Zine community is important to me. I have a friend who makes Echo Publishing, and she does a ton for the zine community. I’m so grateful to her! Echo Publishing has been going for 21 years.
Recently my friend posted her zine reads from May of this year, and a couple zines by me are mentioned favorably. Permaculture for a Pair, and poetry zine Hat Genius 23. I love my friend’s appreciation! And I love reading about the zines she reads, so I can get a sense of what else is going on in the zine community and how I fit in. Please see the post, at Echo Publishing.
I’ve been doing zines for a long time too, and I definitely have zine friends I trade, share, and connect with. But the zine community is vast, and people make zines for all sorts of reasons. I can’t always relate to people who make zines unlike the kinds I make.
Sometimes I feel old and different. I’m middle aged. I feel like a magic word machine–turn the handle, and words pop out, like from a music box. I’m writing away, on blogs and zines, doing my thing. Yes, I like context, but I would do this even on my own, if zines had been my own invention.
connected
My friend at Echo Publishing stays way more connected than I do, and writes about that. So I’m grateful to the people who do it that way. She does so much for the zine community, it mystifies me!
It’s fun to see how her other work ties in, like with Lavender Witch. I was singing one of my favorite Lavender Witch songs just the other day. It’s partly about TERFs.
Zines and radical mental health have given me most of the friends I have. Well, the UU church gave me one of my closest friends. And penpalling has helped a lot too. I love these people.
