“Zines,” small, handmade magazines, have been around for decades. They are popular as ever today especially with teens and adults who want to share their stories, messages, and passions with others. Highly coveted, collected, and traded among zine makers at festivals and fairs, they are now circulated at libraries across the country and around the world. PW spoke with three educators who are making and sharing zines with their students and patrons, and blazing their own trails in the wide world of zines.
Ziba Pérez is a young adult librarian at the Palisades Library, a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, and soon-to-be the East Valley Region's Young Adult Librarian III at the Van Nuys Library of the Los Angeles Public Library later this month. She’s also a self-named “zine librarian,” being both an avid zine maker and collector. Pérez spearheaded the circulation of zines in her first library in Long Beach, Calif., and her current library, and has also helped create a flourishing zine culture in Southern California.
Pérez has loved everything about zines since she was a teen. “Growing up in the ’90s, I first encountered zines in high school where my classmates and I made them outside of school. Zine-making gave us a way to write and put together our own little yearbooks or newsletters and distribute them. We’d each get a page and do whatever we wanted: jokes, comics, movie reviews, or poems. It was a way to be creative with our friends.”
She sees the same level of interest in today’s teens. “Zines are especially relevant for teens because they mix art, and literature, are DIY, non-conformist, non-mainstream, and teens don’t need permission to create them—–so it’s a very underground alternative that’s fun.”
Pérez and her library help facilitate this fun by opening up their community room’s maker space once a month to zine making. Patrons can partake in a zine-making station with all the necessary supplies (e.g. pencils, pens, and paper), demonstrations, and inspiration to [create personal narratives or whatever they want. “When people walk by, they’ll ask what the station’s all about,” Pérez said. “I show them examples of zines and how to fold one page (i.e. an A1 sheet of paper)] into eight pages.”
She’s also known to mix things up by hosting “Zine and Sing” nights pairing zine-making and karaoke, as well as workshops with artists from UCLA to attract new ziners of all ages, spark ideas, and build community. Pérez also co-facilitates skate zine workshops with the West L.A. Library branch, across the street from the Stoner Recreation Center, for the skaters “to document their culture” in zines, and holds intergenerational zine-making workshops with families. “We have seen older adults and adolescents sitting side-by-side working together. Zine-making can be a wonderful family program because it’s so simple. You can make them at any skill level and/or in any language. There’s no wrong way to do them,” Pérez said. “It’s not as intimidating as publishing with a mainstream publisher. You can make them, and put them out there yourself.”
She rallies her patrons to do just that. In addition to duplicating their zines at no charge, Pêrez asks ziners if they’d like their zines added to the library’s collection. She also finds other zines to circulate at fairs, festivals, and conferences, where she shares her knowledge of zine-making, collecting/trading, and curating zine collections.
At a recent conference, Pérez’s talk motivated a librarian who teaches a class entitled “Creative Journaling Inspired by Taylor Swift” to try their hands at zines. (See more about this below.) To date, Pérez’s library has added some of these Swiftie zines as well as many others from different cultures, communities, and languages to the library’s collection. She believes that sharing a variety of voices is a crucial part of zine-making. “It’s especially important for immigrants, refugees, and marginalized voices,” she said. “But it’s not just about telling stories; it’s also about being heard.”
Kristin Nilsen is a veteran librarian, author of Worldwide Crush (SparkPress), and host of the podcast, The Pop Culture Preservation Society. Most weeks, you can find Nilsen juggling writing projects, hosting her podcast, and helping Lake Harriet Elementary’s certified librarian (along with other parent volunteers) run the school’s library in Minneapolis, Minn. The library is her happy place and sharing books is her jam. She especially loves when kids grab titles that she’s book-talked out of her hands, and helping them find books they want and need to read.
That’s why Nilsen jumped at an invitation to teach a creative journaling class tied to her novel, Worldwide Crush, about a girl with a celebrity crush who journals about it. By combining her own writing and celebrity crush experience (a.k.a. Shaun Cassidy) and targeting the barrage of beaded-bracelet- wearing Swifties in her school, Nilsen developed a course entitled: “Creative Journaling Inspired by Taylor Swift,” integrating reading and writing. And, with some inspiration and instruction from LAPL librarian, Pérez, Nilsen added zine-making to the class. “By creatively journaling and creating zines, the girls got to work out their love of Taylor Swift through talking and writing about Swift, her music, and their response to it,” she said, “It was profound to see how much love they have for her, and their journals/zines have been a place for them to share it.”
Nilsen said that it took a little time to get there. To begin, she showed a video tutorial on making the physical zines, offered a variety of writing prompts to help students get their footing, and played some of Swift’s music to explore the lyrics– and the symbolism. She also opened up discussions surrounding celebrity crushes, and her book, and then set them free to create. “The zines seemed to make their journaling more kinesthetic, tactile, and artistic,” Nilsen said, “They became an explosion of self- expression! Even the folding of the zines was meditative.”
The end result was a blending of thoughts and feelings in words and pictures, and a desire to share them. Pérez even invited Nilsen’s ziners to have copies of their zines circulated in the LAPL’s zine collection. “The girls nearly lost their minds,” Nilsen said. “They were so excited that their zines wouldn’t be just for them, that others could see what they made, and might benefit from what they’d put on paper.”
Nilsen knows all too well who has benefited the most. “It turned out to be more about them—–and less about Swift. My students found their own voices by writing about their favorite singer,” she said. “The experience gave them a practice ground for handling big and new feelings—and a community where they could stand up for themselves and others. Imagine what the world would be like if we could all do that?”
Eti Berland’s early reading life included the world of comics in Disney Adventures and Nickelodeon magazines. Now, in her life as a school engagement librarian at the Wilmette Public Library in suburban Chicago. Berland supports local schools and their librarians with access to the collections, databases, and authors, and is a fierce advocate for comics. “They are a powerful medium for self-expression. They’re able to show characters’ internal lives and feelings, and help readers better understand themselves and others. Young people deserve to have access to this kind of literature,” Berland said, “Currently, comics and graphic novels are more likely to be banned because they’re so visual—and you can take lots of things out of context. In fact, today’s top 10 banned book list includes several comics.”
The on-going banning and censoring of these materials is the primary reason Berland volunteered for the Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable’s Addressing Challenges Committee two years ago, and accepted the 2023–2024 co-chair position (working with Daniel Patton) when the committee devised the GNCRT Addressing Challenges Community Zine Project launched this past April.
Aligned with the committee’s focus on gathering resources for libraries and librarians to address and prepare for bans, challenges, and censorship around comics and graphic novels, the zine project’s purpose was to spread awareness of the important work that library workers and many others do and to support the freedom to read.
Berland said that zine-making was a natural fit. “Zines have a long history as short, creative works independently produced, and are often calls to action to make the world a better place, or share a passion, and can help people find community and solidarity,” she said. “The medium is the message. Zines are visual in different ways and can help us powerfully express ourselves to make sure that books—–including comics and graphic novels—stay uncensored.”
Many of the submissions’ themes centered on the toll that book banning/censorship has taken on library workers. Others offered encouraging messages and practical strategies to fight the good fight. “We accepted 24 submissions in all: from graphic novelists, librarians, library workers, and others. I also submitted a couple. Some were submitted anonymously because of the dangers of talking about bans and challenges,” Berland said.
Once received, committee members copied, folded, and distributed the zines at Comic and Connect Lounges at this summer’s American Library Association conference. They’ve also been digitized, are available on ALA’s website, and will become part of the committee’s resource tool kit. Berland hopes the conversations that the zines sparked at ALA will continue in libraries and communities across the country and around the world.
She also wants librarians and others to keep making zines to advocate for the freedom to read—and each other. “Advocacy can be really nebulous. It often feels like you don’t know where to start. But, making something that shares your knowledge and expertise related to the freedom to read is a tangible, empowering thing that every one of us can do. All you need is a love of libraries– and library workers,” Berland said, “It’s also healing in many ways to help those impacted by the bans and censorship to know that while there are things that we can’t do, there are some things we can do.”
Referencing a quote in the GNCRT Addressing Comic Challenges Tool Kit, she said, “If we take care of each other, we can all ‘live to library another day.’ ”
