Sage / Sweet Candy Distro
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.’
Sarah Sawyers-Lovett
Amazing Grace
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
Better Days: Stuff that helps with all this anxiety
cute drawings chronically the things sarah does to help with anxiety, from holding her pet hedgehog to staying up late, to focusing on a friend, finding some structure, and more. Inspiring. Makes me want to make one too.
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Laid Stuff I wish I’d known about SEX before I started having it
Info on masturbation, your first time, sex feeling good and how it doesn’t always feel good, learning to communicate, self image, saying no, being queer, and more. Tons of stuff piled into this tiny little zine.- Cindy Crabb
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A Practical Guide to Fighting Monsters: winning against the enemies of your heart and your head.
Drawings and facts about some of the misters that live in all of our minds, and some tips on banishing them. A very playful take on dealing with our insecurities and bad habits.
16 pages halfsize. B&W
I love this zine. Each page is a funny picture of a monster, what it does, what it’s weakness is, and a quote. Like Blue Phunk, N. Sentient, Toady Brownnoser, Vex Tantrum. Super funny and good way to identify problematic self tendencies and how to combat them with humor.- Cindy Crabb
Dangerous Damsels Feminist Fairy Tales
6 writers rewrite traditional fairy tales or write their own. They are well written and cool and sometimes scary. I love fairy tales, and love this zine. The small font is a little hard to read, but worth it.
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From watching john water’s movies, to how making you own movies can change your world, coming off painkillers and healing from trauma. Zines as self care and activist burnout. What I love most about this zine is the variety of ideas and experiences shared within.
36 pages Half size. B&W
Everybody Else’s Girl (published by Sweet Candy Press, 2013)
Set in Tazewell, Virginia, a town whose wholesome storefronts and country charm hide an undercurrent of poverty and lawlessness, Everybody Else’s Girl tells the story of growing up poor amid unspeakable violence. Broken-down trailer parks and gritty classrooms provide the background for this story of a girl searching for her voice.
Trigger Warning –
This book deals with heavy subject matter, such as addiction, sexual abuse, and violence. Please read with care.
Audio Recording of an untitled book. (Live From The Writer’s House, 12/14)
Sari
you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania
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]
Neither Doll Houses nor Tree Houses: On Living Outside of the Gender Binary
Finished in under 24 hours for the 2012 Chicago Zine Fest, this zine focuses on the ups and downs of finding myself outside of the gender binary and attempts to both de- and re-construct various questions about my own gender as well as gender in general. Three separate sections discuss feeling pushed out of femininity, how masculinity is viewed as inherent and femininity is viewed as a fictitious performance, how striving for the “perfect balance” of two genders is not plausible nor an adequate solution, acceptance or tolerance (or neither) that I feel in specific spaces, how my radical friends misgender and disrespect me more often than my non-radical ones, the (non-) accessibility of queer jargon and language, how coming out has garnered me the most intense gender assumptions yet, dealing with friends who don’t “get it”, my desire to validate my own identity without stepping on the identity of others, and checking white privilege. March 2012. 32 pgs, ½ size, B&W. $2-3 or trade.
Thou Shalt Not Talk about the White Boys’ Club: Challenging the Unwritten Rules of Punk
Touted as being a home for society’s rejects, outcasts, and ‘alternative’ political stances, punk unfortunately often ends up reinforcing oppressive mindsets and ideals by setting up numerous unwritten rules for dress, behavior, personal choices, identifications, and so much more. This zine aims to direct conscious attention to the nuances of being a marginalized person, namely a woman, queer person, or POC, in the punk community. Includes questions intended to incite dialogue among readers and their friends as well as a short list of recommended resources concerning marginalized experiences in punk. B&W, 34 pages, & text heavy.
Survivors Manchester
Twenty lads in Manchester come together to tell the collective journey of breaking their silence to find healing in the hope of helping others.
Suzy Subways
The Propaganda Maker
Short story (fiction) by the amazing Suzy Subways. Suzy is a really good writer. This story I don’t exactly know how to descibe – it is about a person who is basically imprisioned, living in a part of a bridge with someone who makes propaganda. Sometimes she gets out – turning into rat and sneeking out. The whole story is kind of creepy and really intriguing and seems like it’s symolic for various policial and emotional and realtional things.- Cindy Crabb
The Eyes of the Man
this is a fiction story by my friend Suzy Subways. it’s about a girl who kills her mom’s rapist. and about queerness and activism – Cindy Crabb
Delivery Dyke (1996, about my adventures as a pizza delivery girl in Brooklyn)
Subways (2003, with stories and interviews about NYC communities)
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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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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sleepswthghosts
Beautiful Mess Issue 5 – Emotional Vomit
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Sophie Crow / Oyster Knife
Wank – an illustrated book of female masturbation MATURE by Sophie Crow published by Oyster Knife
Sophie says:
“I have always been fascinated by the diversity of sexual expression and experimentation that humans engage in. One day I came across an internet forum where women explained their favorite ways to masturbate, I was really surprised at the diversity and inventiveness so started collecting stories and illustrating the most visually striking.”
Bizarre Magazine says: “For succinctness and simplicity the 28-page book certainly hits the spot. Tales confessed here transform everyday objects, such as TV remotes and door frames, into weapons of mass orgasm, and the drawings are likably quirky.”
This is a book about female masturbation, it takes 12 real life confessions found online of the inventive ways that woman masturbate and sensitively illustrates them.
There are 12 line drawings of women of all varieties enjoying themselves in intriguing and fascinating ways.
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South Kilburn Studios
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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SweetMayhemZinery
Pinterest Interest! ZinePinterest Interest! is 24 black-and-white pages in a quarter-size format. The zine explores Pinterest from top to bottom: the editor looks at what’s on Pinterest and thinks about why it’s there, reveals Pinterest’s top topics, and talks about some Pinterest characteristics that annoy her. Plus, she offers some potential innovative uses of Pinterest, and answers your burning question: Is there porn on Pinterest?
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Sugar Paper Gang
20 tings to make and do.
The space issue, with recipes, crocheted planets, fabric marbling, X Files cross stitch, fizzy bath stars, which alien are you quiz and much more!
Comes with free headpins and beads to make constellation jewellery!
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Synchronise Witches Press + Zine Distro
the chapess zine #4‘There’s a strange disconnect somewhere between Being Too Much and yet not Taking Up Enough Space, which sound like they should at least resemble each other, or that one should be en route to the other. I think that I am Too Much, and it feels like I am oozing all over the floor. I tell myself that I need to learn to Take Up Space, and Taking Up Space seems like it should look like something more solid, something that knows how to express its well-formed opinions calmly and yet with force.’ – Aimee Wall
a special A4 edition of the Chapess zine – produced for the Turn The Page Artists’ book fair, 18 contributors over 26 pages.
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Synthetic Fluff Zines
Zines about being femme, queer and disabled, anarcho-feminism, mental health, relationships and lots more.
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Activist Journeys 