Last year, Ben and Sarah of T&A visited New York (lucky things) and came across Bluestockings, an independent bookshop/fairtrade cafe/activist centre. They left a few copies of the zine (with the proceeds going as a donation to the shop). This year, we decided to send some more issues in the hope of getting a wider readership and perhaps some international submissions. We decided to extend this project and invite other UK-based collectives and zine-makers to contribute; sending us a few issues for free or wholesale price to include in our big parcel.
It's been a good opportunity to get in touch with other zine-makers (who hopefully we'll trade/collaborate/work with in future) and hopefully they'll get some good exposure from this project too.
This project, and a few of these zines (cotw, vapid, shrieking violet) are mentioned in the latest issue of Twigs & Apples, though we went to print before we got all our collection together. Here's the full list of what we collected!
---------
- Call of the Wild: A new Preston based zine covering art, music, fashion, word and local culture. Named after the novel of the same name, in which the characters meet around the campfire to escape the cold, relax and converse - 'Call of the Wild' offers a 'campfire' in zine format.
A5 b&w photocopy, plus a free CD of local talent. 50p
- The Shrieking Violet: A well-established Manchester based zine and blog, informed by 'the experience and love of being in the city'. It offers a constant mix of recipes, articles, illustration, short fiction, local listings and more. The regular feature on 'alternative' Manchester history/culture (canal boats, gargoyles, parks...) by editor Natalie Bradbury, is a particular favourite.
A5 b&w photocopy, free!
- Vapid Kitten: Beautifully designed 'zine for the lazy feminist', now up to their third issue. Each issue is based around a theme - so far 'feminism', 'green living', and 'craft' - and offers a mix of photography, articles, and creative writing. The next issue will be 'analogueVdigital' and they're accepting submissions until the end of March (see their blog).
A5, full colour, £2/£2.50
- The DIY times: A zine we came across at Supersonic Festival 2010 in Birmingham. Lovely colour hand screen-printed cover; black and white innards featuring a host of pictures and interviews with creative types. A collaboration between Birmingham based screen-printing studio 'Get a Grip' and Exeter based creative/printing community 'No Guts No Glory'.
A5, colour cover, b&w pages, £2
- OWT creative: An art zine put together by recent grads of Manchester Met University. Each issue is based around a word-theme and contains a great mix of text and image based works, plus a beautiful hand screen-printed cover. They put out very smart art zines at a very quick rate which, quite frankly, makes me kick myself to work faster and harder...plus they make tee's, prints and stickers.
A5, colour/b&w, £5
- Twigs & Apples: you know us! :)
---------
We'll let you know how it goes. If you're one of the collectives involved, we'd be interested to know if you make any fans/contacts in New York through this project!
PS. We also sent out some zine parcels to nice folk in the UK this week - hope you enjoy! ;)(emails will never be as fun as real post).
peace, T&A x
