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Category Archives: zines
recently-donated zines
excited and grateful for four new zines recently donated to the zine mobile — now available for checkout! — thanks to the zine-makers who made and sent them!
* a thousand times yes: reflections on yoko ono, by Kate Angell
* Adam Gnade’s Do It Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin Sad
* 5iren5 and Death in a Rifle Garden, poetry zines by John Vincent Greco
Next stop: Tucson!
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15th! 6:00 at the Dunbar-Spring Community Garden —> zine reading (anyone/everyone encouraged to read), open library hours, and maybe some zine-making…. please come and spread the word! The zine mobile will be parked at the corner of UNIVERSITY and 11th AVE!!
photo by Follow Eric, from Albuquerque Zine Fest!
Next stop: Denver!
Fly Away Zine Mobile at the Denver Zine Library!
Look through the zines in both collections and join us for a possible impromptu zine reading!
Thursday, October 4 at 7pm
2727 West 27th Avenue, Denver CO
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Twin Cities Zinefest this weekend!
Source: City Pages Blog
While the newspaper and book industries are floundering, the self-publishing world of zines appears to be flourishing. The Twin Cities Zine Fest, now in its ninth year, will demonstrate exactly why this is at its daylong showcase of the art form. The event brings in over 60 exhibitors who will welcome guests to shop, trade, and chat with local DIY artists. Do you make your own zines? If you didn’t sign up for a table in time, bring one to share at the free pop-up booth. There will also be demonstrations and info on screen printing for cheap, a release celebration for the Twin Cities Zinefest Encyclopedia, a children’s table, and the Fly Away Zine Mobile, a 1997 Chevy Astro that functions as a free library/skill share boasting over 1,000 zines and a few musical instruments (ukelele anyone?) available to borrow. The festival kicks off on Friday night at a pre-party at Boneshaker Books (2002 23rd Ave. S., Minneapolis), where from 6 to 9 p.m. guests can read zines, enjoy vegan snacks from Josh Ploeg, and meet with fellow enthusiasts. For more info, visit zinefest.org. — By Jessica Armbruster
Price: free
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Interviews the Zine Mobile!!!!
Huge thanks to Jude Vachon, Librarian and Instructor at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, for the interview. Tried to reblog it properly, but that wouldn’t work, so copied and pasted below. Please find the original HERE!
1. Hi! Tell us who you are! What’s the Fly Away Zine Mobile?
Hi! I’m debbie rasmussen, driver and curator of the Fly Away Zine Mobile. The zine mobile is a free lending library, self-publishing skill-sharer, and mini reading room that travels around North America, organizing/supporting events around literacy and self-publishing and hosting open library/reading hours. There are currently about 1,500 zines in the collection; current sections include Do-It-Yourself/How-To; Healing and Wellness; Prisons/By Prisoners; Personal/Autobiographical; Comics/Drawings; Cooking/Food; Field Guides/Place-Related; Political; Parenting; Zines by Kids; Poetry; Librarian-Made Zines; and Animal-Related Zines. The lending policy is loose; I try to let people keep things if they want while also preserving a solid chunk of the collection (people are always excited to donate their zines, and/or sometimes their whole zine collection, so this has been easy). The zine mobile’s current form is a 1997 Chevy Astro Van, but I’ve been on the lookout for a larger vehicle that runs on diesel so it can be converted to run on waste veggie oil.
2. When did you start the project? Why did you start the project?
I started dreaming of a traveling self-publishing library/skill-sharer when I was on my way out at Bitch Magazine, where I was working as publisher/director. It was partly a way to realize a lifelong dream of living/working mobile and partly a way to encourage/inspire people to express themselves without waiting for acceptance or approval from, say a magazine or book publisher. Our acceptance rate of article proposals at Bitch was around 10% (so 90% of what people were submitting to us was rejected), which was common for magazines. I’d submitted an article proposal to Bitch myself when I was in grad school, and was rejected, so I knew firsthand how discouraging it could be!
What finally helped get the project out of my head and into the world were librarians Jenna Freedman, who invited me along on a librarian-zinester tour and Lacey Prpic Hedtke, who was starting a garage-based zine library in Minneapolis and who donated all the duplicates to the zine mobile project. The zine mobile was officially launched in Minneapolis in May 2011, and it had its first voyage the next month — three librarians and I met in New Orleans at the American Library Association Conference, and did a 9-city zinester librarian tour that ended in Milwaukee, at the Zine Librarians Unconference. I didn’t realize until that tour was over how fortunate I was that the zine mobile was really positioned as a legitimate library because of this original journey.
3. How has the project been for you to do? What have you learned/enjoyed/experienced??
I love living on the road — it’s been a dream of mine since I was little, when I wanted to be a trucker. People have been encouraging, enthusiastic, and generous in their support for the project, which has helped keep me going. What’s been the most challenging — and I never would’ve expected this when I set out on the road — is the amount of aggression aimed at me while on the road. I drive fairly slow — for reasons of safety, to minimize gas consumption, and because it’s the pace of life I’m looking to live now — and people often express their frustration with me about this. And I’d say the other biggest challenge is that the zines world is, relatively speaking, pretty small, so I spend a lot of energy/time explaining what zines are, and sometimes that feels discouraging and tiring. Of the many highlights was the first youth-centered zine-making event I did. I was way more accustomed to doing zine workshops with adults, so when a public library in Oakland asked me to come, I was very nervous. I’d asked a friend who was much more accustomed to working with kids to join me, but at the last minute, she couldn’t make it. I almost canceled because I was so nervous. But about three minutes after the event started, I was totally at ease because I immediately realized that one amazing thing about working with young ones is that they don’t have the same perfectionistic expectations that many of us adults do — they were so happy to be making something, they didn’t care if they cut crooked or colored outside the lines. There was a table full of young kids with their moms, and I kept getting teary-eyed because I was just so moved and excited about their process and what they were creating.
4. Why are zines important to you?
Self-expression is important to me, no matter what form that expression takes. I’ve always been deeply moved by both reading and writing, so zines were an obvious focus for my attention, but to me the idea that everyone is an artist, a creator, a writer, whatever… is really important. As much as my own personal expression has gone largely digital (I think, because I move around so much now, it’s difficult for me to do print — every time I’ve started a zine in recent years, I’ve lost the pieces before I’ve finished!), my heart is still in print, and I don’t imagine that ever changing.
5. Tell us anything you feel moved to!
The zine mobile is intended to be part of an emerging traveling caravan that seeks to support and create free skill-sharing and community-building — by free I mean trying to challenge the way we’re so conditioned to commodify everything, to buy and sell… The idea is that there would be several mobiles traveling together — perhaps some focused on food, some focused on things like dance/movement and music, some focused on radical education and/or community organizing — everything free (donations accepted, but not expected — and really trying to emphasize donations of things that are not just money — just offers of food and/or a place to stay). My hope is that someone super passionate about zines as a form of personal expression will step forward and want to take over this piece so that I can move into doing something focused on music and sound.
I’d also like to offer a huge THANK YOU for your interest in spreading the word about this project!
Thank YOU, amazing Debbie!
- Jude
like a little bear cub…
the zine mobile’s been sorta hibernating…
emerging in real life, maaaaaybe in online life…
this friday, March 9th, we’ll be at Actual Cafe in Oakland for the opening of Paper Trails: a zine show hosted by Rock Paper Scissors Collective in collaboration with Tomas Moniz of Rad Dad…
6pm-10pm open library hours outside! Inside will be readings and music and another zine library and a zine-making station! Funnnnnn…
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posts with no photos are kinda boring, no? here are some much-beloved zines donated to the zine mobile lately!
West Coast Port Shutdown
tomorrow, 12/12, in support of the west coast port shutdown, the zine mobile will serve as a branch of the Occupy/Decolonize Oakland Library. there’s also gonna be a BOOKS ON BIKES BRIGADE!
Here’s where we’ll be — any other updates throughout the day will be posted on twitter ; )
5:30am First march from West Oakland BART to port
:: 11am – 3pm Activities, workshops, speakers, teach-ins at Ogawa/Grant Plaza ::
3:00pm Rally at Ogawa/Grant Plaza
4:00pm Second march from West Oakland BART to port
5:00 pm Third march from West Oakland BART to port
See you there? Also accepting encouragements and well wishes to pass along from those of you far away!
And hey, do you read this zine? it’s so good! it’s one of the only ones i know that provides accessible honest information on our economic system. there’s a companion blog, too!
East Bay Zine Fest
A few pix from last weekend’s East Bay Zine Fest… thanks to Rock, Paper, Scissors for organizing and 924 Gilman for hosting!
jejune would make a zine if she had oppposable thumbs!!
And huuuuuge thanks to everyone who donated zines to the little zine mobile! We ♥ you!
Oakland + kids + zines!!
Yesterday was the zine mobile’s first youth-centered event — I parked outside the downtown Oakland Public Library and opened the zine mobile for reading room/library hours… inside we set up a table for zine-making. I brought two typewriters and the library had lots of awesome stamps and kids’ books bound for the recycling bin for clip art.
I feel I should confess that I was really nervous; the age group I tend to feel most comfortable around is at the other end of the age spectrum! But after some reassurance from lovely librarian Amy Martin (who set the whole thing up; thank you Amy!!!!!) and spending a few minutes with the kiddos, my anxiety vanished and I didn’t want the day to end, it was so fun and inspiring…
Some pix of what was created:
One little guy was so excited about the typewriter and asked if he could work on his novel and movie script!!
And thanks to dear friend and OPL teen librarian Amy Sonnie for bringing OPL’s teen zine collection for the afternoon!
Oakland Public Library's teen zine collection
Yay kids!!!! The zine mobile is (more) ready for you : )
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