Wonderful World of Zines

Randomly saw a post the other day from Mitch Clem on Instagram, plugging his participation at San Antonio Zinefest. I didn’t have anything planned on Saturday, so I penciled in the fest as a possible thing to do during the day and then made it a point to check out when I saw that they were going to have some panel discussions on the topic of “Zines”.

I haven’t been to a Zine show since the days of STAPLE out in Austin, Texas. I admittedly didn’t really know where Zines were in 2023 and I was kinda shocked at how much it appeared to be THRIVING in and around San Antonio. UTSA has appears to have a program and community around Zines and people seem to be leveraging the ability to Self Publish at much lower costs and are cranking out self published works in Zine/Book/Large print formats that not only look professional but kinda collectable.

The best part of the day was getting to hear a guy by the name of Patrick Brooks talk about the history of Zines. I had no idea that they dated as far back as the 1920s and i didn’t realize that the synergy behind creating Zines then and now hasn’t really changed much. Its basically born out of needed to create, publish and share outward. I spent a lot of time thinking about print Zines and Electronic Zines…. not to sound like a purist but I did think a lot about the medium of print, the paper stock and the technical ability it takes to put something together that has incredible content. I left feeling inspired to sit down, write and collect feelings and thoughts together with the intent to just share.