The Zine Fiend Project

RVA Zine Fiend

The Zine Fiend Project is something I thought up as part of my coursework for an independent study on zines. “Project” may be too heavy a word for what I have done, but the other word choices I toyed with— “experiment” or “endeavor”—seemed a bit affected, and “The Zine Fiend Action Plan” sounded too much like something you’d see in an infomercial. I hope that this project provides a useful model for other shy or new zinesters who are ready to test the water. Basically, The Zine Fiend Project is how I’ve chosen to characterize the method of distribution for my zines as well as my attempt to give folks in Richmond a glimpse at zine culture. There are three components to the project:

1) Creating/Defining Identity Unlike Pagan Kennedy and many other zinesters, I have a hard time cultivating a writerly persona that strays too far from how I think or write in my daily life (although I think I’m a more confident person on paper). Nevertheless, I’d probably be one of those kids that surprise zinester Alex Wrekk with how different (read: awkward and boring) I am in real life. I also struggle with the question of how to identify myself for contact purposes. I’m not yet comfortable with using my full name or giving out a snail mail address, and in some of my zines I leave out contact info altogether. Although the idea of an alter-ego looks very attractive and fun to me, I feel too much like myself all the time, and for now I’m finally at a place where I’m mostly okay with that feeling. So, I came up with a simple way to play with identity: I created a new e-mail address, rvazinefiend@gmail.com. I plan to

use this address for all of my future zine-related correspondence. This seems like a safer option to me than using my personal e-mail address, and it gives me the flexibility to identify myself in the zines however I choose.

2) Distribution In the past, I’ve been quite terrified of sharing my zines with people I didn’t know. Even after spending countless hours on them, I still felt a great deal of nervousness about “putting myself out there.” Due to the intensive nature of my independent study, my insecurities became less important the harder I worked and the more I revised.

After my visit to the Barnard College Library Zine Collection, I realized that the relationships that grow from swapping zines brings happiness to a lot of shy and lonely people, as well as people who are marginalized by systems of oppression, whose voices are not valued in more mainstream, commercial outlets. The more zines I read, the more I wanted to be a part of that community, so I decided to swallow my fear and take action. I left my zines all over the city. I put some on counters at the Kinko’s on Broad Street and spread them around VCU’s Monroe Park campus. My favorite activity involved sticking zines inside of books at the Broad Street Barnes & Noble and inside Cabell Library. From memory, I put zines in the following titles: Orlando by Virginia Woolf, How to Think Like an Engineer, Approaches to Art Therapy, The Collected Poems of Edwin Morgan, The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image, and Wicca and Witchcraft. Surprise! Upon request, I also donated two copies of each zine I made for the independent study to Special Collections and Archives in Cabell library. If you have copies of your zines to spare, I recommend getting in touch with Special Collections. They currently have people on staff who are really supportive of zinesters and enthusiastic about expanding their Richmond Zine Collection.

3) Paying-it-forward In most of the zines I left around Richmond, I included a businesssized card that said, “What you’ve found is a zine. Make one and pass it on!” and included a link to http://www.zinebook.com as a resource. The card provided a simple way to communicate my intentions, so that unsuspecting readers wouldn’t think their books had been hijacked by mistake. I know that I haven’t reinvented the wheel with this project, and I don’t have any ambition for the ZFP to go global. My highest hope is that I’ve contributed something to the Richmond zine community. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that maybe a few people who are reading this will make a zine of their own or be inspired to learn more about zine culture. I’m the kind of person who gets really excited when I see that someone left behind his or her grocery list in my basket, so I hope my zines find people who feel the same kind of giddiness and want to keep the cycle going. KEEP THE CYCLE GOING!