Queer Zine Archive Project

by Sassafras Lowrey

Do you like to read or write zines? I first learned about zines right as I came out as queer in large part because right after I came out at seventeen I moved to Portland, Oregon which was at the time a very active queer zine community including a large annual Zine Symposium/Conference where zinesters (the name given to people who crates zines) would travel to from around the country to connect, share skills, and of course trade zines. Zines are self-published print publications, usually small and in limited batches. Sometimes created by a single person or by a collection of contributors zines can be digitally put together on a computer, or in the more “traditional” zine look that often involves cut and paste pages assembled by hand and then photocopied and then distributed.

I was a teenager when I discovered zines. I immediately fell in love with the creative medium and began writing and producing my own. Zines felt intimately connected to queer culture to me — not only because I was writing about my experience of coming out, dating, and building friendships at my local LGBTQ+ youth program — but also on a deeper level because for me being queer is a large part about claiming and naming our own experiences and lives. With zines, creators were completely responsible for the production and no one is reliant upon an editor or publication to approve our words or grant legitimacy to our words or stories. Zines and zine culture were huge in the 1990s and early 2000s but they absolutely have not gone out of fashion, and are even becoming trendy again. Last year I facilitated a zine writing and production workshop at a queer youth program in Portland, Oregon and I was thrilled that so many participants were already actively producing and distributing zines. Accessing zines and zine culture can be challenge depending on where you live, and particularly with COVID where visiting independent bookstores and other creative venues isn’t possible.

One of my favorite zine resources that can be accessed remotely is The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP). QZAP was founded in 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY (Do It Yourself) publishing and underground queer communities. The organization’s mission is about preserving, celebrating and making accessible queer zines of the past, present and future. The archive has a FREE and searchable database of LGBTQ+ zines which have been scanned in as PDF’s that you can read online or download!

If you’re looking for something new to read, it’s fun to spend some time getting lost in the QZAP archive and exploring different zines and zine creators. Milo Miller, Co-Founder of the Queer Zine Archive Project, gives the following recommendations for LGBTQ+ youth looking for a place to start when looking at zines in the archive:

• YELL ZINES: “YELL was the young people’s affinity group connected to ACT-UP NY, and they were doing direct action in their high schools to get better sex ed and HIV/AIDS ed, condoms in schools, and fighting the school board for such. I think it’s an awesome example of queer student activism in times of pandemic.”
• Cascade AIDS Project: Youth created peer-to-peer sex education focused.
• A Queer Zine Tale: a little bit vintage but this zine actually looks at the history of queer zines!

Zines are a great way for LGBTQ+ people of all ages to communicate and share about lived experiences and unique perspectives. With COVID and the need to spend more time at home and isolating, zine-making is a great creative way to connect with other LGBTQ+ people from around the world and share about your own unique perspective and experience! Have you ever made a zine?

About the Author:

Sassafras Lowrey’s novels and nonfiction books have been honored by organizations ranging from the American Library Association to the Lambda Literary Foundation and the Dog Writers Association of America. Sassafras’ work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired and numerous other newspapers and magazines. Sassafras has taught queer writing courses and workshops at LitReactor, the NYC Center For Fiction and at colleges, conferences, and LGBTQ youth centers across the country. www.SassafrasLowrey.com