Well, this post is coming out a bit later than I had planned! Little did I know when I set out to create a loose IZM schedule for myself that I would be laid out by an especially brutal head cold just a few days into the month. Instead of reading, writing about, and filming zines, I spent most of week one curled up on the couch with a hot cup of chamomile, watching comfort content (Twin Peaks and Halloween). It all sounds pretty dang cozy, albeit for the congestion, headaches, snot, and the awful raked-coals feeling in the back of my throat.

I’m glad to report that I’m feeling better, and hopefully that plague will be the only hitch in this month’s plans… anyways, here are my zine recommendations for the first week of #IZM23:

Day 2 – Zine Rewind! Re-read your favorite zines. Always! I’m always up for re-reading my favs, and I’ve done quite a bit of that lately. I dove back into Shotgun Seamstress by Osa Atoe (more on that later), re-read some favorite issues of Wanderer by Alyssa Giannini, and I picked up Snakepit’s Big Adventure, the latest volume of collected diary comics from Ben Snakepit. This got me craving to read more of his work, so I re-read his split with Chris Terry of Gullible zine, from all the way back in 2005. It’s practically a historic artifact at this point! Despite being eighteen years old (!!!), this glimpse into the lives of 2 touring punx still feels fresh. And both Chris and Ben are damn great writers, to boot.

Day 3 – Cook 1 recipe, or complete 1 DIY project, found in a zine! I did not do this. No, last week I subsisted on soup and takeout and meals cooked by my husband. But I would be remiss if I didn’t plug a recipe zine, because my friend Jaydream’s “Schemin’ Vegan” cookzine series deserves all the hype. They’ve put out 4 volumes thus far, and they’re all fantastic. (And vol. 3 has a wacky cake recipe submitted by yours truly!)

Day 4 – AmeriZine Day: buy, share, and read zines that celebrate racial justice and zines written by BIPOC from the Americas. Most every time I restock my titles at Spiral House Shop, I have Alex pay me in zines and buttons and books. That’s how I finally got my hands on the complete Shotgun Seamstress collection – Osa Atoe’s iconic fanzine spotlighting Black DIY punk. This book is a must have – at over 350 pages long, it contains all 8 issues of the zine (the previously-published version from Mend My Dress Press only included issues 1-6), and trust me: once you read one, you’ll want to read the rest. Shotgun Seamstress is best enjoyed with Bandcamp open on your phone, so you can check out all the artists interviewed and featured.

Day 5 – Try a new way of folding a 1-page zine, or create your own. You’ve got it – just my luck, when I went to film the next episode of Roll for Zine, the dice gods had me creating a 1-page mini. If you haven’t watched the episode yet, check it out below (and sorry for spoiling the first couple rolls just now!)

Day 6 – Zine Pride Day! Explore LGBTQIA+ zines! Porch Beers Press was a @zinereviews discovery: Elliott Stewart sent me their anarcho-pagan perzine “Many Gods, No Masters” for review, and I loved it so much that I scoped out their Etsy page and ordered some more of their stuff. And so, on a day celebrating LGBTQIA+ zines, I am stoked to recommend their zine Porch Beers# 5. Subtitled “Radically and Unapologetically Queer”, this zine discusses everything from the first officially-recognized Pride celebration in Elliott’s hometown of Huntington to queer country music, and reading it feels like hearing stories from a close friend.

Day 7 – What’s a zine distro? A zine distro is a store, website, catalog, or entity that helps distribute and sell zines. Some zine distros buy zines at wholesale to sell, or they may sell zines on consignment. They might have a physical location (like a magazine rack inside a record store), pop-up at zine fests or craft fairs, or exist solely online. There are distros that sell all sorts of zines, and others that sell only titles on certain subjects, like music fanzines or perzines or zines from a certain regions. Essentially, a zine distro is a place where you can get your paws on a whole lotta zines! Some of my favorites are Neither/nor, Spiral House Shop, and Quimby’s.

Day 8 – Look into upcoming zine events in real life or virtual events that you can attend! While putting this post together, I found out that I’ve been accepted to table at the second-annual Paper Plains Zine Festival in Lawrence, KS! So I’ll see y’all at Van-Go on September 3rd… and hopefully I’ll have a couple new zine titles to show off.