i’m writing about things closely related to our collective struggle. Zines are a space where i’m reflective and happy and angry and sad and loving myself and loving my community, and when I make them, I always hope that others can sit and feel, too, when they read them-- whether it's the same things I’m feeling or something entirely different.

All my zines come from my community-- the inspiration I draw from Muchacha Fanzine and diary of a sista grrrl and pretty much every last zine at Brown Recluse Zine Distro; from Leslie Feinberg and Dolores Huerta and Sylvia Rivera and Assata Shakur; from Palestine and Cuba and Hawai'i and Aotearoa; from my closest friends and those I don’t know at all but would stand with all the same.

I know I've talked a lot about zines as if I'm an authority, but I'm still quite new to making them. They're just already quite dear to my heart as a form of expression. I've shared some of my zines below, alongside a few collages, too! You can find the zines on my itch.io page as well, where both printable and readable versions are available.

I've put Image IDs for each zine/collage in the alt text, but if you would like to access to them directly, please visit this page, where I have IDs listed for every zine I have posted!

I hope you enjoy them all. :]


the cover of an 8-page zine, which says “you taught / teach me” across the front in big letters. 'you' is in block letters, 'taught / teach' is in cursive, and 'me' is in my own weird handwriting! along the complete bottom is some washi tape of eyes & lips, with dark red & blue & yellow colors. slightly above it, on the right side, there's a used yellow butterfly stamp! The cover page of a zine in an 8-page layout, which has “FOR [to] REID” written in large letters in the middle of the page. The 'O' and 'D' have cropped sections of Reid Gorecki's art pieces inside of them. The cover of a zine in an 8-page layout, which has “Oh, the HORRORS!” written near the top of the page with a subtitle underneath it saying “a zine on horror (wow) & all its forms” with the word ‘wow’ in parentheses. To the side of the title, there’s a drawing of a cat with its head twisted around and backward in a way it should not be able to move. The cat is edited to sit on a photo of a bookshelf filled with horror movie VHS tapes. The cover of a zine in an 8-page layout, which displays the title of the zine, “Nature Where You stand,” in big letters. Around it is a collage of plants— a mix of old photos and line-art of leaves and flowers. It is separated from the title text by a solid, squiggly line.

things that inhabit my body: A collage about transness and body, filled with lovely art from people I admire.

A collage about body and transness using art and writing by different artists whose work I admire. Starting from the top right corner and going to the bottom right corner, there is a quote from Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater that says “She welcomes [Saint Vincent’s] delicate masculinity arranging itself in folds inside her … It brought her a small amount of grief when she realized that he was restricted to using only a dreambody because hers was simply wrong. Her body had worked for Asụghara, but Saint Vincent would be neutered within it, with nothing weighing down between his legs, just canals lined in velveteen”, a panel from @androhmeda on Tumblr's comic titled 'HELLO MY NAME IS ____________' which depicts a pair of eyes and some sparkles, a photo of a shirt that says 'WE ARE A BOY / WE ARE A GIRL', and the song lyrics “My auntie was a man now, we cool with it / The history had trickled down and made us ign'ant / My favorite cousin said he's returning the favor / And following my auntie with the same behavior // Demetrius is Mary-Ann now / He's more confident to live his plan now” from Kendrick Lamar's song Auntie Diaries. In the middle, there is simply a piece titled 'The Abacus Snare' by Havi Peterson in which a figure destroys and rips the beads from an abacus. In the top left, there's a copy of a poem titled 'when the trans masc tops' by silas denver melvin, which goes “our gaudy trans decadence / makes diisco of the room / your tgirl femboy body / squealing beneath my caterpillar thighs / sex is more about reinventing / than it is about pleasure / sex between us is about / repurposing words from / the old world / how a womb can be anywhere / in the body like once believed / my small farmer's hands / holding your head down against / a silk pillowcase / your hairy stomach heaving / barbie smooth legs pinned back / like butterfly wings / i want to possess you / in all the ways i was taught i couldn't / i want to excavate the teeth / still lodged inside you / let sex not be a competition / but an act of mercy: / you ask to be taken apart / & i bestow you purpose”. Beside it is a piece tiitled 'sometimes you have to hold yourself' by @julykings on Tumblr, in which two bodies embrace and overlap. Below that is the text “transness is holy, transness is divinity, transness is creating your own path, transness is subverting & breaking roles, transness is expansive, transness is community, transness is home”, and below that, the title of the collage: things that inhabit my body.

to the moon: An also silly collage for and about a girl like the moon!

This is yet another silly collage made for someone also dear to me. From left to right, there is John William Waterhouse's painting Ulysses and the Sirens with Animal Jam logos put over each of the siren's faces, a painting of Komitas by Hovhannes Zardarian, a photo of Sevak Amroyan, a photo of the members of The Longest Johns, a little piece of art of two creatures hugging, a photo of some star jasmine, a photo of magnolias, a photo of two dice with an arrow pointing to them that says “Bro, look– on the left, there’s a D20 from 1st Century Greece, and on the left, a glass D20 from Rome around 2 millennia ago (or so says Dave Hinerman in 2000). I’m sure they were used all over (I think Egyptians had some, and I know others did, too), but aren’t these so cool??”, a photo of a famous state of Vahagn vishapakagh fighting a dragon by Aram Vardazaryan, and a little note in the bottom left corner that says “I love u babe!! Hope you enjoy this” plus a little heart emoticon.

Ada, Darling: A (silly) collage for and about one of the loveliest people I know :]

This is a silly collage made for someone dear to me. From left to right, there are photos of the Newsies cast holding their fists up, Matt Mercer, Saintseneca's frontman, Sisyphus 55's Youtube profile picture, a pomegranate, Sam Cooke, Haruki Murakami, a canon camera with a raven perched on it and an arrow pointing to it that says “Because of your poem!! Two Blackbirds!!”, a photo of Franz Kafka, a guitar with a salmon painted on and an arrow pointing to it that says “Fish guitar :^)”, and the cover of the album “I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning” by Bright Eyes.

finding: A collage on geocaching and searching for small things in general

This is a collage about geocaching and the proces of searching for and finding those little boxes of trinkets-- getting to take from and add to them! From left to right, there are photos of two people with lots of rings on linking pinkies, a tree trunk that's split open slightly with a geocache hidden inside, a person standing in the middle of a meadow surrounded by trees, little geocaches made from small tubes attached to the backs of bottlecaps, a basic geocache box, a geocache that's just a tiny little glass bottle, a photo of a long, thin strip of paper with people's names being taken out of a geocache container, the same bottlecap geocaches from earlier at another angle, and a photo of a geocache bottle that was taken out of a little manhole.