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how did you get involved with zines/d.i.y. publishing?
In junior high, I used to pick up free indie music and poetry zines in Salt Lake City, Utah. In high school, I had a boyfriend who had a father that was a chat room monitor for AOL back when AOL thought they were the internet. His father used to order zines and would let us borrow them. After that I started getting really into zines, penpals, and reaching out beyond the lines of such a conservative state as Utah. Reading zines were a way to connect with other people. At some point, the d.i.y. light bulb went off and I realized that I could make a zine myself, I could be a participant and not just an observer. I made my first zine with my sister and it was called “Fun in a Bucket”.

I started writing "Brainscan" in 1997 when I wanted to write a more personal and less silly zine. I moved to Portland in '99 and it seems that everyone I knew created zines, so much so that I started going by my pen name, helped organize the Portland Zine Symposium, worked at a distro, and volunteered at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. My life started to revolve around independent publishing and I guess I never really looked back.

why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
Ugh, I really hate this question. Can I just say that I like the smell of toner as it comes out of a copier on warm paper or the ability to tuck zines in my pocket when I ride the train? No, really, I feel that usually the premise of a question involving paper zine and the internet is that they are mutually exclusive and that is just not the case. Many zine creators, including myself, have an internet presence and also still create paper zines. But to say that the internet has not changed zines would be folly. Of course the internet has changed zines, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing, we just need to realize that the internet is just another form of communication. It is a tool, and like all tools, they can be used for creative pursuits or destructive ones. The internet has made it a lot easier to connect people, find distros, be involved with message boards and social networking sites, and even some zinesters have set up their own websites to sell their zines or other creations.

To me it just seems that there will always be paper zines because there will always be people drawn to print media. It takes a lot more energy and effort of write, layout, print, and distribute a zine than it does to just type something up and put it on a blog and I think the follow through of that zine process is something to be celebrated. In a way, it could be argued that the internet has upped the bar in zine creation because those that create zines really want to create them.

what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
I’m a big fan of the zine muse whoever she is--Calliope, maybe? When inspiration hits I feel I have to answer and that could be in the form of writing down one sentence in my notebook, looking over something I wrote five years ago or sitting down to layout a single page. I generally write things down all the time and when it seems like “zine time,” I review things, rewrite things, trash things and start over on others. A lot of the time it seems that I have a theme for the zine, sometimes that translates to the reader and sometimes not, but for me I need that kernel of an idea to start with and I go from there. At that point, I can usually start to see the layouts in my head and my whole workspace becomes a mess of paper clippings and me frantically looking through the boxes upon boxes of paper I have saved that just might come in handy...this mess usually lasts for a few weeks after the final layout is done.

how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
Well, my idea of community when I started my first zine was the elation that came when there was something in my post box. I could scour "Factsheet 5," drop a couple $1 bills in the mail and wait weeks or months to get a zine and damnit! I was happy about it. In a way, I guess that is one of the ways the internet has changed zines, people have lost their patience for mail correspondence, and postal rates have gotten a lot higher too. The internet does have a strange way of bringing people together though. It used to seem that if someone didn’t put a zine out for a few years they just fell off the face of the earth. Now you can usually find them online somewhere which I guess is a good thing. Also, computers seem to have made slick layouts really easy so it seems that many more zines look professional.

are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
Since living in Portland, Oregon for the past nine years most people know me through zines so it is pretty easy there. Currently I’m visiting Utah, where I spent a good portion of my adolescence. Most people here don’t really get it or they remember that little pamphlet that I used to sell at shows. I think it is easier to explain it though the concept of d.i.y. and how you don’t have to sit around and wait for someone to publish your work for you to be a writer. I’m not sure if that is really an accurate way to go about it, but people seem responsive. I usually throw in a bit about how there are people all over the world that do this like a hobby and we have conventions and readings and distribution. Zines can become your own little world if you let it be.

My mom is a teacher and she has always been really supportive of my zine pursuits (except for the time Webly and I got a threatening letter in our home mail box and she made us get a post office box). My mom actually taught a class to teachers about zines and used my book (Stolen Sharpie Revolution) as her guide. I don’t think she totally understands it but she sees it as a valid form of art and media and even jokes about writing a zine about being the mother of two zinesters discussing her fears and support. I think she should!

what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
Right now my favorite thing about the zine world is the We Make Zines website. I just love seeing everyone’s photos of their zines or working on their zines and all the zine fests around the world. It just gets me excited.

In general I love to peek into people’s lives that zines offer. I love the real aspect of it knowing that what was written did come altered by editors but is in the voice of the authors. The life written about exists in a vacuum in those pages, I have never gotten over how awesome that is. We can grow and change and what we write is suspended in toner.

What I don’t like is the idea of hierarchies in zine culture. Sure, some of us have been at it longer and have done a lot of work to develop style and seek distribution, but that doesn’t make them better people. They have just had more time to work on it. You really put yourself at a disadvantage if you buy into that idea.

I’m also increasingly uncomfortable with the growing “zines vs. fine art” discussion. I have been seeing more people talking about expecting to be compensated for their time creating their zine as if it is a job that you get paid by the hour. That just seems really weird to me. I see zines as a hobby, they are something I create because I love it. Breaking even is nice, but sometimes just the creating zines and having them appreciated by peers is the best part.

do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
I guess after so many years of believing that the personal is political, this is a hard question to answer and maybe it shouldn’t be and I’m just thinking too much. How about this, I don’t think that social, economic and environmental issues have to be at odds with each other and I feel that capitalism as it exists today creates some serious road blocks to ever rectifying these issues.

I think that in a world where media has reached unprecedented heights of both saturation and consolidation, the very act of self-publishing is political. Too often, dissenting voices are drowned out and people don’t realize the value of their experiences as media. In that line of thought, I have worked on several projects that reflect those ideas, from being an organizer for the Portland Zine Symposium, an open hours staff volunteer at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, and even teaching workshops about zines at the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, and the ones for ladies as well as at several universities and zine fests.

I wrote a book called Stolen Sharpie Revolution that is meant to be a jumping off point into using your own voice and creating your own zines. As far as my own zines go, I have written about experiences with some of those projects mentioned above as well as about getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship and challenging others to examine their personal use of power in relationships. I have also written about reproductive health and my personal experience of getting and IUD, a not-often-spoken-about form of birth control.

what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
Spend some time becoming a part of a community, read zines and see what you like and don’t like, write actual letters to the zine authors. Then let your own writing or layout styles form organically so that you create things you really love and want to share with others. Create the best zines that you can create with what you have and allow for that idea to grow and change over time.

what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
I personally think a distro should represent the world view of the person running the distro. I think lots of different views are valid and unique and that the job of someone running a distro is to showcase that in their selection and really stand behind what they choose to stock. I think distros should help people get their zines into hands of people that would otherwise not have access to them. But also, distros are just a building block for the community. If you are only getting your zines from distros (no offense, distro folks, and there are many fine ones out there), then you are kind of missing a step in the community aspect of zines.

are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
I’d like to see people creating their zines because they want to be part of a community and not because they see zines as a stepping stone in their writing career. I’d like to see a lot more little distros with small unique focuses. I’d like to see more letter writing!

The closest thing I have to a day job is running Small World Buttons and my Etsy shop. That’s where I sell custom 1” and 1.25” pinback buttons and my own custom buttons designs as well as organic coffee that I hand roast and of course I sell my zines and a bit of zine merch. I volunteer at the Independent Publishing Resource Center and am an organizer for the Portland Zine Symposium.

Write me--I have a new post box!
Alex Wrekk
P.O. Box 17230
Portland, Oregon
97217 U.S.A.

you can get alex's zine, "brainscan," through the distro.

INTERVIEW WITH ERICK LYLE (posted october 3, 2008)

how did you get involved with zines/d.i.y. publishing?
I had always thought I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. I don't know how it happened, since I don't remember my parents being very interested, but I was reading enormous books like Bullfinch's Mythology when I was five. Later, as a teen runaway, I would spend most of my time hiding out at the mall, living off food from the restaurants where friends worked, reading books stolen from the chain bookstore. By the time I was kicked out of my house for good, when I was 17, I moved into The Ft. Lauderdale Punk House, where Chuck Loose lived. Or I should say, by making a zine about our lives of crime, dumpstering, spraypainting, etc. we turned a fairly ordinary house full of scummy kids into The Ft. Lauderdale Punk House. Chuck was making a zine called "Get Loose" and me and my friend, Buddha, wanted to make our own. Really, we wanted to do EVERYTHING -- we wanted to do a label, start a band, and try to coax bands down to the bottom of the country, Miami. A zine was just one part of doing DIY stuff for us, of trying to be part of the country's punk scene and let folks know there were cool punks in South Florida. We started a zine (Buddha wanted it to be called "SCAM" or "REAGAN") together, but Bood kind of dropped out and I took over. I spent most of my days stealing stuff, dumpstering things, and getting drunk and writing about it, while placing wasted long-distance calls to bands on the West Coast like Blatz and Christ on a Crutch, begging them to tour to Miami. "SCAM" #1 was the result, published on July 6, 1991 at the Filth show in Miami Beach. Making a zine made being "a writer" possible.

why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
I really like doing the cut and paste layout is one reason. It's fun. Mostly, though, I believe in print. I don't like reading at a computer for very long and I think even the internet publishing boosters agree that this is true of most people (which is why internet publications write such short stories). I think I can get my stories across better in print. I also fear as a researcher that with the loss of flyering and zines to listservs and blogs, we are losing our punk rock scene's ephemera! How will we know where punk shows used to take place or how will we look up old information when there are no hard copy zines to refer to years from now? We're erasing ourselves.

As for the other question, have blogs affected zines? I wonder. People say blogs will kill zines because blogs are easier to make but the kind of people who make zines don't tend to be the people who do things the easy way. They're usually the kind of folks who will spend their free time stealing massive amounts of copies from Kinko's or some other tedious thing. Its apparent that there are more zine distros than ever and they seem to be making enough money to survive, so I'm not sure the zine is dead.

what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
I usually have a list of stuff that I know will be in the next zine for awhile. Then suddenly it's time to make it and i lock myself in a room for three weeks and hammer it out. I always know what order everything goes in and why first and then I work to fill out the spots based on what I feel like doing at that moment. Layout is fun for me. I invariably go days without sleeping, and usually am blasting Butthole Surfers "Psychic... Powerless..." the whole time, for some reason. It's one of the best work records for me, along with Big Boys and The Ramones.

how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
When I got involved, zines were still pretty underground. Soon after, I lived through the so-called "Zine Revolution" -- an earlier version of the blog craze -- when many of my friends were exasperated (though I suspect secretly pleased) to find their zines written about in places like Time magazine. During this period, suddenly, everyone in the world did a zine and honestly, many weren't that great, but there was a certain excitement in the air about zines and about this suddenly visible republic of traveling punk kids across the country. This period was about finding ways to reinvent and reinvigorate punk rock and to maybe elevate the lifestyle, politics, and d.i.y. of punk over the musical and clothing style. That's mostly where zines stand today I think. I don't always feel like I am part of a "zine community" anymore as most of my contemporaries from those days have hung up the waxer and are grinding it out at free weeklies, or not writing at all.

I am grateful to receive good zines, though, cuz they always remind me of that feeling of being connected to this larger community of zine writers.

are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
Many people know me as a zine editor. Its no secret. I'm the guy from "SCAM". My mom didn't get it until she got the book, though.

what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
Like I said, I'm not sure about "zine world"? Sounds like a chain store! I feel that my zine is much more a part of a larger community of writers, artists and activists in the nation than I do feel like its part of a specifically zine-oriented community. I do what I can to help zine editors, though. I'll steal copies in SF of the new issue of "SPARE CHANGE" when it comes out, cuz I know it's harder for Tom to steal them in Chattanooga, Stuff like that.

do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
I guess self-publishing is considered political. I'm not so concerned with wondering whether what I do is political or not.

what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
have fun and steal everything!

what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
Distros sure have made things easier for me. My zine distribution method used to be pretty intense. When the new issue would come out, I would go out on a cross-country freight-hopping/hitchhiking trip. I'd steal copies in every town's Kinko's, but since my zines were so thick, I could usually only make like 10 or 15 at a time. Then I'd try to sell them at shows or find the lone zine store. If I could make more copies, I would Fedex scam the zines ahead to the next town to try to sell there. and, of course, there was always that thing where you had a 50-minute layover in a town on a Greyhound ride and you'd race from the bus on foot some 50 blocks to the one record store in town to persuade a manager who had never even heard of zines at all that he NEEDED to at least consign TWO copies of your zine for you. Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis... those are towns I know almost exclusively from those long crazed walks and I know someone out there in each of them owes me like $2.85!

are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
I always wish I made zines that were shorter and came out more often like Cindy (of "doris" zine). Oh well. I'm doomed to the 80-pager, but I've been working on it!

you can get ericks's zines, "scam" & "zine libs," here, & check out his book, on the lower frequencies: a secret history of the city, here. you can see his book's website here.

INTERVIEW WITH TUKRU (posted september 13, 2008)

how did you get involved with zines/d.i.y. publishing?
oh it's a long long story. i first learned about zines when i was about 16 and i stumbled upon some websites about riot grrrl. i didn't see a real life zine until a few years later but i was fascinated by the idea. and made my own using the fax machine at my mum's work for a photocopier. we jammed it a few times. it was a few single sided a4s under the name "kylmä kahvi" ("cold coffee"). it was all in finnish and about bands i liked or had just discovered. i don't think i ever actually gave anyone a copy though, we only managed to make about two or three. i made my next zine, my first perzine, "kersa x" a few years later when i befriended the janitor & receptionist at my school and got them to let me photocopy things secretly. it was mostly fiction and tidbits of real events disguised as fiction. that only lasted two or three issues that were even distroed somewhere but i never really got involved with the zine community then, just admired it from afar. i had a couple of years' break when i moved the england to study photography. i just didn't feel i had anything to say, and i was finding enough of a creative outlet in my website, livejournal and my photography. but then i decided to write my dissertation about perzines. i did some art zines with my boyfriend. and after i graduated i found myself semi-homeless & living out of a suitcase in my boyfriend's bedroom i started writing "your pretty face is going straight to hell" #2 about my experience. & the rest is history i guess.

why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
i was on the internet before i got into zines, and i've done all that--livejournals and websites and blogs and while i enjoy doing them, they are not the same, or enough. you can't hold a website in your hand or keep it in your back pocket & read it on the bus or in the post office queue. i like the feeling of dried glue & bits of paper on my finger tips. paper zines are real, and once you've given one away they can't be deleted by a click of a button. and that's why i do paper zines.

i think the internet has helped to spread the word about zines. obviously i would have probably never heard of them with internet in my small hometown in southern finland. & it makes it easier to find new zines and people i'd probably never find or meet otherwise. but i guess it has isolated people from each other while bringing them together at the same time. letters turn into emails to rushed myspace comments to no communication at all. just anonymous paypal payments.

what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
i have a few different approaches to my writing/layout process. sometimes i just sit down with some bits from my three boxes of photocopies from books and magazines i found at the college library, stick pictures on a piece of paper and start writing. other times i scribble things onto scraps of paper or in one of my notebooks and later type it up with the layout. my only real editing happens when i re-type things from notebooks and when i decide what actually goes in. i hardly ever re-do anything more than that. i have a rather short attention span, and feel editing takes out the spontaneity from my work. i have a tendency of faffing about quite a bit at the end, rearranging pages and not being quite happy with whatever.

how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
as i said i haven't really been involved for that long. i don't think there's been that much change in the past year. i've been semi-lurking for quite a few years but.. there's not much i can say that i haven't already in some other answer.

are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
almost everyone i know knows about me being a zinester, including the ladies at the toyshop i work in. i talked about zines a lot. but very few people i know in real life have actually read them. i don't really hand them out to people unless they ask.

i explain zines as they are, little magazine types that i photocopy myself. that's not the hard bit. it's when they ask, "what are they about?" and i let out a nervous laugh and say, "me." they tend to get a bit confused and probably think i'm incredibly self-centered. i'm used to that though, because most people react that way to self-portraits. but to be honest, i'm the only person i can speak for.

what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
least: i sometimes feel a bit isolated because everything seems to revolve around places is the u.s. & canada and us european zinesters are a bit of a minority. i wish there were more of us. but that's not anyone's fault, just geography. i have the same problem with pretty much every community. everyone lives so far away.

best: sharing experiences. zines makes me feel less lonely.

do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
i guess doing anything diy (zines, crafts etc) is inherently political. you know, doing things yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you. i think that's a political act. it might not change the world in a big way, but tiny bits at a time which is better than doing nothing. i don't really have any non-zine-related d.i.y. project going on at the moment. when my boyfriend still had a studio with some other local designers we used to do crafty projects together but lately i haven't really even seen anyone. maybe once they manage to find a new studio. i knit & make jewelry & occasionally sew bags (not so much lately because i don't have a sewing machine). i'd like to be more involved with stuff but i have some rubbish excuses even i know are useless. i guess i'm just lazy sometimes.

what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
write letters. don't be imitated by "famous" zinesters, at least most people are really really nice. read lots of zines. get inspired, but don't be a copycat (it's a fine line). don't think about it too much, over-analyzing kills creativity. but do have an inner shit filter. have fun with it. don't be in it for the money, it doesn't happen. use bulk discounts whenever you can. experiment.

what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
i really like distros. i doubt half the people who have now read my zine would have found it or i all the lovely zines i love so much without distros. that's really their basic role, isn't it? helping the zinester to get a larger audience to their zine. sure, it takes away the contact between the zinester and the reader, but a lot of time when someone buys my zine from my etsy shop, the only communication between us is a paypal payment email, which really isn't that different from someone buying it from a distro instead. & they can get other people's zines at the same time.

are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
i'd like people to write letters again, and i'd like to start writing letters again (i'm working on it). i'd like to be less scared every time i finish a zine.

you can get tukru's zines, "your pretty face is going straight to hell," here. & you can see her website here.