Mid-West Zine Fest

The second annual Mid-West Zine Fest will be a gathering of zine-makers, authors, speakers, musicians and other rad people for the purpose of celebrating zines and zine-culture!

The festival will include interactive events, food, speakers, music and plenty of zines.

Featured Guest Speakers

Liz Mason - The Consignment Doctor Is In: Hints & Advice On the Dreaded Business-y End of Getting Your Zine In the Public's Paws

From Liz Mason, the manager of Quimby's Bookstore and editor of the zine Caboose. Liz Mason has been self-publishing zines for fourteen years. Her work has been printed in such publications as The Chicago Tribune, Punk Planet, Venus, Lumpen and The Zine Yearbook. She has appeared on a reality show to provide instruction on publishing zines, which NBC executives referred to as "pamphlets" as if they were Marxist propaganda. Her most recent published work is Caboose #8: reDraft Picks.

More info at: LizMasonIsAwesome.com

Quimby's is an independently owned bookstore that sells independently-published and small press books, comics, zines and ephemera. We favor the unusual, the aberrant, the saucy and the lowbrow.

Emm Poisk - We’re all here, but where are we at? Praxis for zine culture.

There is something that has brought us all here. Something that we all
agree is worth spending our time and energy on. We experience life, we
define our desires, we act, we communicate… we create culture. Or do we?
I wonder, are we creators or are we consumers? Do we maintain our
independence as some try to sell back our culture to us, or have we become
the producers and purveyors of just another commodity? I want to explore
what I love about zines - the ideal: the powerful, radical and liberating
qualities of zine making and everything that goes with it.

Milo Miller - Preserving Queer Zine History

Milo will be speaking about the importance of archiving queer zines and
preserving queer zine history. Zis talk will include a bit about QZAP's
own back story, digital archiving and fair use, and why zines as /vox
populi/ provide an alternate and parallel story of the struggles and
triumphs of queers.