Maggie Taylor, Radical Librarian, curates the IMC’s collection of zines. The IMC will host the first annual Midwest Zine Fest April 30th. Maggie sat down with Smile Politely to discuss the event as well as the finer points of zines and zine culture.
Smile Politely: You describe yourself as a Radical Librarian. Can you tell me what that means?
Maggie Taylor: Well, Librarians have a long history of un-censorship. The basic role of a librarian is to give people access to information without censorship. I’m one of three Radical Librarians and that’s actually the name of the group here at the IMC. We manage the Zine Library. We are cataloging and organizing all the zines as well as doing programing and workshops around town were people can make zines and learn about them. This year we are hosting our first zine festival, which is very exciting.
I guess what distinguishes us from other librarians is we are working with self published material. Which is radical in that it’s . . . I don’t want to say that it’s specifically anti-Capitalist or something, but people are making a choice. Either because the publishing industry is hard to break into or because they want to make something that’s immediate, or because they are resisting some other system.
SP: Do you see a difference between a zine and something on the internet — like a blog?
MT: Absolutely; I see a difference. Aesthetically there’s a difference as well as browse-able. When you find something on the internet — I was just talking to one of the other librarians about this — but when you find something on the internet it’s either that you’ve done a word search and you’ve come up with this blog link, or someone else has shared it with you. But when you come across a zine, often it’s just sort of happenstance. You just happen to come to the IMC and see it on the shelf, or you’re in an info shop or a record shop and you pick it up, or a friend sends it to you in the mail. Its not something you’re specifically searching for. Now you can go to a place like Quimby’s [Bookstore] in Chicago that’s got zines for sale and they are cataloged.
SP: It’s kind of more spontaneous.
MT: Yeah, you can just come across it, just stumble upon it. As well as the actual format of it. It’s usually collage. There a lot of aesthetics. There’s no pre-made format for it. You can go to a blog and use a template and then a lot of blogs tend to look the same or very similar. Zines — although they’re all photocopied — a lot of them are screen printed. There’s all different binding techniques. Some of them have a lot of photos or drawings, some are painted, some are collage. It’s very different.
SP: Is there something that links all zines together?
MT: I think usually it’s 1,000 copies or less published. So, small printing. I mean most of them are usually only around 100. But the definition is broad to say that it’s under 1,000. They have a lower distribution. They are self-published most often photo copied. Some people screen print their whole thing and only make a sort run of like 10 or something in their artist’s edition zines.
SP: Is there a specific style between the zines that are published?
MT: No, not particularly. There is a wide range of topics as well as styles. So in our collection we have art zines. You’ll see everything from more up and coming artists that are using it as a different format to get their work and information out there, as well as people who are for the first time ever putting together some images and call it an art zine. And, as far as style, there are all different styles. You think it’s just paper and a photocopier but it’s actually pretty broad. The binding techniques: ribbons, sewing, rubber-bands, stapling, all these Japanese techniques that are woven in with the pages.
SP: What got you interested in Zines?
MT: Most people get into zines when they are a teenager, but I was a little bit later. I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time and the guy I was seeing was making a lot of them at the time. So that was my first exposure to them. And then it was just kind of like, “Oh you can write down your thoughts of stuff you’ve learned and make it into this sort of work.” And it’s a great way to share. For me at the time, I was doing all this self study of my dreams. So I was journaling and audio recording my dreams. And then I sort of created my first compilation zine by collecting other people’s dreams and stories about that. And then I did a few issues of Dream Believers’ Zine, is what I called it. But for me it was just fascinating that it was relatively simple to create a work that then you could just share with people.
Some people make their zines in like a 24-hour period, but for me it usually takes two or three weeks to sort of compile what it is that I want and then find the layout. Then you’ve got something in your hand that you can share with people.
SP: How did you move from Portland and making your own zines to here and collecting zines?
MT: Well, there was a lot in the middle. One of the things that brought me to Champaign/Urbana is I came here for graduate school for library science. And that’s actually were I met Chris Ritzo and Jeanie Austin, the two other radical librarians here. I’ve still been making zines. I usually make one or two a year. That’s probably now six or seven years since I’ve been doing that. I had a radio show here at the IMC and noticed that there’s a zine library here and got on the list serve and started getting more and more involved.
We got a grant from the city of Urbana — an arts grant last year. So we got to do a lot more programing in the community. So Chris and Jenny and I have done programs at the women’s research center, the Urbana Free Library and at a youth media camp last summer. All kinds of places have been exposed to more people in this community. And that’s sort of what’s exciting.
SP: Explain how the Zine Fest came about.
MT: Well, Zine Fests have been happening all around the country for at least a couple of decades now. And there’s one in Milwaukee and one in Madison and one in Chicago that are pretty popular. Chicago is the one closest to Champaign/Urbana. And there’s quite a huge collection here in our library and we just think it would be a fun thing to do. IMC is a great place to hold an event like that. We started pooling our ideas. We’ve got a lot of interest and now we have over 20 people registered with tables that are going to be selling their zines. We have people coming form all over the country. And we have eight presenters now on some pretty radical topics. Visual history of abortion, politics of language, prostitution as a work, DIY instruments. So, all sorts of topics that these presenters have made zines about themselves. But also some fit into the realm of the alternative. We are going to do a punk brunch as a part of the festival, because punk is closely linked to zines history.
SP: Are there a lot of local zine makers?
MT: It’s hard to say, because we see what we get donated. I think we’ll know a lot more after the zine festival how many are local. A lot of the people we do workshops with it’s their first time making a zine. But you start asking around and they say, “Oh yeah, I know what a zine is” or “I made one a few years ago.” Since it’s a little less of a public project for people to do you don’t always know how many people in the community make zines.
SP: Yeah it seems like it’s more underground so it would be harder to collect everybody together. Have you run into any problems like that?
MT: Well, we definitely had a couple zine readings and those haven’t been that well attended. Either people like to keep their word in print, which is why they use that as their medium of communication or we just don’t know how to get the word out. So we are trying to put our fliers up in the Midwest Zine Fest and coffee shops or small book stores. Even music venues or house shows. So people who might make zines know about us. And that’s worked really well for us. But surprisingly, as soon as we made the Facebook event, like 80 people say they are attending and 700 people are awaiting reply or something.
SP: You were explaining a little about some of the different presenters [at the Midwest Zine Fest] that you’re going to have. Which ones are you excited for?
MT: Susan Parenti, who teaches at the School for Designing a Society here always is a dramatic presenter. She’s got a lot of background in sort of bizarre theater stuff. So I’m sure that’s going to be very audience participatory. And will capture peoples attention. She’s going to be talking about some things that people may or may not agree with. She usually has some pretty radical ideas.
Then we have someone who is doing a workshop on block printing. I think that will be great, not only for people who come the the zine fest, but people who have tables at the zine fest. It’s a cheap way to print multiple things. You just carve it into a linoleum block.
One woman is presenting her career as a sex worker. I’ve heard her speak before and she’s really interesting, because not a lot of people are public about that or especially talking about that. And there’s not really a space to have dialogue about that sort of thing. And she’s made zines that are absolutely beautiful. And they have these quirky little stories in them that can make anybody sort of smile but have serious dark undertones in them.
SP: Why do you think people get into zines?
MT: It’s fun. I don’t know. People are weird. They are quirky. So I think that this is weird and quirky. It’s pretty acceptable. It’s not expensive. You don’t have to be a certain age. You don’t have to have a certain music genre that you like to get involved. You don’t have to be a part of a certain scene to like zines. It’s a whole range of people who like zines. And you can like it openly and get together for an event like the Zine Festival or you can just check them out from the library and enjoy reading about other people’s lives and learning how they did something.