Explore Distinctive Zines and Artistic Creations
Szkearian Zines is dedicated to celebrating the art of zines and creative merchandise, fostering a vibrant community where enthusiasts and creators connect, share, and inspire each other.
Self-publishing pamphlets, chapbooks, and zines is a time-honored tradition. Walt Whitman published multiple editions of “Leaves of Grass.” Thomas Paine published “Common Sense.” Little magazines were popularized during the Harlem Renaissance. Sci-fi fanzines started showing up in the 1930s. Feminist and punk rock fanzines appeared in the 1960s and 1970s.*
What do they all have in common? A healthy disregard for convention and commercialism. A desire to create something personal, experimental, important, or quirky without an editor or investor dictating what can and can’t be done.
So where does Szkearian Zines come in? While floating through YouTube videos on bookbinding, I found a bunch on zines. It occurred to me that I had a backlog of Pagan-oriented poetry that I’d never really pushed to get published in journals, etc., and hadn’t included in my (small press published) chapbooks. Zines seemed the perfect way to give those poems life beyond my computer.
Aside from a quick experiment, my first zines were “Odes to Greek Deities” and “Odes to Norse Deities”. Making zines was too much fun to stop there, so I continued. Of course, I needed to find a way to distribute them, so I started a Szkearian Zines store on Etsy. Then decided we needed an actual website of our own.
So what’s the plan now? To make blog posts about every zine. Links to where you can buy them (some digital options, too). Exploration, some silliness, some words of experience, and whatever the dog drags in. And probably a zine about the dog, too.
*(see https://staples-alanna.medium.com/a-brief-history-of-zines-and-why-you-should-make-one-f362b30e6d67 for more history)