Saturday, December 26, 2009

Ladyfest Syracuse NY

I'll be speaking at Ladyfest in Syracuse NY on Feb 20, and hopefully Snarlas will play too. They need more bands and maybe more speakers, so if you want to get in touch with them, here's contact info: womensactioncommittee@gmail.com or womensactionscommittee.blogspot.com

also, if anyone has contacts for Ithaca NY, for punk shows or speaking at Cornell, let me know.

other upcoming events:
Snarlas shows: Jan 11 with Can Kickers, Hello Shitty People, and Frozen Teens, at the Smiling Skull, athens ohio

Jan 13, Snarla's in Pittsburgh, (I don't know where) with Hello Shitty People and Frozen Teens and more

new zines to distro

New Zines to Riotgrrrrdistro!

New To Everything #8
Sometimes I wish I wrote a zine just like this one, and maybe sometime soon I will. It's quarter sized, so it fits in your pocket, and it has little stories a couple pages long each, about various things; her dad's motorcycle, listening to the oldies, the feeling of being on the way to somewhere or something. Each story is self-contained, sweet and insightful. It reminds me to want more stories from the people I know, to know them better.
It reminds me of what is good in life.

The Visible Woman
I love this zine! Written by a woman in her 50's, it's about how older women are turned invisible by our society. She says, "In some ways it's oddly restful, but when I think about it, it makes me angry. I don't want to be invisible anymore."

A How To Guide on Starteing a DIY Events Calendar (in your town)
This zine is by Leanne of New to Everything and it is pretty self-explanitory. It has examples of different towns calendars, and a bunch of tips and a bunch of inspiration!

Tuff Town #1
I'd like to hang out with Naomi. Her zine touches on so many things I think about - wanting to stay in a small town but also wishing there were more than a handful of people to keep projects going; wanting to believe in ghosts; wanting to be accountable to her neighborhood; violence against queers; how fucked up it is when "radicals" try to dismiss the real shit in our lives (like class, race, gender violence) as "personal issues"; all kinds of things, written in an urgent and articulate way.
1.60 or 2.40 intl

Totally Rich
Throw out all the anarchist theory and just read this zine! It is a cutsy story about one morning when the trees started growing money and noone had to do anything for money anymore and could just do meaningful work.
It is written by the Second Maine Militia, which includes Carole Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt Maine
2.85 or 3.60 intl

Monday, December 21, 2009

Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, by Alison Piepmeier

Girl Zines: making media, doing feminism. By Alison Piepmeier. New York University Press

I want to recommend this book, if you like academic books, and I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the featured zine writers. What I love about it most, is that it looks at zines, their history, their often overlooked place in feminism, and in doing so, talks about embodiment, about the contradictions inside of each of us, and talks about what we can do to challenge and change each other, ourselves and the world.
When I first found out about feminism, I mostly just knew liberal feminism - voting, critique of mass culture, etc. For the most part, it didn't speak to me or inspire me. When I found feminist writers like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and the writers in the book This Bridge Called My Back, I was inspired, forever inspired. They talked not just about what was outside of us, but also how it ate up our insides, and how our source of power was inside of us, demonized by patriarchy. When I was told that we had to reach to our most feared places and work from there. work on social change and inside change at the same time. Believe in ourselves. Speak and listen.
Sometimes I get tired of zines and wish people would read more serious books. Sometimes I wish college people would quit college and write zines. Sometimes I think it is ok that everyone does different things.
This book put girl zines in the same trajectory as writers like Audre Lorde, and it helped me to take zines more seriously. Truthfully, it usually is zines that inspire me, when I get a really great zine, or even a shitty one that is honestly looking at shit and working it figure it out - the voices of girl zine writers inspire me more than anything.
This book also had a nice little history of girl zines that I didn't know about. And I like how it traces girl zines back to the 1800's women's health pamphlets and the 70's feminist underground papers.
I haven't read the whole book yet, but the chapter called "We Are Not All One: Intersectional Identities in Grrrl Zines" is really excellent. She talks about a number of zine writers, including Mimi Nguyen, one of my favorite zine writers who edited and Evolution of a Race Riot, - a very smart zines that wanted to "subvert the dominant punk rock order & yes, whiteboy/girl hegemony."
Coming from an activist world into a zine world, it was really great to me when I'd read zines that were girls who were coming from academic language, using and fucking with that language.
Sometimes I like theory and sometimes it makes me laugh with it's over important language, but I can't hide the fact that it really does help me think more deeply, and more seriously.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

new zines in

what I've been doing: chainsawing. waitressing. Planting garlic. Getting ready to get two puppies and two sheep.


New Zines to the distro at www.dorisdorisdoris.com/zinecat



Skinned Heart This is a beautiful and intense personal and political zine about racism, feminism, child abuse, rape, mental illness, cultural appropriation and a bunch of other life things. This is the kind of zine that first got me into zines and that I don't see enough of these days - that takes personal experiences, sees them through a political lens, and makes you feel, not just think.



2.50 u.s. or 3.60 intl




Cometbus #53

Cometbus was the first zine I ever read. It is stories, social commentary, interviews, mini-novels, punk. This issue is half Aaron Cometbus's writing and half Maddalena Polletta. Aaron has an interview with the founder of PUNK magazine, back in the very beginning of punk. and a couple stories, one of which mentions the time I stole a car to come visit him.

Maddalena's stories are about her mom dieing and the aftermath. Very beautifully written. Bleak and stunning.

3.75 u.s. or 4.50 int'l