Why I Make zines!
It’s International Zine Month, and I’m so excited to spend a month making, sharing, and talking about zines. This will be my third year making zines officially and my first year with the actual professional time to dedicate to my creative projects. I hope to make lots of new zines this month, play around with new formats, explore and share my ever-growing collection of zines, and just generally enjoy the culture of DIY physical media for a whole 31 days.
To kick things off this month, I was reflecting on why I personally make zines. In my adult life, I’ve had many jobs and even career paths, but through it all, I’ve come back to making things myself and putting them out into the world however I can. Over the years, in the down moments of every job, on every break, I’ve written poems, essays, blog posts, podcast scripts, grant pitches, and manifestos. On my days off, I went to art markets, pop-ups, and hosted workshops– usually losing money in the process and loving every second. I’ve generally left the places where I’ve worked (or the fields entirely) because my values were being compromised in some way. I find that zine-making as a genre of creation aligns with my values in a big way, which is why I continue to make and share them as much as possible. Here are some of my values and why they align with zine-making as a creative practice.
The cover of the minizine version of this blog, created for #IZM2025 based on Prompt #1 of @alexwrekk’s 2025 prompt list.
No Hierarchies!
I don’t believe in hierarchy. Nobody should be able to dictate the actions, thoughts, or lives of others. I don’t think that any one source of knowledge is more legitimate than another. The traditional avenues for artists, writers, and thinkers to share their works and insights: academia, publishing, exhibitions, galleries, all come with barriers to entry and difficult-to-navigate power structures. Many voices (particularly marginalized ones) are actively excluded from these spaces, or else passively “forgotten” by those who can afford to forget the struggles and realities of our world. Zines break down all these barriers by being radically accessible. Anyone can make a zine on any topic, and anyone can share a zine. DIY culture embraces the horizontal, the abolishing of power structures, and freedom of expression and radical ideas. My zines have allowed me to speak up about my experience leaving higher education, changing my name, smoking gay weed, and having an X gender marker in the year 2025. I am grateful to be able to freely share my ideas and engage with the freely shared ideas of others, too!
Art Is Activism!
Art is a well-documented form of resistance in movements for justice and liberation, and the creation of art is highly political- especially when made by people who are being actively marginalized and oppressed. In today’s climate of AI, state surveillance, well-funded and sanctioned violence against our communities, war- making art that challenges the status quo, speaks your truth, and attempts to move the needle is more important than ever. We can use art and the easy-to-distribute format of zines to visualize a liberated future, organize our movements, inspire action, build connections, and spread important ideas. We can share what we know about how to survive with each other in a discreet and difficult-to-track format (especially if we’re handwriting our zines). Zines are well-documented as a tool for liberation- check out these digital zine archives for inspiration from zinesters and activists past.
Free Is For Me!
I have a lifelong habit of frugality and “free-first.” I try to make things before I buy them, I wait to pull the trigger on purchases, and I buy secondhand and refurbished as often as I can. I also have an anticapitalist attitude towards making money and running a business. My business is not structured to be a highly-profitable one. My main goal is for my creative projects to sustain themselves, and I aim to keep my expenses and incomes at a net zero. I do get paid for wholesale orders, online orders, workshop gigs, and any money I can make at tables. But often, I give away free or highly discounted zines at markets for folks who need them. I usually have a stash of What’s A Zine minizines on me that I leave in Little Free Libraries when I’m out and about. I encourage trades at my table, and much of my personal art and zine collection has come from these kinds of exchanges. I love to add free stickers and extra minizines to orders that I ship out. I give sliding scale options for workshops. And of course, I offer free digital downloads of all my work so anyone can enjoy them without barriers. I want to share my work more than I want to make a bunch of money off it! I do find that people are usually generous when they can be, sometimes leaving tips at my table or over-paying for their orders. I use these extras to balance it out when someone can’t pay in full or at all, like the pay-it-forward chain at the drive-thru. The good news is, with business practices like these, I can rest assured that I’ll never become a billionaire.
Take Back Your Power: Do It Yourself!
I’m a firm believer in the power of doing it yourself. Especially when taking matters into our own hands can happen within a community, a network of skilled folks sharing their skills and knowledge freely. We can make significant moves happen with our own power. Zines have a long history as a DIY culture staple, often reporting on other DIY actions taking place- be it protests, punk shows, drag balls, or parties. Making zines on your niche interest or skill set and putting them into the world immediately makes the world a more rich and interesting place. Your zines don’t have to be polished, or perfect, or finished, or even good. Just the act of you sitting down to Do Something Yourself (rather than endlessly doomscrolling, or outsourcing your brainpower to a robot) and creating something out of nothing is powerful. We have to use the muscles we don’t wish to lose, so flex small rebellions and creative flow and hard puzzles and handwritten letters and complex problems and see what comes out of it.
Connection and Community!
Zines are an excellent antidote to the polarization and fracturing that we are seeing in our world today. Zinemakers are a wonderfully diverse and welcoming community of folks who usually love to make stuff together, so it’s pretty easy to get involved and make new connections both digitally and physically. Even if you’re just a zine enthusiast, fests, indie bookstores, and alternative economy spaces tend to lean on the “welcoming and accepting” side and there is a wealth of cool art to enjoy. Making and sharing zines across differences builds empathy and connection, and there are so many different perspectives you can engage with out there. I hear from folks all the time that my zines provide a Queer perspective that resonates with them or their loved one. Some of my favorite interactions are with the folks who come by my table unfamiliar with Queerness and come away with a zine series that will help them explore their gender, or a perzine about my experiences as a nonbinary transmasc person. I hope that they end up with empathy and understanding for my experience. Zines provide a window into each other’s realities, and it’s important for us to keep making and sharing things with each other within our communities, and connect rather than divide.
Never Stop Exploring!
I love being curious, trying new things, attempting to master new skills, giving myself challenges and seeing what I can learn from doing something a new way. Zines have no boundaries, no limits on creative potential. I’ve seen CD mixtape zines, interactive pull-out-book zines, quilted zines, mini-minizines, digital zines. There are so many cool people making cool stuff, and it’s easy to be inspired in the zine-making world. I like to make zines about things I enjoy, or else on topics I get to dive deep into and learn all about. I also often use zines as a place to try new creative mediums or techniques, and I get to practice my artistic skills every time along the way. It’s fun to try new things with no pressure to have it be perfected, and to just see what comes from the exploration.
These are just a few of the reasons I make zines, and how they align with my values. This International Zine Month, I hope you join us as we all make zines and share them with each other and celebrate this iconic and important DIY medium.
