How many countries (and languages) have you received zines in?

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Obviously the majority of my zines are from the UK, because I live there, and the US, because there's a lot of zines from there. I've also got quite a few from Canada and Australia, them being english-speaking countries. Gianni Simone sent me some of his excellent zines from Japan as well. I've also got some zines from a Singaporean living in the UK. (And obviously my pal Tukru is finnish living in the UK)

My friend Ed got me some german zines (auf deutsch) when he went to the Müllheim Zinefest, and I got some really lovely things, and I got some zines from Germany in English off Tukru. I've got a few french zines I traded with Adrien on here. I can read zines in French no problem, but my french writing is atrocious, like some small french child who can't spell, so my letter back was probably pretty painful.

I've heard there's a huge zine scene in Russia, but I'd have to learn Russian first to make the most of that. I'd love to find more zines from other countries written in languages I know, but I'm not sure how to find out about them, because the majority of things I come across are american.

How many countries have you got zines from? What countries would you like more zines from? What differences do you see in the zine culture in different countries?

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Also me & Tukru were interviewed for a german design magazine about zines, but for some reason they didn't interview any german people, despite the fact that there are plenty of zines in germany. They totally mistranslated her English answers, and took my german ones and used them wholesale in the article without marking them as quotes, so it wasn't great journalism. I think T has got a scan somewhere.

[Matthew Mu]

I'd love to get some Russian zines, I could possibly even read parts of them!
I've got a pretty rad minicomic I bought in Indonesia. I can pretty much only understand the english loan words.

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Zines were big in the Soviet days, for obvious reasons, and they're big now in Putin's Russia, where the newspapers are once again censored. It was also the method used to distribute banned books, like the Master and Margarita too. They're called Samizdat in russian, and distributing stuff in the USSR days was pretty difficult because you needed to have a licence for typewriters and photocopiers, and the KGB had an identification page for each typewriter, so they could find out what machine was used for dissident materials. It's pretty interesting history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

Matthew Murray said:

I'd love to get some Russian zines, I could possibly even read parts of them!
I've got a pretty rad minicomic I bought in Indonesia. I can pretty much only understand the english loan words.

[Dave Roche]

I picked up some zines in Southeast Asia, some in English and some in Bahasa. I didn't see any perzines there, which I was kind of bummed about. I mean, it's cool reading about their local punk scenes, but I'd like to know more about day to day life for a punk.

I'd really like to get zines from anywhere in Africa. I know for a lot of the continent zines might not be feasible, definitely not a priority, but there's got to be some political underground press. And South Africa has to have something, right?

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Yeah I bet some of the richer countries like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Botswana have got something going on. And I bet there's loads of stuff in Egypt, but I don't know arabic.

Dave Roche said:

I picked up some zines in Southeast Asia, some in English and some in Bahasa. I didn't see any perzines there, which I was kind of bummed about. I mean, it's cool reading about their local punk scenes, but I'd like to know more about day to day life for a punk.

I'd really like to get zines from anywhere in Africa. I know for a lot of the continent zines might not be feasible, definitely not a priority, but there's got to be some political underground press. And South Africa has to have something, right?

[Emma Jane Falconer]

http://lowercasebooks.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/new-exhibition-russi...
This looks pretty cool

[AD]

"I've got a few french zines I traded with Adrien on here. I can read zines in French no problem, but my french writing is atrocious, like some small french child who can't spell, so my letter back was probably pretty painful."

Ahah! Didn't I tell you that tour letter was one of the best I'd ever received? Ok, I don't receive many but still... And I really liked the fact that you tried writing in French even if you don't know the language perfectly. Thank you for that. Plus the Beatles envelope was amazing! No need to talk about the zines.

Most of the zines I read are from the USA, but I've had some from UK, Australia, Canada, and I'll have some from a Spanish living in Germany. Not so much from France though, as weird as it may sound... :/

[Emma Jane Falconer]

There's good french lurking around in the back of my head somewhere, but it gets rustier by the day.

AD said:

"I've got a few french zines I traded with Adrien on here. I can read zines in French no problem, but my french writing is atrocious, like some small french child who can't spell, so my letter back was probably pretty painful."

Ahah! Didn't I tell you that tour letter was one of the best I'd ever received? Ok, I don't receive many but still... And I really liked the fact that you tried writing in French even if you don't know the language perfectly. Thank you for that. Plus the Beatles envelope was amazing! No need to talk about the zines.

Most of the zines I read are from the USA, but I've had some from UK, Australia, Canada, and I'll have some from a Spanish living in Germany. Not so much from France though, as weird as it may sound... :/

[kit feral]

The majority of the zines I get are from the US, but I pretty frequently get things from the UK and Australia (didn't realize there was such a big scene there!) A few things from France and Spain, as well.

I'd really love to get some more Canadian zines, as funny as that sounds. The majority of Canadian zines I get are from Ontario and Montreal, I'd like somewhere closer to home (I only have ONE zine from my home province!) or somewhere I'm unfamiliar with (up North, etc.) It'd also be cool to get some from places that I want to travel to one day- like Iceland, Peru... too bad a lot of the places I'd want zines from don't use English.