This zine came in the mail and there what something really unnerving and intriguing about the cover. Something about this zine reminds me of the 90s, but it is current. It feels familiar and it is awesome. It is written by a fictitious “Jonas” for a friend in the hospital to, you know, cheer the eff up. So, if you need some cheering up you should get this zine. (I met “Jonas” at the Chicago Zine Fest and he is actually really cool and no unnerving at all!) -AW
I wasn’t really sure what a second issue of this zine would be like but it is also really great. There are like a billions layers going on in this zine by “Jonas” and it totally engrossed me. I’ll just put this line from the intro “What you’re about to read is part fiction & part true but all the important parts are true” I’d like to think all zines are that way, but maybe this one more than most. -AW
I won’t lie, I love this zine! I also really like Jonas, the guy who makes it. But I gotta say that this zine confuses me but interests me and makes me want to keep reading. In this intro to this issue Jonas touches on how hard it is to describe this zine by saying it is about “MEH” is a horrible way to describe this zines! I mean, not horrible in the way that people who don’t understand humans might write off this zine because they found the cover confusing. But horrible in the “you spent a lot of love and time putting it together and you owe to your zine to have a better answer.”
CHEER THE EFF UP! walks a fine line between fiction and reality and has characters that might be real people with conversation may be written as they should have come out by not necessary did come out. Reading this zine is like being in an alternate reality that exists in Jonas’s head, and I think I really like that reality.
This issues touches on thoughts during different meals with co-workers and friends, something about a cake pony and Future Wives. Also stuff about Occupy Wall Street, the NATO summit Protests, and Cancer (the stupid disease, not the Zodiac sign)
Is it truth? Is it fiction? Doesn’t matter! it’s great! Issue #4 of Cheer the Eff Up talks about growing up awkward. It’s about anxiety and depression and how to cope. It’s about being male without anyone showing you what to do with your feelings or how to grow into your body. Jonas writes about his friends and how they help him, encounters with others that make an impact on him, and working a 9-5 job for 10 years and counting.
I love Cheer the Eff Up, and this issue is no exception. -KA
Cheer the Eff Up #5“The longer I work an office job, the older I get, the stronger I feel about anarchism.” More wonderful stories including all the best charactors/friends, the old highschool FTL crew (the way we form cohesion), wanting to be part of a community again but feeling alienated. Stories about his dad and grandpa, and finding out he’s going to have a son after wishing he’s have a daughter. The ways identity can describe but not define.the way bell hooks talks about saying “I advocate feminism” rather than “I am a feminist, focusing on belief rather than which box you fall into.
This is the very last issue of CHEER THE EFF UP whih makes me really sad because I love this zine. Jonas intended this zine to be like letters to his kid with storeis about struggle and friends and expereinces, but I think in the end this series of zines will prove to also be letters to future Jonas about where he came from and how he got to wherever future Jonas is.
This issue examines death and loss (not always related to death) and how we deal with it, but in this really conversational way that isn’t burdensome or heavy.
Also, Jonas is a father now and that makes this whole zine series all the more real.
Fixer Eraser, four brand-new issues bundled together as one!
Sticking Around #3After a trying end to the summer, I do my best to keep positive by going for it and playing shows. Surprisingly positive results to my efforts.
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Exploring my interest in home recording and grappling with lack of confidence in my musical abilities. Trying to support friends when their house burns down & our friend goes into a coma after falling off his bike.
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In “Sticking Around #1” I write about staying in the same town after graduating from college, and post-college life/ anxieties in general. I talk about trying to maintain friendships when people moveaway, entering the work force via a vegan cafe, and an anxiety dream (about oatmeal?!?)
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Perzine Mythologising Me 10 zine
The usual trope about me not being able to make any kind of life decision whatsoever. I also talk about ‘treat yo’self’, paper rounds, falling in love with Manchester and organising Northwest Zinefest.
If you want to request pink, orange or yellow say so in the comments or I will surprise you! 🙂
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Reverse Cougar Years by Maxx
The Reverse Cougar Years #3
I’ve been meaning to get this one in stock for a while, and here it is! This perzine is divided into two different topics – in the first half, Maxx writes about being a woman working as a sound technician, something that’s quite uncommon (in the real world, and also in zines – how many sound techs do you know??), and everything that comes along with it. Not just sexism in the workplace, but also a history of how she got into the profession, and a little checklist on how to not be a jerk to your soundperson. The last half is about anxiety – an exploration of her mental health both on and off of pharmaceutical medication, situations that can trigger panic attacks, important happenings and relationships that have contributed to her mental health and outlook on life, et cetera. Totally engaging read, and a nice introduction to a new friend!
The Reverse Cougar Years #4
In the previous issue, we learned about Maxx’s experiences working as a sound technician. In this one, we follow her as she joins a crew setting up audio equipment for an outdoor winter festival – lugging heavy equipment through the snow, and working with a bunch of dudes. It all starts when she goes out to buy steel-toe workboots only to find that smaller women’s sizes are tougher to get a hold of, and that PINK boots are on offer. At work, she notices casual sexism and homophobia coming from her co-workers. As a feminist, and someone who studied political philosophy in school, she finds it difficult to simply turn off that switch that makes her aware of those microaggressions. But at the same time, she calls herself on the assumptions she’d originally made about her co-workers, and the way she believed herself to know better because of her university education. I think we’ve all been in those situations where we have to decide when and if it’s okay to call a person out on these things, and whether it’s worth simply continuing to get to know them better, which is what Maxx does. As a woman working in a male-dominated field, this is a situation she is constantly learning and re-learning to navigate. Ironically, after the whole steel-toe boot debacle, she winds up at home with an unrelated foot injury and indeed writes this zine during the healing process. I gotta say, she is a really excellent storyteller.
The Reverse Cougar Years #5
If you know me, you know that I love a good OkCupid story, and this zine is full of ’em. Maxx begins by telling us a bit about her dating history and her decision to join the popular dating website – namely, loneliness, living among a small dating pool (punks!), and a desire to explore something outside of heteronormative monogamous relationships. This issue features the bold femme, the political speech writer (can you guess how it went?), and the hipster. So great!
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This is our zine cover, it was drawn by David Zacharis of The Smittens!
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Pieces by Nichole
Pieces 6: On Commuiting One of my favorite zines is back in print for a short time!
This text-heavy issue of Pieces was written in 2011 and is filled with stories about my first month commuting to a job in Chicago via the South Shore electric line from Indiana. This journalesque issue touches on changes, human isolation, connectivity, and transient strangers.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 86 pages : Text-heavy
Pieces 6.5 / My Aim is True 5This split zine was made with my friend Carrie. We tell two very different stories about body image, but when you get to the salt of each narrative, the feelings are quite similar. Pieces covers an acceptance of acne and scarring. My Aim is True covers acceptance with weight. Both are about the need for self-discovery, self-love, and the people who helped get us get where we are today.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 82 pages
Pieces 8: On Twelve Years of Running
This text-heavy zine is a series of snapshots of the last twelve years. Stories include: avoiding therapy and medication for fear of stigma, starting intermittent therapy, and finally–twelve years later–beginning continual therapy and medication . This zine is a narrative of the constant battle of wanting help but working hard to appear as normal.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 64 pages : Text-heavy
Pieces 8.5 / The Flip SideThis is a split zine I did with my mother for the 24-hour Zine Thing. Zines have been a way for me to communicate with her some difficult things about myself, and I wanted her to share this medium of expression with her. I was delighted when she accepted! This is a lighthearted zine filled with stories about the library, transient pets, a recipe, favorite numbers, quotes, and blackout poetry.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 36 pages
Pieces 9: On Death / The Escape Artist 11
This is a split I did with Jolie Ruin about death, grieving, and the questions we have about how something so weighty fits into our everyday experiences.
Perzine : 1/2 size : 32 pages : Text-heavy
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This is a split zine with Carrie of My Aim is True and Gender Matters.
Carrie writes about her right to exist as a fat woman, how life is too short to remain angry, street harassment, and things to remember being in the world as a fat person.
I write about accepting myself as I am: acne, scars, depression, and everything else, how I’ve come to embrace (and like!) my acne scarring, weight standing in the way of starting medication, and how conversation can be the most healing thing of all.
Perzine : 1/4 legal size : 50 pages
Pieces 11: On Connecting Through Friendships, Letters & Zines
This text-heavy zine is about connecting with others through friendships, letters, long distance acquaintanceship, and zines. Stories include moving beyond diagnoses, courage found through zines, slipping letters to strangers in coffee shops, a girl on the bus, creating second homes, and Chicago Zine Fest 2014.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 56 pages : Text-heavy
Pieces 12: On TravelAn issue about my solo travels of Summer 2014. Places visited include Seattle, Portland, Toronto, and Sleeping Bear Dunes. This overarching narrative highlights folks I met along the way, the homes I stayed in, friends, strangers, a DeLorean, 2014’s Portland Zine Symposium, stargazing, finding Self in unknown places, and a whole bunch more.
Perzine : 1/4 size : 82 pages : Text-heavy
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high on burning photographs by Ocean Capewell
i feel a little weird about the fact that these random people scanned in the entirety of issue #4 without even sending me an email and making sure it’s ok. buuut….i know they only did it because they really liked it. and i like this issue a lot too. so here you go!
on sobriety, singledom, and the world’s single best proposal: “will you, ocean capewell, by my a-official law unabiding partner in oil can romping, floor stomping, catchphrase poppin, jawdropping, mischief-copping amazement, till our travels do us part?”
issue #5
a split with a friend who was incarcerated at the time.
issue #10“I love ocean’s stories. This zine includes sections from the memoir they wrote and then decided not to publish when they found out one of the main characters is a rapist… Obviousy, they don’t reprint the parts about that person, but do include wonderful stories about their first “punk community” in Philly when they were 19, with big queer dance parties. Drag night, race and gender and sex. Also stories about oceans life now, working as a social worker in SanFrancisco, and how shitty people in the tech industry are about homelessness, socialwork, and everything.” – Cindy Crabb
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Marked For Life by Sage
I write the zines Tattooed Memoirs, Hard Knox, and Marked For Life & edit the comp zine, FAT-TASTIC!
Marked For Life #8- bus stories
24 pages/Quarter size
Sage writes, “My intentions were to fill issue #8 with stories about weird and funny things that happened while riding the city bus in Olympia, Wa, but soon after starting on the zine, I realized quite a few of my stories revolved around my anxiety and how it affected my bus rides. I wrote about the various characters I met on the bus, memorable moments, awkward moments, a bus ride panic attack, and DIY anxiety tips for bus riders.”
I began to have many irrational thoughts. Would I get on the right bus? Would the bus driver stop when I pulled the signal? How would I know where to get off? The questions ran on and on in my brain like a movie reel spinning out of control.
Marked For Life #10 – V is for Vitiligo
24 pages/Quarter size
Sage writes about being diagnosed with the skin disease, vitiligo at age 10 and the ups and downs that came along with it. She shares stories, facts (both weird and not-so weird) and also how she feels about having vitiligo 17 years later.
‘I ended up getting a tribal piece that goes over my knee cap and down my shin to cover my vitiligo. Go ahead and laugh, tribal was a dumb choice, but it was the 90s and that was all the rage with one of my tattoo artists. I don’t mind it so much though. I like how bold it is and it makes me feel like a piece of armor is protecting me.’
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Tazwell’s Favorite Eccentric by Sarah Sawyers-Lovett
Retrospect: A Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric Zinethology
Selections from Sarah Sawyers-Lovett’s long-running zine, Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric, have been collected and showcased in this paperback book. In between the covers lay stories of growing up poor, queer and lonely in a conservative small town in Virginia, building and losing communities and friendships,loss, abusive relationships, survival, balloon artistry, and finding hope and love. Picking up where Sawyers-Lovett left off with her first autobiographical novel Everybody Else’s Girl, her poetic voice and raw honesty will continue to let you witness the breaking apart of life, and will dare you to watch as she puts the pieces back together.
Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric #16: Saying Goodbye
Stories about growing up in Tazewell (rural) Virginia, and recounting her 23 year long friendship with her best friend – starting at age 10, some really funny stories, some really sad. I love thinking about knowing someone for that long, and tracing back your life in connection with a friend like that. – Cindy Crabb
Safe Home #1: Thoughts and Stories about home and friendship
A new zine by Sarah of Tazewell’s… This issues is about finding a way to make a Safe Home in Philladelphia, after growing up in one that wasn’t. about how scary it was to move to a city, trying to find ways to fit in or find people to relate to, working as a professional balloon artist and dating girls. “May be the safest homes are communities based on mutual support and respect…” finding a life that she never knew she could want because she didn’t know it existed. – Cindy Crabb
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you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania by Sari
Issue #6 includes my attempt to investigate the traces of anxiety, depression, suicide, and alcoholism in my family’s history as well as my own difficulties with these issues. Eight sections discuss: the secrecy surrounding my family’s history of suicides, a recent suicide in my family, my issues with anxiety and pushing emotions aside, my reoccuring suicidal thoughts and how my identities intersect with them, talking with a fellow queer/trans friend struggling with suicide, assessing my tumultuous relationship with alcohol and deciding to become consciously sober, what I can do to manage and deal with things, and what I plan to do in the future. There is a trigger warning for the zine relating to depression, anxiety, suicide, self-harm, alcoholism, sexual assault, and abuse – please take care of yerself before you read this. It is intense.Extremely text heavy, B&W, 1/4 size, 46 pages. $3 US / $4 international (includes shipping), or trade! [February 2012]
Issue #7 is about queerness, introversion, and friendship theory.
In the 5 sections of this zine, sari attempts to hash out their thoughts on the process of making and keeping friends, how their various identities intersect and affects friendships, the spaces in which friendships are cultivated or cut off, and how they can improve their friendship skills.
this zine is B&W, 1/4 size, 38 pages, & text heavy.
Issue #8 is about memory loss, queer(y)ing growth, and teen advice.
When working on a piece for Hoax #9: Feminisms and Vulnerabilities, I initially intended to take the queer advice framework of writing to one’s theoretical teen self and flip it on its head by creating a fictionalized direct dialogue with my ten-years-younger self. After taking much time investigating different ways to enact this, I scrapped the idea altogether—I had a lot of internal dialogue about why I didn’t want to follow the queer advice road much traveled and realized that I couldn’t give voice to myself in the past because I was almost totally estranged from my memories and feelings from that time period. In this zine, which is a much-expanded version of the piece featured in Hoax #9, I discuss the complications I have seemingly always had with remembering things, reconceptualizing the past to more adequately place myself in the future, and ideas to share with non-normative teens and young adults for navigating tough situations.
B&W, 1/2 size, 24 pages, & text heavy.
Issue #9 is all about reflections of being sober for 2 years, how to support your sober friends, and difficult realizations I had to make once I became sober. [February 2014]
For the longest time I thought countless difficulties I faced before I became sober would magically vanish by quitting drinking – but eventually I came to the realizations that I hadn’t made concrete plans for life post-booze and sobriety wasn’t the super fun root beer keg party I assumed it was going to be. I became cognizant that my issues with sobriety were innately tied into some deep hurts concerning anxiety, trauma, sexual assault, bar culture, and much more. In the 4 sections of this zine, I attempt to take stock of my mistakes and hurts over the past two years, showcase some misconceptions about sobriety that I have come up against, explain my attempts to battle my insecurity over continuing to stick to sobriety, and give some suggested pointers for folks who would like to support their sober friends and community members.
This zine is B&W, 1/4 size, 38 pages, & text heavy.
Issue #10 is about internalized homophobia, waiting for friendships to form, coping with abusive relationships, using men as “beards” and dating them to access social spaces and to survive in a heterosexist small-town environment, survivorship, and using anger as a means of self-sufficiency. [November 2014]
[youvegotafriendinpa@gmail.com]
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Ellipsis by Sarah-Beth
A6 size | 26 pages | pink cover with blue print (insides black and white)
Published in March 2015. Writing about sex, libido and medication, being diagnosed with a B12 deficiency, growing up and making changes.
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Phases of the Moon by Selenographie
Phases of the Moon 02: i’m ready to grow young again
(Jan 2007, 36 pages, quarter-sized)
description: reconciling my past with the present, resisting burnout, recapturing the fearlessness & wonderment of childhood, dealing with post-partum/adoption grief & depression, leaving chicago, new romance in georgia.
excerpt: “David & I are sitting on his front porch. It is January and it is sixty-five degrees outside and I am happy to be back in the dirty sweet south. We are listening to Gogol Bordello: in the old times, in the old times, in the old times it was not! a! crime! He’s smoking; I’m reading Howard Zinn. ‘We should build a time machine,’ he says. I put my book down & look purposefully at the precarious stack of cardboard boxes in the corner. ‘Absolutely!’ This is a year of yesses, and I speak in absolutes.”
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Beautiful Mess by sleepswthghosts
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One of My Kind (oomk) is a highly visual, handcrafted small-press publication. Our content largely pivots upon the imaginations, creativity and spirituality of women.
OOMK is present in print, online and in creative events and workshops. For more information about OOMK visit our press page. If you’d like to submit articles or artwork to oomk.net or OOMK Zine please visit our submissions page.
We are Sofia Niazi, Rose Nordin, Heiba Lamara and Sabba Khan.
OOMK is based in South Kilburn Studios in North London.
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Ladyteeth #2 is finished (as of eleven oclock last night) & I want you to read it. I guess this would be the 8th issue of Sub Rosa zine but things change. I wanted (needed) to start fresh.
This zine is about being/feeling/reclaiming “crazy” & how that affects every single thing. This zine is about new love & how that happens after old, broken love, about traveling to Portland for the zine symposium, cuddling chickens in Olympia, watching the sunset from the Space Needle in Seattle. It’s about hiking volcanoes, Kurt Cobain, sobriety & feminism. This zine is a love letter to zines & life. It is a radical guide to self-care & self-love. This zine is for you.
lady teeth 3 / your secretary 15 split zine
This zine is a split between Lady Teeth #3 & Jami Sailor’s Your Secretary #15.
Lady Teeth #3 is about going on a zine tour & what that is like for someone with brutal anxiety. It’s about dealing with depression & self-doubt when all you want is to feel hopeful. It’s about having a heart full of good intentions but being fucked over by your own survival skills. This issue of Lady Teeth is just as honest & raw as the last two.
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Your Secretary #15 is so good it makes me so thrilled to have it be the other side of my first split. Jami writes about what it feels like to constantly try to believe in the good intentions of others while not questioning your own intentions but trusting yourself. Jami is an “extreme extrovert” & yet, I feel like our brains are so similar, we just process in opposite ways which makes this zine that much more interesting. This zine is about the struggle of writing, of dealing, of living.
40 pages / quarter letter / made with love
Lady Teeth #4 is about relationships, not just those of a romantic nature but friendships & family too. It’s about traveling & spending time with people who “get you” & about living side by side with people who might not. It’s about the complications of maintaining friendships when you sometimes have trouble maintaining your own emotional stability. This issue also has a follow-up to the “Radical Act of Self-Care & Learning to Love Yourself” which is my guide to feeling better & surviving. It’s about staying sober in order to stay ok. It’s about living up to everyone’s expectations while letting yourself down & how you can fight that feeling.
This zine is intense, maybe triggering. It’s about death & abuse, love & survival. It’s quarter letter & 40 pages. I tried to be honest, to write from my heart. I’m not perfect, neither is my heart. But this zine is an attempt to work through shit that is happening in my life, my head, my heart.
It’s 1/4 legal & 30 text heavy pages of miserable heartache with a glimmer of hope. It’s a breakup zine mostly but it’s also about San Francisco & Ladies Rock Camp. This zine is about people in my life dying & going off my meds. It’s about Internet dating & falling for heavily tattooed babes from up north.
Lady Teeth zine 6Lady Teeth #6 is a tiny mini zine that is huge & emotional & probably the best writing I’ve done in a long time.
I sat down & purged everything I had been choking on for months. This is a text heavy itty bitty secret.
This issue of Lady Teeth is a split zine of sorts. It’s a collection of correspondence between my friend Jonas & I. It’s questions asked & sometimes answered. It’s friends trying to helped each other figure things out & it’s painfully, brutally honest.
Quarter legal / 30p
Tiger Stripes by Trish Segundo
Tiger Stripes: bodiesI am a mother and an organic farmer in rural missouri. The tiger stripes project came about because of my need to heal my relationship with my body. It came about because of a strong need to share with others around body shame and, together, learn how to heal. The project exists in the physical form of a zine – a small self-published magazine full of photos, my writings, and interviews with other women.
YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL by Takru Dearest
YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL #22
summer 2015 i asked my friends for writing prompts / what they would like to read about via twitter and ended up writing about my garden, mummy parcels, the x-files and snack time.
16 pages – quarter size
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SRVIV by Sari
SRVIV #1
The new zine, a collaboration. 52 pages, about how we survive and why.
SRVIV #2
The second installment of this excellent comp zine that answers the question “Why do you keep going?”
Pieces by: Jessie Duke, Julia Eff, Amber Garza, Adam Gnade, Marya Errin Jones, Eleni Mandell, John Jughead, Pierson, Trace Ramsey, Sarah, Sawyers-Lovett, Sari, Elizabeth Thompson, Anna Vo
(I really wanted to write for this and I hope there will be another one and I hope I can pull my thoughts of what gets me out of bed in the morning together)- Alex
“Includes stories by a bunch of friends and zine writers: talking about coffee and cats and crazy and politics and coping and thriving.” – Cindy Crabb
SRVIV #3
It’s the third and final episode of the incredibly excellent compilation series that asks “What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning?” This issue of inspiring, hard, heavy, sad, beautifulness was curated by Jonas of Fixer/Eraser zine and has work from Joshua James Amberson of Antiquated Future, punk legend Alice Bag, Kelli Callis, Radical Domesticity’s Emma Karin Eriksson, Jenna Freedman, Nyxia Grey, Jennie Hinchcliff, Jim Joyce, Kendy Paxia, Artnoose, Liz Mayorga, Matthew Moyer, Aaron Weber, Jazz McGinnis, Jami Sailor, and Alex Wrekk! Total powerhouse this one
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Activist Journeys 