Zine Resources

Anne Elizabeth Moore’s “How to Make This Very Zine” is a single-page eight-fold set of instructions for making a single-page zine yourself. It is available in eight languages: Arabic, English, Greek, German, Georgian, Khmer, Russian, and Spanish.

Metaparadox's "Let's Make a Zine" printable quarter size workshop zine.

Links to Olivia Reads Zines blog post about Assembling a 1/4 Size Zine

PDF and Canva templates from HPU Libraries Zine guide

Thuban Press Guide to Analog Self Publishing

Free Images and Clipart

Openclipart - Clipping Culture

https://openclipart.org

The Public Domain Review

Online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.

https://publicdomainreview.org

Openverse

Search over 800 million free and openly licensed images, photos, audio, and other media types for reuse and remixing.

https://openverse.org/

Public Work by Cosmos

Public Work is a visual search engine for public domain content. Explore 100,000+ copyright-free images from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources

https://www.cosmos.so/public-work

Misc. Tools and Resources

Electric Zine Maker

https://unicornycopia.com/ezm/

Dither it!

An image dithering tool.

https://ditherit.com

A Brief and Incomplete History of Zines

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses in 1517? Thomas Paine's 1776 Common Sense? Pamphlets, broadsides, and early independent publishing traditions.

FIRE!! (1926) by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, et. al.

A Brief and Incomplete History of Zines

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses in 1517? Thomas Paine's 1776 Common Sense? Pamphlets, broadsides, and early independent publishing traditions.

FIRE!! (1926) by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, et. al.

Little Magazines of the Harlem Renaissance

The Comet (1930) is often said to be the first zine. Created by the Science Correspondence Club, The Comet was a publication by and for fans of professionally-published science fiction magazines. This and similar publications became known as fanzines to differentiate them from professional pubs.

Beat poetry chapbooks, underground press, art and literary magazines, drug and counterculture movements, and greater access to typewriters and offset printing (1940s-60s)

Samizdat: post-Stalin self-publishing to evade Soviet censors

Similar to sci-fi fanzines, artists like Robert Crumb were inspired by professional magazines like MAD Magazine and Cracked to create their own zines and spearhead the underground comix movement.

Spockanalia, the first Star Trek fanzine, was published in 1967. Star Trek fan works were hugely influential in developing modern fandom cultures.

Punk rock music zines, the DIY (do it yourself) culture movement, and indie music scenes of the 1970s and 80s were extremely influential in the creation of zine culture as we know it today.

Mike Gunderloy's zine Factsheet Five was a hugely influential "review" zine, connecting interested individuals with zines and zinemakers and developing zine communities.

"In the 1990s, with the combination of the riot grrrl movement's reaction against sexism in punk culture, the rise of third wave feminism and girl culture, and an increased interest in the do-it-yourself lifestyle, the women's and grrrls'; zine culture began to thrive. Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience as a community-building tool, and zines proved to be the perfect medium for reaching out to young women across the country in order to form the "revolution, girl style."

from Zines at the Sallie Bingham Center

Riot grrl movement and zines were written about in Seventeen and Newsweek in the early 1990s, leading to a global explosion of interest in zines and zinemaking.

While some might assume social media and the internet have eliminated interest in zines, in fact, it's the opposite! The internet has introduced zine culture to many who otherwise never encountered zines.

Additionally, zines allow folks to retain control over their creations and content from start to finish; they're not beholden to the corporate and advertising interests of tech companies.

Resources consulted for this page:

Library: Zines, Pamphlets, Artists' Publications, and Chapbooks: The World of Self-Publishing & Small Press: Zines and Fanzines

This zine provides history, context, and resources for students and faculty seeking to learn more about alternative publications as protest, as alternative culture, as art practice, and as community resource.

https://libguides.pace.edu/zines/definition

LibGuides: Zines 101: History & Culture

A guide about the history and importance of zines, zine culture, and how to make zines.

https://guides.library.cornell.edu/zines101/history

A Brief History of Zines

To prepare for the Wilson Special Collection Library’s upcoming Hallowzine! event, I wanted to learn more about the history of zines to gain a better understanding of the historical and social contexts they evolved from. When I started my research, it seemed that without fail any website or article I found about zines would always begin by trying to answer one question: “What is a zine?” The answer is broad, and the content, style, and audience of zines vary widely, but there are several shared characteristics that make a zine:

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/rbc/2017/10/25/a-brief-history-of-zines/

Selected Zine Bibliography

Zine Studies Zotero Group: "An interdisciplinary database of scholarship on zines, zine communities, & DIY-publishing cultures."