Chantel's Spectacular Page!

I am a fat queer weirdo from Louisiana who lived in Kansas for almost nine years, but recently moved to Portland, Oregon.

When you consider my age, I am fairly new to the zine world. (Alas, I was not a cool 16 year-old reading and publishing zines.)

The first zine I was involved with was the Femmenstruation Rites Rag, which I did with my friend Bracken Firecracker. That started in 1999 and soon got so thick I couldn't afford to photocopy it.

In 2002 I wrote a zine about my personal experience with herbal abortion.

I have four that are all poetry (A Few Words, The Best of Poet-in-the-Box, Poems for the Year, and A Poem a Day) and one that is both poetry and my experiences in summer 2007 when I spent a month in residence at a rural retreat space for artists and writers (August in Harveyville).

I've also recently made a zines that have nothing to do with poetry.

The first non-poetry zine is called Candy Box and it's all about my experiences with candy that my friend sent to me from Great Britain. In the zine I rate each candy on several criteria and report my findings to my readers.

My most personal zine is called Mistaken for Straight. I started writing it as a way to deal with the invisibility I feel as a queer woman involved romantically/sexually with a male bodied person. It evolved a bit in the writing, and it is also about no longer using the term "bisexual" to describe myself, and embracing the term "queer." In the zine I contemplate gender, sex, and the heteronormative mainstream society. It is 32 pages long and includes coming out stories and a hot sex scene.

My most recent zine is Adult Themes. It contains poetry, prose, fact and fiction, and it's all about S-E-X. I put it together to sell at a reading of the same name I organized for July 25, 2009. Five hot women read our HOT HOT HOT writing. The reading was exciting, but I admit I was nervous too. I'd never read my sexually explicit work aloud, much less in the town where I live. The event was swell, even though some of the people I expected to see there didn't show. I guess I wasn't the only person who was nervous about sex being spoken aloud. I am totally glad I read and would do it again for sure.

I am interested in doing more writing for other people's zines and am hoping to take advantage of this site to find out about folks seeking submissions.

I love to read zines, and I really enjoy trading zines, so people should for sure contact me about trades.