For the love of zines
The World Zine Events Calendar is your index for zine events happening around the world! Zine clubs, fests, and other events are all listed here.
Even better, if you don’t see your event, you can let Fanzines know on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Check it out and have some zine fun!
Oishii Expressions
Creepy Cheese
https://www.instagram.com/thecreepycheese/
https://linktr.ee/thecreepycheese
Oishii Expressions is a A7 one-page folded and thrice stapled mini containing a fun selection of Japanese phrases for when things aren’t going your way.
I picked up this zine at Festival of the Photocopier in February. I love bilingual zines and have a particular soft spot for Japanese. More importantly, I couldn’t resist the cheeky smile of the soy sauce fish!
Each of the six pages has a phrase written in hiragana, Japanese script, with the romaji (or Roman characters) transliteration. I thought this was a really cool feature which makes the zine accessible and useful for people with different levels of Japanese. As someone who understands hiragana, I enjoyed being able to read the zine in the original language as well.
The English translation is beneath my favourite part: the full colour illustrations of highly expressive sushi. The faces these critters pull demonstrate the meaning of the phrase just as well as the text. These sushi pals aren’t just your standard California roll either – I was really happy to see an onigiri rice ball!
If you’re keen on languages or adorable sushi characters, nab yourself a copy of Oishii Expressions.
This has been a guest zine review by J.E.M. Hast!
How to Pat Cats: A Guide to Being a Feline Friend
Rebecca Sheedy
http://mildscribblingzine.tumblr.com/
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/rebeccasaurusrex
How to P at Cats: A Guide to Being a Feline Friend is an about 16cm x 7.5cm (a bit over 6 inches x 3 inches) full-colour comic about being a Feline Friend at the Animal Welfare League.
On four pages – each with three panels – Rebecca gives us a glimpse into being a Feline Friend volunteer at AWL. (The Animal Welfare League https://awl.org.au/ is an animal welfare and care provider.) From taking care of new arrivals to wanting to adopt cats every time they are volunteering, Rebecca packs a lot in their usual fun art style. A super cute style with the perfect amount of detail.
This is a lovely zine that makes me smile and feel good. What’s more is it also makes me want to check out local shelters to possibly volunteer at. I would absolutely love it if Rebecca made another zine on this topic with even more details about the ins and outs of volunteering at an animal shelter.
Grab a copy.
Oh dear.
Oh dear, dear, dear.
This has not been the ideal first part of Mini-Zine March.
Hello, wonderful zine friends. After two weeks with no Happy Mail Monday, few posts, and not much else, you’re probably wondering what’s happening. (If you don’t follow me on other social media, anyway.)
Here’s a little explainer:
On March 4th, I had a day procedure at the hospital. I’ve had this procedure before, so I expected a day or two of rest to recover, and then things would be right back to normal. Unfortunately, this time has been complicated, creating a need for a lot of rest. (I think I’ve been sleeping more than I’ve been awake this month.)
The good news is that I’m really lucky to have great doctors in my life who really listen to me, so I am recovering. It’s just taken a lot longer than expected.
The other good news is that things should be back to normal now as far as posting goes. One good thing about being stuck in a chair for most of the day is that, when I am awake, I have zines to read and review. 🙂
So here’s to health and getting Mini-Zine March going properly!
The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine
Submissions Now Open
Looking for rock, metal and punk themed horror, sci-fi, pulp and bizarro fiction submissions up to 2,500 words. Also interested in visual art submissions that are on theme, especially cover art.
Accepted submissions receive $5 and a contributor copy.
Email submissions to doomgoat666@gmail.com
Share your call for submissions, let people know about your distro or zine library, announce your newest zine, let people know you are crowdfunding a zine project…
If you have an announcement to make that has to do with zines, do it here! Sea Green Zines wants to be your megaphone. Even better? It’s an automatic shout out on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr when your call is posted here.
Big fuzzy love hearts to those who have a .jpg call for subs, but all are welcome. Get in touch by emailing seagreenzines[at]gmail.com or comment below.
How We Met Dory-Bean
Dory-Bean’s Humans
https://www.instagram.com/dory.bean/
How We Met Dory-Bean is an A6 black ink on pink paper zine about how three humans met the adorable Dory Bean.
This zine was yet another case of love at first sight for me. Sewn binding? Rounded corners? A peeking cat on the cover? Yes, yes, and yes please.
How We Met Dory-Bean opens with Dory Bean falling out of the sky and, of course, then demanding some food. From there we read a very sweet story of cat food, notes passed via cat collar, and a cat who chose her humans instead of the other way around.
I love this zine to bits. The story is sweet, the illustrations are adorable, and the zine itself is so well made. Each page spread has text on the left page and an oh-so-cute illustration on the right. The interior page corners are rounded just like the cover. Plus, it’s sewn with pink thread that matches the pink interior pages.
I will definitely be getting extra copies to get for my cat enthusiast friends.
Dog Drawns
Ellie
?
Dog Drawns is an A7 one-page folded mini of dog drawings.
For anyone who doesn’t know, I love dogs. I couldn’t resist a cute dog mini. Heart squeeze guaranteed.
I must admit that the part that squeezed my heart the most is the note at the start of the zine. Ellie writes that they made this zine of drawings because they can’t have a dog of their own.
Six drawings of a variety of different dogs follow. I was also very happy to find an A4 dog drawing surprise when you unfold the zine. (I will never tire of the ‘surprise inside content’ of one-page mini-zines.)
One thing missing from this zine is any sort of social link. Not so much as an email. So if you know the Ellie who made this, let me know, and I will update the top info.
Hello, dear zine friends.
I’m afraid there’s no happy mail this week, as offline life requires my full attention today and possibly tomorrow.
I’ll be back to it before you know it, so until then, make some mini-zines! 💚
Infidelity Zine open call
Do you have a story to tell about infidelity? Perhaps you’ve experienced it because you were the person doing it. Maybe the person you’re with has done it whilst with you or in the past with other partners. Perhaps you witnessed your parents working through it. I’m looking to collect these into a zine to show the diverse spectrum of this part of human life. Please get in touch either by sending an email to sophie.a.w.sherwood@gmail.com or leave your story on the Sarahah page anonymously.
This is open to all ages, races, sexes, genders, and doesn’t exclude people in the polyamorous community.
Google says:
infidelity
/ɪnfɪˈdɛlɪti/Submit
noun
1.The action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner.
“her infidelity continued after her marriage”
synonyms: unfaithfulness, adultery, unchastity, cuckoldry, extramarital relations, extramarital sex; faithlessness, disloyalty, falseness, breach of trust, treachery, double-dealing, duplicity, deceit, perfidy, perfidiousness; affair, liaison, intrigue, amour; informalfooling around, playing around, playing the field, cheating, two-timing, hanky-panky, a bit on the side; formalfornication
“her husband never knew of her infidelity”