|
| |
|
|
PUBLISHING
Keeping the ’zine alive
BY CAMILLE DODERO
|
|
|
|
|
Rosie Streetpixie first published her own Xeroxed ’zine seven years ago, when she was an angsty, angry, disenfranchised girl. Called Streetpixie, a punk-rock nickname that stuck, the handmade pamphlet served as a kind of post-riot-grrl journal. "It was mostly about how I was a pro-sex feminist, how I had a vibrator, and how everyone should have a vibrator and listen to [riot-grrl band] Bikini Kill," Streetpixie says. She was 12. Seven years and 15 ’zines later, the 19-year-old has traversed the country, gone through a period of temporary homelessness, survived a hippie high school, and spent time as a militant anarchist. All the while, her handmade ’zine recorded her sundry experiences. "It was a place to write everything down. And it was the only thing that was ever constant." She’s about to put out her very last issue of Streetpixie, just in time for the "Speak for Yourself" Boston ’Zine Fair, a local ’zinester gathering she organized that will take place this Saturday at the Massachusetts College of Art. Although the ’zine-making heyday happened over a decade ago, and Streetpixie admits that her "experience with ’zines was being a riot grrl pretty much 10 years too late," she says there’s still a definite place for them in DIY culture — especially for teenagers. "For me and for a lot of my friends, when you’re a young teenager, you’re really marginalized all across culture, through school and everywhere. You don’t really have a voice." Which is perhaps why a New Hampshire high-school teacher is bringing her entire class to this weekend’s event. In addition to an open house and an open-mike spoken-word show, the Boston ’Zine Fair will feature two days of workshops on various ’zine-making facets: bookbinding, screen-printing, ’zine design, block-printing, puppet making, and instrument making. Streetpixie’s own talk will focus on beginning ’zine-publishing basics. Honeypump event organizer Ben Sisto will give the lowdown on the logistics of show booking. And Richard E. Bump, who publishes the queer ’zine Fanorama as well as prisoners’ ’zines, will explain how the latter are "one of the last bastions of true DIY creativity in an increasingly bland, sterile and PC world." Most important, in an era of LiveJournal and Blogger, there’s still a lasting appeal to paper publishing. "There’s something that gets kind of dull about the Internet, having to sit behind a screen all the time," Streetpixie says. "Besides, there’s something really neat about having somebody’s stories in a little booklet in your hand."
|
