Public libraries are often thought of as solemn spaces, reserved for quiet study and filled with old books collecting dust. But the library is much more than that, and Milwaukee Zine Fest is just one example.
"I like to refer to this as the loudest, best day at the library," says Timothy Rush, rare books librarian for Milwaukee Public Library. "It's the day where we really smash that idea that the library is a quiet study place, at least for 24 hours."
This year's fest saw 124 vendors and hundreds of alt-literature fans pack Milwaukee’s Central Library for a celebration of DIY publishing, free expression and print media. The event is a collaboration between Milwaukee Public Library and The Bindery — a “book factory” in Bay View that serves as a creative hub for small-press publishing.
Now, you might be wondering — what is a zine? The Bindery’s Zach Lifton explains.
"Basically, it's an independent, published work that somebody is producing on their own, rather than through a traditional method like a publishing house," he says. "It’s typically something simple and easy to create at home that can be distributed through very low-to-the-ground, grassroots means — like a festival or amongst friends — and that's what we're doing today."
Making Art Accessible
It’s the accessibility of zine-making that drew Lizzie Madsen of Minneapolis to the medium. She and her partner Mads started making zines under the name, "Hunter Moon Press" earlier this year.
"You can write or design however you would like, scan it and print it off," she says. "If you go to your local library, it's probably going to be 10 cents a copy or less, and it's a great way to get information out there and meet like-minded people without all the barriers to entry of traditional publishing."
For writer Luke Geddes, zines offer an outlet to participate in a visual medium.
"I've always been into these underground or alternative self-published comics, but I don't have artistic skills," Geddes says. "So, sort of my entryway to be able to participate in that culture is through zines."
His zine TV Grime is a play on the old TV Guide magazine. It’s a serialized work that traffics in television nostalgia – combining cultural criticism with personal retrospective.
"The most popular one is the Halloween issue — which includes my reviews and reflections on every Halloween themed TV episode I've ever seen in my life of watching a lot of TV — and then a Twin Peaks issue that's about the web of influence that Twin Peaks had on culture that followed it," he says.
Simon & Schuster published Luke Geddes’ novel Heart of Junk in 2020, so he’s no stranger to traditional publishing. But, he has a particular soft spot for the DIY charm and disarming intimacy of zines
"It's almost always hand-stapled and bound, so you feel like you have more of a connection with the person who made it," he says. "It has that spark of reading someone's diary almost."
Creating Artistic Community
It’s that intimacy that makes zines so attractive to many today. Take Ian Izard’s zine Electric Dream, a deeply personal work that explores his experience of digital alienation.
"It's a book kind of about technology and like my own personal relationship to the internet in terms of like seeking validation from it, and kind of, 'Where do we get our identity from?'" he says. "It's mostly very depressing and sad, but in a fun, beautiful way."
For Izard, Zine Fest evokes a feeling of artistic community — an opportunity to participate in face-to-face culture.
"I feel like the best part is just like keeping up with people, getting to see what they're doing," he says. "We all get to be in the same place at the same time, and it's really easy to find new stuff that way."
Colleen Harriss of Dog Eye Press puts it like this:
"We love talking about how zines and books are just portals, like portals into another world," she says. "It's something where you can create another world and then just hand it off to someone, and then they take it with them — and you never know where it's going to go."
Max Yela is Head of Special Collections at UWM, and he’s worked closely with Central Library on their zine archive, a collection that helped kickstart Zine Fest back in 2008. For Yela, zines are are an exercise in disintermediation — breaking down barriers between audiences, publishers and makers.
"I love the fact that they're DIY, that you don't have to depend on a publisher," he says. "You're the maker, you're the publisher, you're the distributor."
Librarian Timothy Rush puts it this way:
"Zines allow somebody to put their thoughts into the world without any sort of filter or need to change up what they're writing because it's what the publisher thinks should be made," says librarian Timothy Rush.
Zines as a Site of Struggle
From transcendentalism to surrealism to 70s punk and 90s feminism, the zine has been a consistent fellow traveler of radical artistic and political movements. Cartoonist Susan Simensky Bietila cut her teeth as an activist-artist in the 60’s, and she’s been coming to Milwaukee Zine Fest since the beginning.
"I think the role of artists is to resist authoritarianism, and I'm part of a collective that certainly does that, because we touch all the topics that we're not supposed to talk about." she says. "We support Palestine — even though most of us are Jewish — and we're against genocide; we support political prisoners; we support women's rights; we support the right to healthcare and all of the other things that are being threatened right now."
Bietila is a contributor and co-editor for World War 3 Illustrated, a leftist comics anthology published by AK Press. Last summer, her comic strip “Big Sister is Watching You” was included as part of a gallery event at the St. Kate Hotel during the Republican National Convention. However, she says the piece was removed.
"The night of the show opening at the Saint Kate Hotel, art hotel managers and owners took it down," she says. "And they said that it was it was too inciting to riot for the Republicans and were afraid that damage would be done to the hotel."
Bietila says events like Zine Fest are important bastions of free speech at a time when it’s under threat.
"Things are being censored in the arts, and unfortunately, I think it's only beginning," she says.
For “The Bindery’s” Zach Lifton, zines are the perfect medium for amplifying perspectives that might be otherwise marginalized.
"I really love that they are a way for all different types of diverse voices to be out in the world in a way that maybe traditional publishing wouldn't be capturing, or marginalizing those voices to the side," he says. "So, zines are a great way for everybody to participate in print."
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