Month: November 2016

Submission Deadline: 30 November 2016
Find out if you’re in it by: 4 December 2016
Publication: 30 December 2016

Forms of submissions accepted: photos, paintings, comics, poetry, essays, personal stories – max four A5 pages per person (just to stop it being too bulky!). Please make sure it’s your own work and that you haven’t published it elsewhere. When submitting artwork, please consider that because this is printed at home, colours may not come out how they look on your screen at home.

Who can contribute: people who feel that they fall under the bi umbrella (e.g. you might identify as pansexual, bisexual, panromantic, biromantic, bicurious, polysexual, etc).

Topic: there is none! I mean, it still needs to relate to bi-ness e.g. review a tv show and how it portrays bi character/s, or talk about some shit you’ve dealt with due to being bi, or write a story about a bi penguin, or draw a comic about your first crush that made you realise you were bi, or take a photo of some bi peeps (get their permission to publish that pic too please!).

Pay: AUD$5 per contributor (this is an experimental payment for this third issue to see if this is sustainable, I really want to be able to pay people for their work)

Profits (if there are any): will go to charity – all profits from all my zines and art get split between animal and human rights charities.

You can submit by sending me a message on facebook, or emailing me at khuolohan@yahoo.com.au. All contributors will get a free copy mailed out to them/to pick up :).

Please note: I will be selling this at Junky Comics, in my etsy store, and at zine fairs so if you want, feel free to use a fake name or no name if this makes you feel safer. After it has been printed and sent out, I will not be able to change these details.

Previous issues available here: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/ZinesByKeira

Hi, my name is Fee, I’m 20, white, ablebodied, working class, bisexual, queer, mentally ill, fat and I dropped out of high school in feburary of 2015.

I know a lot of people but I know exactly one who shares this experience. And I have the suspicion that I know why… I’m part of this beautiful social justice community that’s also incredibly centered on university level education. And I don’t even have a levels. (Or the German equivalent.) The people that mean the most to me can’t sympathise with the very real existential fear that comes from not having a high school diploma.

A lot of people drop out of uni. That’s bad. I feel for you guys, I do, but you have so many more options in how to continue. It might not feel like that but it’s true… but being a high school dropout? in this economy? It scares the shit out of you – especially because there is a reason you didn’t stay in school and that reasons stays with you. Bullying (because you are trans or queer or fat or disabled or a person of colour or poor or any other thing people can use to wear you down with every day microagressions), mental illness (like depression, an eating disorder, bpd, etc), money (because you and your family literally can’t afford for you to not work), teachers or social workers not caring about you and not giving you the support, equipment, form of schooling, medication or love you needed because of all the things the other students used to destroy you. Or any other number of other reasons.

And now you are a fucking high school drop out. (Or the pre-university level education equivalent where you are from. This is not supposed to be us centric.)

And I want to hear about it so badly! Whether you dropped out yesterday or 20 years ago, whether you regret it or not, wether you’re back in school or never looked back, whether you want to draw about it or write or make a collage or just paint an entire page black because that’s how it feels, I want to hear from you. And by you I mean literally everyone. (If you want to for example write in a language other than english we can also totally do that.) AND I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE INTERSECTION OF OPPRESSION AND DROPPING OUT! Because I’m 97% sure I would still be in school if I wasn’t, you know, me.

I’m not sure how this is going to work. I’ve never made a zine before but I need to fucking heal from this trauma that was school, so… hit me up, you beautiful failures and disappointments.

Anyone who has ever dropped out of high school. It doesn’t matter if you went back and are now working on your doctorate or if you never looked back. You can submit regardless of your academic status now as long as you left schooling before reaching university level education at some point.

If you have questions wether you are enough of an academic failure to be able to submit, you can talk to me on tumblr, twitter or via email.

Note: Dropping out of university does not count.

Short answer: everything.

Long answer: poetry, diary entries, comics, song lyrics, collages, paintings, drawings, doodles, in-depth analysis of things, top ten lists, hate mail to your teachers, manifestos and because there will be a digital version you can also submit songs, videos and any other digital art.

Go all out. Or go deep inside yourself.

It is really important to me that you get support and love throughout this process. If you need help working on your submission or just want to vent about the emotional build up that creating things can cause, don’t be shy to reach out to me on tumblr, twitter or via mail.