Interview DIY already: Zine Fest co-organizers Matthew Czerwinski and Leslie Perrine

In pulling together this weekend’s free Zine Fest—the first in Chicago—co-organizers and Chicago transplants Matthew Czerwinski and Leslie Perrine say they were stunned to learn that while this city has a healthy zine scene, its members don’t seem to interact with each other on a widespread level. The organizers hope to change all that: They've booked a series of readings at Quimby's on Friday, a seven-hour exhibit of zines on Saturday, and a variety of workshops and speakers aimed at encouraging attendees to exchange zines and techniques. Zine Fest is also about making zine-publishing accessible to newbies, so The A.V. Club talked to Czerwinski (Effigy) and Perrine (The Lonely Hippopotamus) about the most common obstacles in taking pen, stapler, and glue to paper.

The A.V. Club: Did you have any apprehensions when you started out making zines?

Matthew Czerwinski: Well, a lot of zine culture is very underground, very limited to your neighborhood and your circle of friends or your little punk scene or whatever, so there’s an aspect to it that if you make a zine you might only make like 20 copies of it and it can seem like a somewhat silly thing to do when you’re doing it on such a small scale. 

Leslie Perrine: It’s also intimidating when you first jump into it because you don’t know who’s going to be reading it and how they’re going to get it out there exactly. One thing I was apprehensive about is that a lot of zines people throw together just for information to get out there and that’s not exactly what either Matt or I do with our zines. We’re more art-based in where we’re coming from and we both have writing degrees and went to school for writing, so I think we kind of come from a slightly different background than a lot of zine makers. That was a hesitation for me at first.

MC: Sometimes zines can be personal to the point where it’s hard to want to give it to people, knowing that you’ve shared very intimate thoughts. Another thing is that most zine makers don’t really ever make any money doing their zine. In some ways [it’s] a good thing: A lot of zine culture is about trading and sharing and giving things away to your friends, but you can spend a ton of money printing zines and then it’s sort of discouraging when no one wants to give you two dollars just to buy it from you.

AVC: Along those lines, if you could go back in time, what’s one piece of advice you’d give yourself when you started?

LP: Talk to somebody who has been in the zine-making culture, and don’t be intimidated by it. When people are successful in zine-making, you sort of think they’re separate from you. It’s a whole culture that everyone learns from each other in, so I would say to ask someone, “Hey, how do I put these pages together?”

AVC: What’s the lifespan of the average zine?

MC: Usually a lot of zines spring up, have three issues, and then they’ll disappear, or a zinester will disappear. Some of the more established names I know of, like Michelle Aiello in Chicago for example has been making Indigo for I think 14 years.

LP: At a certain point, a lot of artists see it as not moving forward to still be self-publishing. They think they should be published at that point, like after 14 years or something, so that makes the lifespan a little shorter generally because people a lot of times move into a bigger press media.

AVC: What are the markings of a good or a bad zine? To the undiscerning eye, the stacks of them at Quimby’s can look indistinguishable.

MC: A good zine is one that bears the mark of its creator in a really interesting way, and that could really be anything. It could be a mini-comic, or it could be a zine full of lists. The advantage of the zine is that you can be as earnest and as honest and true to yourself as possible. You don’t have to go through the filter of editorship or of trying to market something to the public, so it seems like the best zines are the best because their creators are really open and really true to themselves.

LP: A lot of times the amount of thought behind a zine shows through. It doesn’t have to be super elaborate or anything, but the concept behind it and the amount of time people put into it show through in a lot of people’s work and I think that makes something seem more worthwhile.

AVC: Why not just start a blog?

MC: There’s a certain value in the community that’s created by meeting people that are working on the same kind of art that you are, and going to an event like the Zine Fest and trading zines with people. There’s an aspect also of visual design and creativity that is not really expressible on a blog in the same way. We talked about this with the Chicago Underground Library: I don’t think the niches filled by zines and the creativity that goes into them are really replaceable.

LP: Yeah, having a tangible object that you can look through and feel the amount of work that went into it translates a lot easier into a paper object that you’re holding than something you’re looking at online.

MC: Definitely. I have a blog, and I’m not anti-blog, I think they’re useful, but sometimes I just copy text from a document that I made years ago and post it on there. It doesn’t require the same attention and effort that a zine does.

AVC: You mentioned there’s actually a bigger local zine community than you expected. What zine resources does Chicago have that other cities don’t?

MC: Quimby’s is a really big one. They will carry any zine made by anyone without any sort of judgment.

LP: And the Underground Library, they’ll carry any Chicago-based self-published work of independent media, so they’re a great resource in Chicago as well.

MC: There’s plenty of comic shops and independent bookstores that carry zines or small press books, like Women & Children First or Chicago Comics or Third Coast Comics. And the Lichen Lending Library down in Pilsen. It’s interesting when you start looking into how many different ways this culture is expressed in Chicago.

AVC: Any last words of advice to anyone reading this, thinking of taking the plunge and starting their own zine?

MC: Just do it. Read a lot of zines and meet people and figure out how you want to do it and then do it. I didn’t really feel good about making zines until I focused on it and took it seriously, instead of it being something I just threw together. If you take it seriously and put effort into it, it will turn out good.

LP: I think it’s also getting over the idea that it has to be perfect. Just make something really worthwhile and really great and get it out there. It’s very empowering to see something you made and see somebody else reading it or picking it up at a store and just walking out with it without having to go through the loopholes or editors or anything like that. You can just make it and it exists, which is awesome.