As you know, we are beavering away to get Aunty Mabel’s Zine Distro up and running. We are getting closer to lift off and that means we can now move our blog over to our shiny new digital home. Hooray!

From now on, our blog will reside here: http://blog.perthzinecollective.com/

Check the blog for updates on the grand unveiling of Aunty Mabel’s Zine Distro. We are quite excited so we hope you are too!

Love,

Perth Zine Collective

Tomas Ford
Mathas
Amber Fresh
Erin Pearce
Caroline J. Dale
and PZC members Anna Dunnill and Elizabeth Tan.

We have eight new zines to read! Look forward to seeing you there!

This being my first experience both wandering in the city of Melbourne and participating in a small press fair, I will say naïve things. Like how I imagined there to be strings playing when we arrived in Melbourne, specifically the fancy song you hear when Homer Simpson visits the land of chocolate.

Here is a picture of the zines and typewriters in Sticky. What tasty treats!

I was pretty humbled to have been invited to Page Parlour, which was part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. It was held in the Atrium, which resembles a large beehive made from metal and glass. We had heard from a few past participants that cold winds can race through the Atrium entrance and blow zines right off your table. But on Sunday 5 June the weather was bright and still, the wind was negligible, and we settled in for a fairly halcyon day.

The best thing about Page Parlour was meeting the other publishers, editors and zinesters. We shared our table with Greta from Freerange Press. The table across from us had Johannes Jakob, editor of Voiceworks, and Susie, who was selling some pretty sweet zines like Just My Typewriter and Four Crushes. At the Atrium entrance there was the Emerging Writers’ Festival publication The Reader, a zine called Chase Hot Air Balloons, and another called There, a moment held. At the other end of the Atrium was Tim Train, who makes the consistently funny and charming zine Badger’s Dozen, as well as many other talent-packed items of joy, like the anthology of a Sydney literary night called Penguin Plays Rough. All the small press people and zinesters were pretty darn friendly. The editors from page seventeen and [untitled] even came up to our stall just to say hello. I don’t know if I could have handled a larger zine fair – the level of awesomeness I experienced on the day took its mighty toll on my wallet. I stuffed my backpack full of other people’s zines.

There was a lot of traffic in the Atrium, but most of the people passing through were tourists, families, and visitors of the National Art Gallery. A lot of the people that came to look at our table weren’t aware that the event was called ‘Page Parlour’, but they were all friendly and interested in zines. Although there was a stream of casual browsers all day long, in the end it was really surprising when we counted our stock and realised that we had sold more zines on this day than any other day ever.

When 5pm came and people began packing up and the sun slouched down to peek through the Atrium entrance, I was chilling with a blue milkshake. It was a pretty good time.

Love from

Sj Finch
The Perth zine Collective

When: Saturday 21st May, 1-4 pm

Where: The Grove Library, 1 Leake St Peppermint Grove

Facebook event (so the internet reminds you to come, you forgetful people): here

- Bring a zine project you’re working on, or start one from scratch. Learn how to fold an A7 minizine out of a single A4 page: quick to make, simple to fold, cheap to reproduce, beautiful to read.

- Write a letter to your grandma/favourite band/MP/Year 3 teacher. Decorate with stickers & collage, make a cool envelope, add stamp, post. Wait by the letterbox every day with bated breath.

We’ll provide typewriters, collage materials & stationery…not to mention a library-worth of material to photocopy. Feel free to bring your own art materials too.

Additionally, Aunty Mabel’s Zine Distro will be in attendance with their best smiles & 60+ zines for sale! (Note: smiles not for sale.)

We probably don’t need to tell you how excited we are about this. But it is approximately this much:

Your zine is a toy monkey.

(Seriously, I bet you don’t have anything else to do this Saturday. So bring a friend and come on down.)

We’ll also be at Cottonmouth XXV (that’s #25 if you’ve forgotten your Roman numerals) on THURSDAY APRIL 7TH, usual place (459 bar), usual time (8pm start). Here’s the Facebook event so the internet can remind you to attend.

…and then the rain came and we scooped everything up with incredible haste and fled:

Photos by Kate Wilson, Sue Byrne and SJ Finch, respectively. Thanks to everyone who helped, and everyone who came despite the 38 degree day, heinous humidity & thunderstorm warnings!

In the meantime, join us tomorrow night at Cottonmouth XXIII, where we will be hosting a large & varied zine table for your viewing (& purchasing) pleasure. Plus: spoken word, music, typewriters, beer, coloured pencils. Who can say no?

PS. I am reliably informed that mOther [has words...], one of Perth’s bestest writing zines, will be up all night baking MUFFINS for Cottonmouth! WOO.

What event has all those things? A Zine Picnic! We, the Perth Zine Collective, miss our fun zine times, and so we’ve organised a bit of a get together at Hyde Park. We’ll be bringing our zine libraries out, which includes zines that we don’t normally stock, and that you might not get the chance to see otherwise. We’ll also be bringing out some fun stationary and typewriters to play with! This event has exclusivity! We will also play tunes and feed you food and the event is free free free. If you don’t come you will be forever known as ‘that person who didn’t come to the zine picnic at hyde park and probably regretted it’.

Date: Saturday 29th January

Time: 12.30-5.30pm

Place: Hyde Park, Perth

If you have food or zines or music or you to share, bring it along on the day.

Fun zine times,
The PZC

Last week, Propel Arts held a block party at Kurb Gallery in Northbridge, a showcase for the end results of various art and performance workshops held in March. Here’s proof of the zines our enthusiastic workshop attendees made, and even some photographs of works in the process. Thanks Propel!