Eryca Sender

Grrrl Zines A Go-Go (GZAGG) is a small, San Diego-based group of women who organize zine workshops and events promoting empowerment through self-publishing. They have previously published Let’s DIY, Let’s DIY #2: Taking Zine-Making To The Community, and Zine Capsule: Zine-Collecting For The Future. Margarat from GZAGG shared with us the group’s latest project.

From The Ground Up, compiled and designed by Grrrl Zines A Go-Go

Available at http://groundupzine.wordpress.com (note: a free downloadable PDF of the zine is there too–print and share with your community!)

Margarat says,”We have always been drawn to the activism aspect of zines, and produced this compilation zine on community herbalism as a direct response to issues we see arise within herbalism (and other communities for that matter) that we felt needed to be brought out for more discussion. The zine has strong ideas from many different voices, and the graphics and design make this zine a satisfyingly creative print object.”

The introduction:

Issues of class, privilege, race, and gender come into play when providing herbal care to the community, whether we’re conscious of it or not. As much as herbalists would like to have “folk medicine for the people” many people do not have access to information, clinics, plants, or plant based medicines. Class cuts across all issues when it comes to healthcare, and understanding how to best serve those who do not have financial freedom is paramount to moving toward a truly healthy community.

The herbal community needs to confront these issues on continuing basis. Discussions on class and privilege and how these inform the practice of herbalism are rarely put on the schedule at conferences, and recommendations heard in workshops can sound recklessly out of touch with the realities of many. Let’s face it, the vast majority of U.S. herbal conference attendees are White, and certainly don’t represent the full breadth of our culture.

We find the DIY intersection of herbalism and zines to be an obvious one. Zines offer an accessible technique for sharing information, opinion, and art, just as herbalism itself can provide people with afforbable and accessible health options.

From The Ground Up #1 focuses on herbalists sharing their knowledge with each other to promote more effective and compassionate care for community members who may not have adequate resources for ideal herbal healing and prevention solutions.
– Margarat & Kim

We’ve been really fortunate to have a hand in this zine library coming together. Good news is, it’s still a work in progress! Bring your (PG-appropriate) zines to the opening and donate them to the zine library.  For more information about your zine’s inclusion in the library, contact Kevin at KStaniec[at]ci.irvine.ca.us! The library and reading room are located at the Palm Court Arts Complex in the Orange County Great Park in Irvine.

ORANGE COUNTY ZINE LIBRARY & READING ROOM

Saturday, June 15 – Sunday, September 1, 2013

Saturday-Sunday:  10:00am-4:00pm

Opening Reception

Saturday, June 15:  1:00pm-3:00pm

 

The Orange County Zine Library & Reading Room is an exhibition curated by L.A. Zine Fest in collaboration with popular zine festivals in Brooklyn, Houston, Scranton, and San Francisco.  The library features over 200 zines from across the country as well as the zine documentary $100 & A T-Shirt.

$100 & A T-Shirt is a cultural analysis of the zine community created by Basil Shadid, Rev. Phil Sano, Nickey Robo, and Joe Biel.  The documentary sparks untapped creativity and new interest into zine making and reading.

To celebrate the opening of the Orange County Zine Library & Reading Room, artist Yumi Sakugawa created a free zine for guests entitled ‘How to Make a Zine.’

Pictures are up on our FB of a few reasons why we had such a good time at VICE’s party with Casa Indio Beer! Meeting new people in an atmosphere of snacks and beer is pretty much our favorite thing to do. If that’s your thing, too, you should come out and visit us at the Airliner (21+–sorry!) on July 13 when we partner with Soundpaint! What will we bring to the party? How about an interactive postcard workshop. BOOM! We’ll see you there.

In other news…

-Oour friends at POC Zine Project are coming to town–well, they’re going to a lot of towns because they are launching the 2013 Race Riot! Tour.  L.A. dates are October 12, 13, and 14!

-ABQ Zine Fest registration is OPEN.  The Fest takes place on October 5 and 6. You know, they say Albuquerque is lovely in October…

-We saw some good stuff on The Last Bookstore’s zine rack.

-And sort of tangentially connected to zines, Adrian Chi of Bite The Cactus zine and the band Spokenest, has a new solo tape under the name Badlands and it is solid.  That’s sort of a bonus from LAZF to you.

We’ll be at this big ol’ party in Culver City from 6 pm – 8pm this Sunday! KXLU will be bumpin’ jams well past that and there will plenty of adult beverages to go around.  The space is huge, the price is right–come on down!!

The second in our series of suggested reads from trusted sources comes from Adam Gnade of Pioneers Press, a great publishing house based in Lansing, Kansas.  Check them out–they offer zine subscriptions delivered to your door and a million other cool things. 

What: Trans-Siberian by Bart Schaneman

Where I got it: The Pioneers Press catalog.

Why I recommend it: Nonfiction writing’s boring these days because most writers’ lives are boring. There aren’t a lot of people out there living good, real, authentic lives and writing about what they see. When I pick up nonfiction books (and I mean, literary nonfiction) they’re usually about someone’s “funny experiences” in the dating world or their “rock bottom” recovery stories or their coming of age tales in the music scene. I hate that shit. I want adventures. I want to read about people who are LIVING and not just hanging around having nice hair or shopping for clothes or naval-gazing about pop-culture and internet fads. My friend Bart Schaneman LIVES in the way Jack London lived. He travels the world and he looks for new things and better ways to spend his time here on the planet. In Trans-Siberian, he goes from China to Mongolia to Russia. He gives you story and plot and adventure and it’s real. It’s exciting. He LIVED it. He’s one of my favorite people and one of my favorite writers and his zine is goddamn good. Really proud to carry his work in the Pioneers Press catalog.

Other places it can be gotten: Thought Catalog released a really beautiful e-book version of this a couple months back. Besides that, it’s in a lot of stores now. Powell’s in Portland. I think Quimby’s. Maybe Skylight.

From Trans-Siberian:

On the train to Mongolia I slept the first six hours. I had stayed up the night before with a group from the Beijing hostel, drinking and dancing in clubs on San Li Tun and the sleep came easily. When I woke up, the windows were full of the steppe of northwestern China and southeastern Mongolia, landscapes that looked very much like the western Great Plains of America. As the train rolled across the countryside, we began to see more felt gers—the homes of the nomads, conical and white, larger in diameter at the base and shorter than tepees, but similar in structure.

In time we came into Ulan Bator, the capital. Ulan Bator—the one city on that trip that people warned us about. Travelers along the way had told of a city of thugs, pickpockets, and bag slashers. “Travel in groups,” they told us, “Don’t go out after midnight,” and “DO NOT GET DRUNK.” We were in the middle of the steppe at the mercy of the Mongols—a­­­ race once feared throughout the world as vicious barbarians—surrounded by thousands of miles of empty land, alone save for a few pods of travelers, hoping the million and a half Mongols wouldn’t turn on us, get hungry, or kill us as some sort of ancient sport ritual.

An older Mongol woman held a sign with my name on it when I stepped off the train. I looked around and saw Mongols everywhere on the platform watching us. We got in the car and drove off, glancing over our shoulders. At our hostel, the owner, Zaya, launched into a tirade about her people in a Russian accent. “Today, I drove out to the wild horses, the park, and I don’t know why, everyone sits in their cars in traffic, in their Jeeps! We don’t need these cars. We have horses! We are very spiritual people—we think, we have the philosophy that is very high. We are not working like robots. We have socialism in our minds, but now we are also working for capitalism. So we are both. But everywhere everyone needs these shirts, these pants, these robots (pointing at the computer I hoped had reliable Internet service) for what, 70, 80 years? And we need these things? We Mongolian people, we will never work like robots for money, not like that. I think about what we are doing to the earth, and about how the 22^ndcentury will be…but it is our reality, it is what we have, and we are not going to say we need to turn away from it. It is like the tomato. It dies, and then it grows again.”

We are pumped to be back at Pop Hop for our first ever collaborative zine workshop! Participate and you can tell people with full honesty that your work is being sold at an awesome independent bookstore. 

We’re really excited for our events this summer, like our upcoming collaborative zinemaking workshop at Pop Hop, and we’d love an extra pair of hands during these events. We can always use people to help us do things like loading and unloading workshop supplies, helping with setup, and other general tasks.  If you’d like to give us a couple hours, we would really appreciate your help!

We’re always excited to meet people who are interested in helping us strengthen LA’s great DIY community one zine at a time. We’ve been so lucky with previous volunteers and are looking forward to meeting more good people!

For more information, send LA Zine Fest a Facebook message!

Riverside Print Fest is back and I am so happy to see it! Zinesters will have their wares on display, and there will be workshops and readings for you to attend throughout the day. Don’t forget to stop by the zine library, too!  Exhibitors include a lot of titles that are new (and exciting) to me, plus former LAZF tablers like She’s Not A Morning Person, Double Fur Press, Pimpkillah, and Seite Books.

BONUS: just after the Fest, there will be a screening of DIY: We’re Doin’ It, a short documentary about women in DIY culture–artists, zinesters, musicians–that stars two amazing ladies from Zineworks, Annie Knight and Angela Asbell. Can’t wait to check this one out!

We’ve had a lot of questions via the internet about where to get good zines. It’s kind of hard to say “Everywhere!” without feeling a little unhelpful, so we’re going to stop telling people that zines are all around them and try to give a little direction. We’ll be posting here every few weeks or so with reading suggestions from trusted sources,  plus the information needed to get the zine for yourself. This first rec comes from LAZF organizer Bianca Barragan. 

What: Lady Teeth #2 by Taryn Hipp 
Where I got it: Gifted from a friend!
Why I recommend it: Before I get going on this, I just have to advise you to talk about zines when you meet new people. Like, right off the bat. If someone seems interesting, tell them you like zines because you will eventually get people giving you awesome things to read. Case in point: this zine, gifted to me by Brodie Foster Hubbard of Fair Dig zine and Shakeytown Radio Hour. 37 pages fly by as Taryn talks about self-care, attending zine fests, keeping friends, getting healthy (mentally, physically), music, food, and a handful of other topics.  By the time I reached the back cover, I felt like she and I had gone on a really solid road trip together because we’d had such an in-depth, varied conversation. I have always been a huge fan of perzines because I can’t imagine myself spilling intimate words onto pages and then sending those pages out for other people to see.  I admire deeply the brave people who can do that repeatedly and always keep it engaging.  For this reason (and others, I’m sure), Taryn Hipp is a total badass.
Other places to get it: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ladyteeth

From Lady Teeth #2:

“The truth is, my life has never been better & it really sucks that I am missing it. I am so stuck inside my sick brain that I can’t appreciate it fully. Some days it feels amazing & I can actually see that. I can actually feel it in my gut, how wonderful life is & how it will be ok. I will be okay. But other days I take it for granted because I am in a dark, dark place.  I try to go outside, lay in the driveway with my dog & let the sun soak through my skin. I let it warm my bones & breathe life into my sadness. I dig in the dirt, plant things that will grow, vegetables & fruits to consume, herbs to dry & turn to tinctures to heal & I feel proud of my bounty, even when the bunnies chew up my tomatoes or my dog eats my strawberries.”

Trades garnered from Claremont Zinefest. We’re going to have a few more pictures and a recap up soon! If you’d like to see what the Claremont ZF was like, you should probably check out this recap.

It was great to meet some new people! We traded with A Shop Called Quest (Skinner; ColorInkBook), Rusty Jordan (History In Ruins), Zineworks (Pocket Guide to Being a Safe & Sane Zine Pal), Allied Forces Press (Raw Bones, New Observations, ALFQuarterly, Battle Toads), Julia Glassman (Formulaic), SPEW Stickers (Midnight Madness), and Camera Creeps (Loophole). The superheroes-as-cats-in-costumes cards are by Nathaniel Osollo.