Zine makes a scene in NL

Two ziners hold a workshop about how to make DIY zines

My Online Journalism Blog
Melissa Wong

Emily Roehl and Rachel Jekanowski were interested in artist books and zines and a friendship was born.

‘Zine’ is slang for a home-made magazine.

"Often when I think of zines, I think of you know sort of cheaply printed, ready to… (handout) black and white folded paper maybe staple-bound things," Roehl said.

"The US Library of Congress has a zine web archive which is a very exciting thing, but apparently you can only access it when you are physically at the Library of Congress," Roehl added. "The definition they give for 'zine' is a self-published, self-created, self-distributed, and non-commercial publication."

Jekanowski brought a few examples of zines made from folded paper with covers, without covers or hard bindings to Roehl and Jekanowski's zine workshop.

DIY Zines

A small group of people attended their event called "How to Make Zines At the End of the World: A Hands-On Workshop" on Thursday, February 13 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador's Science Building's Nexus for Humanities and Social Sciences Research.

A zine that has a cover. The cover is made from card stock.
Melissa Wong/My Online Journalism Blog

Jekanowski had recently moved to St. John's from Montreal to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of English and study activist media creation. She attended the workshop as the instructor. 

Roehl spoke at the workshop through a video call from Texas, United States. She said "As part of Mystery Spot books, I'm really proud to say I'll be in St. John's later this year. I'll be doing a residency."

"In addition to being a researcher, being a scholar, I am also an artist book publisher," Roehl said. "I founded a publishing company called Mystery Spot Books about ten years ago it in Minneapolis which is where I am currently doing my work although I'm a- technically a postdoctoral fellow in the transitions in the energy cultures society program at the University of Alberta in Edmonton."

"In 2018… (I finished) my Ph.D. (at Concordia University) … looking at histories of land use and settler/colonial relations in Canadian cinema." Jekanowski said. "It became… I guess (a) call to action. To move beyond documenting settler-relations in Canadian film and media… To reshape those relations and try… (to) intervene... (in) these systems. So, to me, zine-making and public scholarship is one way to do that."

Zines VS, Blogs

According to Jekanowski, zines can reach readers directly without relying on "usual gatekeepers that exist within Western society—you can see these kinds of parallels to blogging."

Zines and artists boxes that are concerned
 with the state of the world.
Zines, artist books and boxes
could be fast to make without relying on
traditional publishing companies.Melissa Wong/My Online Journalism Blog

"With the rise of the Internet, there are some concerns within a lot of various underground circles that the zine as a paper form would cease to exist because why would people still want to work on paper when people start to blog and do various kinds of work within the digital realm," Jekanowski added. "Although there was, of course, this explosion of blogs and this use of online collage, memes and theater essays and a whole host of different kinds of digital media that was doing the same kind of things there has still been a very rich if not (an) expansion of zine making."

The Internet has helped zines because ziners have used it to increase their audience by scanning and uploading paper zines to the Internet. Or, their readers can use the Internet to arrange for zines to be mailed to their homes.

NL Zines

"Like here in St. John's who wouldn't actually have access to a local distributor," Jekanowski added. "We don't actually have an ongoing zine series here... or zine fests so having online distributors who can then send the stuff through the mail continues to reach areas that would be outside of those… networks."

A zine and book about how to make zines.
They are fairly easy to make.
Melissa Wong/My Online Journalism Blog

Newfoundland may not have a large zine culture now, but it could grow larger. DIY workshops like this encourage could locals to make DIY zines or to come together to make collaborative zines.

"Emily and I are doing a few different types of workshops, so this is the first," Jekanowski said. "We're going to be doing another over the summer conference and we're also hoping to do further events… We've also been talking to the other people who are involved with Eastern Edge Gallery to try and develop zine pop up fair like zine distributors event here. So, we're also hoping this will be the first of many."

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©Melissa Wong