Call for Submissions: Concerning Masculinity
Call for Submissions: Bi Focus #3
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
Zine Review: Asperger’s & The Re:Spectrum of Human Emotions / Perfect Mix Tape Segue Number Six
Asperger’s & The Re:Spectrum of Human Emotions / Perfect Mix Tape Segue Number Six
Joe
https://microcosmpublishing.com/
I was excited to receive this zine because I know little about Asperger’s and hoped to learn more (especially because of a loved one). What I found inside was both confronting at times and different to what I expected.
Asperger’s & The Re:Spectrum of Human Emotions starts with an overview of Joe’s story of abuse, loss, and coming to terms with his reality through the scope of an Asperger’s diagnosis. What I expected to be a ‘101’ of sorts was actually a perzine about his thoughts regarding his experiences, the diagnosis, and his thoughts on finding resolution for abusers and the abused.
(I must admit that I am pretty impressed that he clearly states that he emotionally abused people. If only I could have achieved so much from those who abused me.)
This zine became confronting for me when it started to address the topic of abuse. For Joe, these two topics are now and forever linked, so it’s only naturally that his story be told through addressing this subject as well. However, instead of leaving it at only his childhood, he takes it to the next step of sharing thoughts on resolution and why he thinks punishment doesn’t stop the abuse.
As someone who was abused, I found myself needing to stop purely reacting to what he was saying and actually think about it. The reaction to hurt is to punish, so the thought that vengeance and punishment alone can be lacking for both sides wasn’t something I could just take in stride at first read. A lot of what he wrote does make sense, but it did take some breathing through my emotions/immediate reactions to actually understand where he’s coming from.
It was interesting to read about someone who desired to make peace with both sides of himself: someone who had been abused and someone who has been abusive (by his own admission).
To the other side of the split.
Perfect Mix Tape Segue Number Six reveals a little more of the pain while also satisfying my desire for more ‘introduction to Asperger’s’ level information that I was wanting in the first section. It presents a characteristics list as well as Joe’s feelings about it.
What really shook me was the list of things do to in interactions and relationships list. Yes, some of the things seemed natural, but other things like “Do I try to do nice things for my partner without being asked” are things that even the ‘neurotypicals’ forget in their relationships.
I’m someone who is, if anything, toward the opposite side of things as far as empathy goes and am an abuse survivor. I also have someone in my life whom I suspect may be on the Asperger’s range, and I want to know more about their (suspected) experience of the world.
Both of those things added up to a zine read that I carefully took my time with and thought a lot about. Am I still sorting out my thoughts and feelings about the things in this zine? Yes, absolutely. However, I am grateful to someone who is willing to document their experiences, and I’m glad I read this zine.
Zine Review: Dead Templeton Issue 1
Dead Templeton Issue 1
Ellen and Gideon
www.deadtempleton.bigcartel.com
www.deadtempletonzines.etsy.com
I don’t often review music/music-related zines because I feel like I’ll be out of my depth. (Unless someone has a Punk 101 zine out there.) Thankfully, zines are very good at shattering my assumptions about what they’ll be about, almost always a pleasant shattering.
Dead Templeton Issue 1 is the most ‘cut n’ paste’ zine I’ve seen in a while, filled with all sorts of goodness to look at as well as read.
The very beginning of this zine made me smile because it’s such a great reason the make a zine:
Zines are something that seem to be missing from our area, and we always thought they were super cool and important for whatever scene was going on. So we figured,
“Hey, punk rock is dead here, let’s have some fun. Let’s make a zine.”
Opening up with a piece about the music in the show Daria and the complications involving the music in the show vs what they were able to put on the DVD. Double win for Daria and for immediately bucking my expectations of what would be in the zine. That the next piece was a ‘non-piece’ that was and wasn’t about goats…
If you want variety, then this zine has it. Along with the aforementioned piece, there is an interview, an album review, show reviews… It’s a music zine with side salads of humour and human interest.
I’ve mentioned before how I love the little things that move the zine experience into more than experiencing what’s in your hand. Well this zine comes with a Spotify playlist. I don’t have Spotify, so I wasn’t able to check it out (yet), but I still think it’s a pretty cool add on in a world where including a cassette or CD could shoot postage out of budget. Not only that, they say they’re going to make a playlist for every issue.
I have one nitpick in that some of the type is tiny – I mean really tiny – and even my near-sightedness didn’t help me out. Making that small text white on black makes it a smiggle harder to read again. At least, by lamp light, like I was trying to. That being said, this is a first zine, and it can take a while for people to find their zine layout groove.
When I traded for this zine months back, Punkrawkdewd said that the second one was nearly done and looked even cooler than this one. I hope I can get my hands on a copy.
ZineWriMo Update + Don’t Call Me Cupcake 6 Sneak Peek
The rollercoaster that has been life since… gosh, probably back into August… made me realise that I haven’t really given a ZineWriMo update since I first posted about it. Oops!
I’m one of those people who always has so many ideas rather than not any. I want to do all the things on top of all of the things I’m already doing. There’s always something to do. I started my ZineWriMo prep by gathering all the notecards, sticky notes, envelopes, napkins and the like, and putting them into a proper ideas notebook.
I have been working on pieces for Don’t Call Me Cupcake 6, but there has been a particularly insistant idea bouncing around in my mind for a few weeks. When I sat down to dig into zine making this weekend, I found myself naturally gravitating towards creating this zine…
It’s different in size, shape, subject, and pretty much everything else that I’m used to creating in my zines. So, of course I would mess up the pages, end up needing to cut everything and then washi tape it back together so it would copy/print properly.
Oops.
I ended up scanning it into the computer because that was just the simplest way to clean up the pages and make copies. I have yet to make the covers, so this zine is still ‘in progress’. It’s also the first zine that I have yet to be sure if I’m even going to release, as it’s a bit… It makes me feel a bit vulnerable, to be honest. I’m still very glad I made it, either way.
Now, while all this has been going on, I’ve also been working on Don’t Call Me Cupcake 6. I was feeling quite stuck and unsure (no idea why). Whenever that happens in my writing, I go back to longhand. That usually does the trick of getting me out of whatever muck I’m in.
Seeing as I’m running late with it anyway, I thought I would share the very first page of Don’t Call Me Cupcake 6…
Happy Mail – Zine Pack Goodness
Wind and rain, wind and rain, and some happy mail to make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
This Brainscan Zine Pack came all the way from Portland Button Works. The pack came with Brainscan 21, 25, 26, 27 and 28, and it was like getting a basket of Easter eggs. They are all Brainscan, but they come in all different shapes, sizes and colours! It does my head in a little. 🙂
Yes, I’m showing the happy mail after I reviewed one of the zines (It Will Be Okay). Missmuffcake just so happened to have the awesome timing to have sent a zine so I received it right when I needed to read it.
I’ve been eyeing up The Stay At Home Girlfriend series for ages now, so I’m excited to finally have one. 🙂
As always, thank you so much to everyone who sends me mail. Happy mail makes me feel, well, happy – especially in the past few months where we seem to have some pretty bad luck happening!
Call for Submissions: Femme
Call for Submissions: I Don’t Care About Your 33 1/3 Proposal
Call for Submissions: Waste Management
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.
Who Can Submit?
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.
What Can You Submit?
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.