Outings

DIY publishing is alive and well at Mini Zine Fest

It’s 2011 and we’re neck deep in internet, so why is it that zines will never die? Probably because there’s always going to be some kid who reads Get in the Van or Please Kill Me and falls in love with the whole screw-you-Yankee-blue-jeans DIY ethos. Brooklyn, which has been incubating young creative talent for years, is a fertile ground for idealistic young writers. You can see the fruits of that fertile soil this weekend when Pete’s Candy Store hosts the free second annual Mini Zine Fest, bringing out the best DIY publishers in the five boroughs to show off their wares.

The fest on Saturday from 3-9 (rain date June 4) shows that Zines — self-published and often self-constructed, magazines — are enjoying a surge of popularity in the city. “I can tell you that people are still writing zines like mad,” event co-organizer Andria Alefhi told us. She also revealed that available table space filled up so quickly for this festival that she and co-organizer Marguerite Dabaie are planning another one for September.

For a preview of what you’ll be able to find, here are excerpts from some of the participating zinesters on Saturday.

From “The Baby General: The Graphic Novel” by Mark Lerer:

“Even as Admiral Kips-Bay enjoys sloshing around in the muck, General Dunlately and Generalissima Chiquita Banana (with a tilde over the first “n” to read “Chiquita Ban-yan-a”) continue their battle! Wave after wave of Dunlately’s paratroopers engage Chiquita’s soldiers on the ground — Chiquita’s surface-to-air artillery devastates Dunlately’s air forces — and young men lie wounded and dying while the two babies try to convince themselves of the correctness of their courses of action…”

Margo Dabaie uses pictures to tell stories in The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories:

Comic by Margo Dabaie

And from Andria Alefhi’s We’ll Never Have Paris:

“I wasn’t just cold and bored, I was angry. And here is the point. What with all the quiet time I had a chance to ask myself the important question: How much is me and how much is them?  Why couldn’t I go with the flow?  You know, lemons to lemonade.

Some people have lemons and make lemonade. Some maybe just sigh, too tired to make lemonade, and go to Dunkin’ Donuts for an iced coffee. Me, I run to the nearest person, finger already pointed, screaming, ‘Do you see THIS? What the FUCK am I supposed to do with lemons?’ I somehow need to prove to anyone within earshot that I saw thru the plot.”

Pete’s Mini Zine Fest will take place from 3-7 p.m. on Saturday May 28, at Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St., Williamsburg.

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