C

Comet Crowbar / infecticitis

Find the Rabbit
2011. Hand-cut and assembled.
A puzzle-zine. Made from one sheet of A4 paper; cut to produce 11 trapezoid pages; stapled in 18 places; to create triangular flaps that unfold into a hexagon shape. More photos here.
Challenge: Fold triangles until the rabbit is found within a flat hexagon.
Herausforderung: Falte die Dreiecke, bis du den Hasen in einem flachen Sechseck findest.

Let’s Make a Zine!
2010. 8 pages, A7
This is a little introductory zine that I would give away at the zine workshops I do. It’s folded from one sheet of paper, with no staples. The perfect lil’ somthing to give to a friend curious about “what’s the deal with these little things??”

Infecticitis #13: deconstructing internalized capitalism and how to draw a flower
2013, 48 Pages, orange-paper cover, entirely hand-written
My newest zine about my political beliefs in Do-It-Yourself philosophy, reflecting on being born in America, anti-war, traveling to La ZAD in France, talking to nature, creators not consumers.

Infecticitis #12 (sometimes)
2012. 24 pages, A5
Hiking on the Appalachian Trail through Massachusetts. Hiking through the Rockies in Colorado. Bouts of depression. Tree love. Organizing the zine fest berlin. Washin’ dishes. Sleepless nights. “Maybe this issue is called Sometimes, cuz sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s not, or another way entirely. Don’t ask me about yesterday, it’s already gone.”

Infecticitis # 11: SELFISH
2012. 36 pages, A5.
A zine on being selfish, in regards to mental health. This zine is the result of a long Winter Depression, with a personal account on such topics as depression, suicide, self-harm/ scars, being an adult, self-awareness and taking care of yourself.

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Infecticitis #10
2011. 32 pages in 16cm triangle, woodblock print cover on 300g paper.
The gender-queer (in itself) art zine that folds into a pyramid. Reflection on 10 issues/ 7 years of zines. What is a zine. Juice. Designing puzzles.

Infecticitis #9
2010. 32 pages, A6, hand-colored cover.
Figuring out the patterns of a new life in Berlin. Living autonomously for myself. Hitch-hiking to Norway. Coming out queer. Camp on a farm teaching English. The Professor and Sprinkles, the farm kittens. What will you make of today?

Paper X-ray
2012. 16 different-colored pages, hand sewn, smaller than A.
This art zine is printed in an edition of 31, and made using a RISOGRAPH machine (kind of like mechanical screen-printing) Paper X-ray is a quest to examine my body (teeth, hands) and other things (trees, typewritters) through a process of pencil-rubbing on paper. The drawings in here are, literally, paper x-rays.
Made during a lovely workshop at the Kotti Shop.

Chronic Pain zine

Chronic pain is defined as pain that persists for more than six months. It is often mysterious and goes undiagnosed, but can stem from injury, illness, surgical complications, or can be an inherited condition. Because it is a condition that is invisible, pain often goes without treatment or validation. The chronic pain experience is not just about the physical sensations, but also has serious emotional and social implications.

Finding good information and meaningful dialog about chronic pain can be challenging. Many of the resources out there are very clinical, too general, or are written from outside the pain experience. There are few voices by folks with chronic pain about their struggles and how they keep living as full of a life as possible. This zine attempts to begin to fill the empty space with a diversity of voices telling their stories. We hope that by publishing these essays people will feel a greater sense of permission to speak out. Further, we hope to create more community for those with chronic pain and their allies.

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Issue #1

Issue one contains essays on identity, invisibility, capitalism, bravery and hopefulness as they relate to the experience of chronic pain. Additional essays on caregiving and care in activist communities. 48 pages.

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Issue #2

The second issue of this edited collection includes 4 new essays, a beautiful 16 page comic, a workshop piece on communication and support, contributor bios and reading/resource list. Themes include self acceptance, and sustaining self-care, support, and motivation over the long term. 48 pages.

Issue #3

includes 4 new essays, a 15 page comic essay, contributor bios and reading/resource list. Themes include parenting with chronic pain, invisibility and chronic pain, and some ways we’ve found to survive and thrive in the face of ongoing illness. 48 pages.

Issue #4

Hot off the presses, the fourth issue includes two prose pieces exploring chronic pain as it intersects with mental illness and identity, a workshop piece about self care, and a number of pieces of poetry. 44 pages.

Each zine is offset printed, with a beautiful two color cover.

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Gentle Reminders About Care Postcard by When Language Runs Dry contributor Karen Hixson

These are 5 x 7 laminated cards created in the spirit of her ‘Beyond the Bubble Bath’ self care article from issue #4 of When Language Runs Dry.

The front (color) includes care reminders and the back (black & white) contains an area for using a dry erase marker to make notes on your care plan intentions (wipe clean with dry tissue). An awesome gift or training tool for social workers, activists, mental health professionals, peer support folks, volunteers and anyone who is interested in harm reduction oriented self & community care.

ClaireUrb

What Binds What Makes What Breaks

Thoughts on borders, belonging, identity, place, decolonization, community accountability, dignity and resistance.
Contains stories from the Oaxacan teacher’s strike in 2006 and from different social movements organizing and fighting for justice and dignity in Mexico (Zapatistas, Los Braceros, a sex worker’s collective, and an autonomous community).
Contains some personal essays about riding freight trains in northern Mexico, and about being a settler on stolen land, cultural appropriation and belonging.
Finally, contains some ideas on how to support survivors of sexual violence and to hold an accountability process.

Stuck in Place: Thoughts on Belonging Zine

This zine is a collection of personal essays exploring our relationships to home, seeking a sense of belonging somewhere, and how we impact place/place impacts us- while thinking about settler identity and white privilege while living in a white supremacy.

‘Stuck in place’ is 74 pages long and includes original artwork and historical photographs.

“For so many years I have been trying to figure out ways to talk about whiteness and cultural appropriation in ways that are constructive and challenging and don’t just shut people down. This zine is so great, and really helps me to think about these things and find new ways to talk with my friends about racism. Super thick zine super smart and thoughtful zine about being white, “I have been working through a lot of confusion in my own relationship to home and seeing friends with settler privilege express similar feelings of being detached from place, or lacking in cultural roots and spirituality, and seeing us appropriate cultural and spiritual practices without recognizing what kind of violence we are engaging in or why it is violent in the first place. As a way to bring other settlers to understand their own settler identities and the implications of the actions we take within a white supremacist, colonizer culture. I am sharing my experiences in my own learning process. I am hoping this will be useful to other settlers grappling with understanding their own relationship to land, home and place.” I love this zine in so many ways, and it particularly is helpful for me, because the author is not an academic (and doesn’t write in academic language) and also comes from a working class background, which I relate to more than when people write from other perspectives. She is able to write about the violence and poverty in her own family and clearly state that this fact does not dismiss the reality of white privilege. I really hope all of us white people trying to understand our own internalized racism and how to fight racism or be an active anti-racist ally, we all should read this zine! ” – Cindy Crabb

It’s Down to This: reflections… critiques, and ideas on community and collective response to sexual violence, abuse and accountability

“This huge zine (100 pages!) is a tremendous resource for people who are committed to ending sexual violence. The past few years have seen an upsurge of community-accountability processes of dealing with assault—and lots of questions and issues these processes have raised. This zine collects a multitude of stories, reflections and articles—from advice on finding a therapist, written by a perpetrator who is in an accountability process, to articles describing what different accountability groups look like, to raw stories of the failure of radical communities to step up and offer support to survivors. Intense and essential zine for people doing this work.” – Cindy Crabb

It’s Down to This #2 : on sexual violence, accountability, consent, healing

Cover art by Shloka Ettna
This zine is 50 pages and features work by nine artists and activists on the topics of sexual violence, (self) accountability, building cultures of care, and healing. Contributors engage critical analyses of whiteness, racism, and hetero-normativity in anti-violence work, and think critically on how colonial violence and white-supremacy inform relationships to sexuality and responses to sexual violence.
Contributors offer insight to move towards healing and building cultures of care.

Clementine Morrigan

Rupture

Rupture is a collection of poetry, creative non-fiction, photography and visual art.

“Rupture bravely captures the emotions of trauma, pleasure and recovery. This series of poems, divided into six parts, takes the reader through the author’s experiences of sexual violence, discovering her sense of self and relationships, and how she has started her journey toward healing. Although some of the poems are extremely difficult to read, Morrigan’s work serves as a way for others who are dealing with similar experiences to begin to articulate some of their own pain. In ‘divine responsibility’, Morrigan writes “self love is a divine responsibility / because the goddess Herself / makes no mistakes.” The juxtaposition of the empowerment expressed in some of the poems and the hurt in others underscores the nuanced struggle of living with a painful history.” —Shameless Magazine

“Rupture is a bold, honest, and thought-provoking collection of poems and short narrative writings on female embodiment, violence against women, sexuality, and feminism. Morrigan’s accessible language and intimate tone invite the reader to enter into her experiences, which range from harrowing to exhilarating. She encourages readers to appreciate the challenging journey of the woman in patriarchal culture who seeks to honour her feelings, desires, and powers and carve out a truly independent existence. Her book strikingly demonstrates that women’s right to self-determination continues to be a poorly protected one and is a work that would appeal to many women who similarly struggle to live outside of sexist conditioning and norms.” —Herizons Magazine

seawitch #9

This issue is largely about three things: being queer, being femme and being a survivor. It’s about the way those three things interact, internalized queerphobia, internalized misogyny and trauma. It’s about street harassment and femme embodiment. It’s about what it was like growing up queer, coming out at fourteen and experiencing a ton of homophobia. It’s about shame and wanting to be sexual with women and femmes and finding that really hard. It’s about the legacy of queerphobic violence, misogynist violence, sexual violence and cissexist violence manifesting in the body. It’s about being a survivor of sexual violence at the hands of women. It’s about astrology and digging deep and facing hard stuff. It’s a really vulnerable, heartfelt little zine.

seawitch #8

Quartersize, 40 pages. This issue was made during a stay in Halifax, unceded Mi’kmaq territory. It’s about the stay in Halifax and spiritual shifting. It’s about gentrification and the violence of white guilt and an event on gentrification attended while in Halifax. It’s about jealousy, polyamory and femininity, writing about these things and designing a workshop on these things. It’s about the importance of friendships and valuing and grieving friendships. It’s about sex work. It’s about gender ambivalence, gender dysphoria and not feeling totally inside or outside the gender binary. And it’s about happiness and how stunning / staggering happiness can be as someone who has been in so much pain for so long. Very text heavy and sparse. Mostly words.

“It’s Mercury Retrograde right now. Mercury Retrograde doesn’t stress me out because I just slow right the fuck down. I’m grateful to be in Halifax at this time, working on projects, meeting cool people, walking around the city, hanging out with my love. In the mornings I’ve been doing my prayers and drawing daily tarot. There have been a ton of Major cards, suggesting intense things are brewing for me right now.”

seawitch #7

Quartersize, 40 pages. seawitch #7 is about going back to school in the fall, navigating identity as a demisexual, having a pregnancy scare and coming to realizations about a lack of support for parents, families and kids in communities/movements, the need for an expansion of the meaning of reproductive justice and pro-choice. It’s about the intersections of polyamory and madness, having c-ptsd and trying to navigate polyamory, taking a break from poly and the need for support/resources for mad folks in the poly community. It’s about intoxication culture and being a sober addict and not wanting to ‘fit in’ and justice and access and sober spaces. There’s some heavy stuff about trauma, being an incest survivor and a multiple rape/assault survivor, having c-ptsd and the impacts of this, especially with regards to intimacy, trust, friendship, touch, sexuality. There’s stuff on gender, sacred femininity, revaluing femininity, being genderfluid and being ashamed of masculinity that it is ‘too’ femme. And it’s about recovery, spirituality and spiritual maintenance. Very text heavy. Lots of words. Lots of content warnings.

“I long for resources and discussion on polyamory that include mental health issues. I want to talk about how polyamory intersects with trauma and madness.”

“People praise me for my ‘radical vulnerability’ in my writing but in person I can barely say hello or ask you how you’re doing.”

“I see my femmeness, my femininity, entangled with my witchcraft. My intuition, my heart, my ritual, the way I am with nature, with the sky, the water, with my body, the animal that I am.”

seawitch #6

Quartersize, 40 pages and text heavy. seawitch #6 is about self-naming and choosing to have three different names, it’s about gender, genderqueerness, multiplicity, femininity and masculinity (and femmephobia), it’s about being a survivor of child abuse, it’s about healing, recovery and spirituality, it’s about gendered violence, it’s about white supremacy and racism and some things white people can do to take responsibility for our position in these systems, it’s about learning to love again after surviving intimate partner violence, it’s about jealousy, it’s about learning a new tarot deck. It’s also an end of the year / birthday zine.

“healing is not linear. it is cyclical. we revisit the same trauma again and again with new insight each time. as long as we stay connected to our journey we are growing, even when it seems we have been plummeted to the bottom of another depression.”

“i think that, because of sexism and toxic masculinity, masculine people who are even slightly feminist or respectful to feminine people, are treated like special gems. even in queer spaces, we flock to masculine people, we hold them up, we long for their attention and praise.”

“i am a capricorn sun and a capricorn moon. capricorn is a seagoat. people often forget that and paint capricorn as simply a goat. this does not do justice to the entirety of capricorn’s nature. yes, capricorn is a goat: methodical, stubborn, single-minded when its sights are set on something, hardworking, slow to change. but caproicorn is not just a regular goat but a seagoat: deep diving, spiritual, intense, reflective, passionate, with an eye for the mystical and other-wordly.”

seawitch #5

seawitch #5 is quartersize, 48 pages, text heavy with a colour cover and eight colour photos inside. It’s about being caught between the past and the future, reflecting, letting go, major changes and moving forward. It’s about hope, fear and courage. It’s about coming out as genderqueer, recognizing my demisexuality and making sense of my sexual history. It’s about trauma, sexual violence, being too drunk to consent and coming to terms with my past. It’s about trauma, recovery and supporting survivors in your life. It’s about spirituality and being a witch and seeking spiritual connection. It’s about university and navigating that world as an alcoholic and a survivor/victim of intimate partner violence. And it’s about tarot, specifically The World card.

“i realized that being a woman is a part of my gender but nowhere near all of it. i realized that my gender, which i stress about and which i love, which i revel in and am punished for, which i can’t describe and which i seek words to describe, is queer. it’s very, very queer.”

“right now i am describing my sexuality as queer, demisexual with femme4femme leanings. i am excited to give myself the space and the time to explore and develop my desires. i am grateful to be at a place where i can be honest about and let go of my past, making room for who i am today.”

“i write about this stuff because i know i’m not alone. i write about this because there are so many of us who carry the legacy and trauma of sexual violence. i write about this because this is my human experience, my truth, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. i write about this because i know my tears, though sometimes inconvenient, are ultimately utterly healing.”

seawitch #4

Quartersize, 40 pages, text-heavy. This issue is about what it feels like to write zines, living in a culture that objectifies women and how that interacts with trauma, C-PTSD and emotional flashbacks. It’s about wanting touch and being uncomfortable with touch, supporting sex workers in action not just words and some experiences with sex work. It’s about systemic oppression, accountability and the problems with “call-out culture”. It’s about being a femme who doesn’t wear makeup, polyamory and depression. It’s about kindness, sobriety, addiction and recovery. It’s about feelings, breaking out of old patterns, change and hope. This issue is, as usual, a mix of thoughts, feelings, experiences, ideas. Personal, political and always blurring those distinctions. It’s honest, heartfelt and hopeful.

“like many writers, like many people in general, i feel a strong urge to just hit backspace and delete it all. the way i wish i could find every copy of some of my old zines and burn them. the way that writing and especially printing makes this all seem so permanent, so final. but it’s not. i know it’s not.”

“when i was working the most frustrating experience was when a client would try to argue down the price… arguing about the cost of my sexual labour is bullshit. i shouldn’t have to do it. if you don’t want to pay it then don’t have sex with me.”

“i know what it’s like to watch my communities do nothing because they like the people who assaulted me and refuse to believe they are “bad”. i am painted as lying, exaggerating, causing drama, etc. when all i want is to feel safe. yet, i know that my rapist didn’t rape me because he is a “bad” person. if only it were that simple.”

seawitch #3

Quarter-size, 32 pages, text-heavy. This zine is about ptsd and trying to do polyamory while having ptsd. It’s about tarot, being gender-nonconforming and being a survivor who believes in nonviolence. It’s about veganism, accessibility and building alliances between people who have non-normative relationships to substance use. This zine was written while struggling with and trying to make sense of a lot of things.

“ethically i believe in polyamory. i know my partner does not belong to me. i know that they have the right to have desires and experiences outside of me. ideally it is what i want. it makes sense to me. but in my body and emotions, i feel horrible.”

“i am a gender-nonconforming femme. i use the pronouns she/her. i have a vulva. i also sometimes have a cock. when my cock is being stroked and sucked, i feel it. it is a part of me.”

“i do not want anyone to ever be assaulted ever again and that includes my rapist and the people who have violently assaulted me. i do not wish them the pain that they caused me.”

seawitch #2

Quarter-size, 40 pages, text-heavy. This zine is about polyamory, working through jealousy and working towards compersion. It’s about tarot, spirituality, trauma, violence, healing and rediscovering inner power. It’s about intoxication culture, sobriety and valuing the voices of addicts and alcoholics, sober and not. It’s about hope and gratitude.

“i think about the girl who yelled at me on the street ‘you fucking liar he didn’t rape you’ and the cops who told me to let it go, to move on because he’s moved on but he’s still messaging me three years later calling me a lying slut. i feel helpless, that’s the truth. i’m exhausted. i’m fucking numb.”

“i was born with all my natural, divinely given instincts in place. i was born to be curious, to honour my own needs, to communicate my own boundaries, to speak my own truth, to be brave, to be honest, to be playful and to engage with life.”

“i want you to have all the joy in this world and all the pleasure and not just from me. i want to hold you in my arms and know that you were in someone else’s arms the night before, that you were held in those arms with love and care.”

seawitch #1

Quarter-size, 40 pages. This text-heavy zine is about friendship, polyamory, love and queerness. It’s about loving being femme, ptsd, depression and internalized ableism. It’s about intoxication culture, spirituality, paganism and being a witch. It’s about fear and surrender.

“i am sitting at a table with a group of friends. across from me is my partner, my best friend, the person i am so in love with. next to me is a person he occasionally goes on dates with. she’s smart and cool and pretty and kind. we’re all laughing and i am feeling my feelings.”

“when we reproduce intoxication culture we create divides in our communities. when we reproduce intoxication culture we hold up a standard of normalcy and desirability that many people die trying to live up to.”

“i adore femmes. i notice and value femme skill sets. i appreciate the diversity and vast difference in the ways femme is embodied.”

from the great above she set her mind on the great below #2

This quarter-size, 24 page zine is about fear, change, things that cannot be put into words, courage and love. It’s about turning twenty-seven, sobriety and recovery, and feeling long buried feelings. It’s about grief, dissociation and trauma. It’s about vulnerability, hope and trusting the process.

“i am beginning to feel my feelings. the deep ones buried at the bottom of the lake. the ones i put down there for safe keeping. never to be felt again. except in drunken rages where they rose to the surface incoherent and violent, spilling forth in eruptions of shame and terror and grief and hatred. only to be buried even deeper in the blur of the hang over.”

from the great above she set her mind on the great below #1

This quarter-size, 48 page perzine is about owning the past and letting go of it. It is about learning to love fiercely and with an open heart. It’s about humility, integrity, recovery and creating a new life in sobriety. It’s about trauma, pain, grief and finding new ways of dealing with these things, instead of just burying or running from the pain. It’s about consent, sexual violence, dissociation, ptsd, addiction and ultimately healing. It’s about forgiveness, hope and new beginnings. Most of all it is about love.

“i am ready to start writing a perzine again and it will be different than the zines i made before. i write this zine explicitly from a place of love. i write this zine from a place of awareness that i need other people. i write this zine from a place of courage and hope. i write this zine because i want to tell a different story.”

significant distress

This is my first ever art zine.

Content warning: psychiatric incarceration and violence.

signifigant distress juxtaposes the archive of psychiatry with the repertoire of ritual from the perspective of a mad witch. The psychiatric archive, with its disinterested, impersonal tone, attempts to capture the psychiatrized person and reduce them to words on a page. This capture and reduction is a symbolic act which mirrors the actual capture and reduction which takes place in the context of psychiatric incarceration. The artist, a psychiatric survivor who also happens to be a witch, literally cuts up the psychiatric archive to free themself from it. The words are then resituated from the sterile pages of the psychiatrist’s note keeping, to the powerful, energetic setting of the witch’s craft. Scenes from the artist’s actual spiritual practice reveal magic to be a welcoming space for madness, a space which can hold madness in all its complexity and wisdom. The violence done to the mad body in the context of psychiatry is here witnessed and addressed in the context of witchcraft.

The Dangerous Powers of Witches: Spirituality, Autonomy, Community and Literacy

This quartersize, 20 page zine is an essay about the Essex Witch Trials. Informative and educational, it goes beyond the historical facts to explore the political implications of the witch trials. Rather than simply considering the event as a persecution of ‘witches’, this zine looks at the construction of the category ‘witch’ and how it was used to justify the torture, murder and oppression of poor, disabled, old and otherwise marginalized women. It explains how even the smallest forms of organization and resistance were considered to be and treated as major threats.

Three of Swords: Beyond Mainstream Narratives of Polyamory

This is a collection of writing that came out of the experience of attempting poly, having a very hard time of it and closing the relationship with the intent of opening it again. The pieces in this zine document a personal journey but they also reflect on larger issues. The zine expresses the realization that mainstream poly lit is extremely over simplistic. Everyone is just expected to ‘own their jealousy’ but there is no political, intersectional analysis. This zine goes beyond that and considers the way that polyamory can be complicated by things like mental health issues, trauma and gender. It considers the impact of misogyny and ableism on polyamory. It also questions the narrative of abundant love through an analysis of trauma and survivorship. This zine holds out hope for polyamory, values and desires polyamory and seeks to create space for more complex narratives within poly community and literature.

Gender: Femme Pronoun: They