Zine Haul from Canzine and the Hamilton Feminist Zine Fair

Zine Haul! Fall is the time of zine fairs in the Toronto area – on October 17 I tabled for Static Cloud at Canzine, and on November 7 I tabled at the Hamilton Feminist Zine Fair. I love both of these fairs a lot, and they both generally bring very different kinds of zines. While Canzine ends up to be a lot of art and comics and not a lot of wordy zines, Hamilton Feminist Zine Fair takes that reign. I was super impressed with it last year, their first year, because of the kinds of zines I found. I crave wordy, serious topic zines, and this was the closest fair I could find them. Don’t get me wrong though, I have always loved Canzine and this year they took it up another few notches having it at the AGO, which made it accessible and allowed for even more awesome tablers.

So here are the zines I brought home with me.

Canzine

Here we have three comic collections – one from Jordan R Aelick (“Basin Comics”) and one from Robb Mirsky (“Life’s Too Short…”), two fine Toronto comic illustrators who have done many pages and their own covers of Static Zine, and the third from Christine Wong (“I Don’t Know What I’m Doing“) There’s also Robb’s mini “Stranded” about two guys on a raft in the middle of the ocean. All these comics are very cheeky! I also picked up Naomi Moyer’s “Black Women & Self Care” which is a great resource for dealing with different mental health issues as well as taking care of yourself in the face of racism and sexism. I’d love to include this in a future Self Care Package (yes I still am working on this!). Also fun fact: Naomi’s zine was featured in the same Bitch Media zine column post as one of my perzines. Yay!

Hamilton Feminist Zine Fair

Almost all very personal zines here, besides Bush, the new fashion magazine from Amarina Norris. There’s also a collection of notebook scans that is Jonathan Vallely’s teenage gay erotica (too NSFW for this blog, heh). There are two of Clementine Morrigan‘s “Seawitch” issues, 5 and 9, which talk a lot about gender feelings, addiction, trauma, self care, self-harm and a lot more. There are two of Eddie Jude’s zines – “Saturn Return(s),” which is in their perzine series Gross Process, and their new compilation zine (meaning they are the editor and have lots of contributors) “Not Trans Enough.” There’s “Silent Sadness” by Sonali Menezes about coming in control of their body after feeling very out of it. There’s “Women, Witchhunts, and the Reproduction of the Capitalist World” which is an interview with Silvia Federici. There’s “Tender Buttons” by Ellie Anglin (who contributed to Static #11) – I can’t tell if this zine is personal or fictional but I really liked the colourful collage and story about buttons. There is a very sad small zine called “Listen to the Monster” by a McMaster University student about an abusive relationship. And there’s “She’s Not Sorry,” a small zine of empowering feminine collages.

I must say I am proud of this haul! I can’t wait to dig into them even more.