2025 is the year of the zine at the University of Virginia, according to Erin Dickey, Librarian for the Arts at UVA Library. From the Library’s Makerspace to classrooms across Grounds, Dickey has observed an uptick in students and faculty experimenting with creating the self-published, do-it-yourself magazines thanks in part to a new Library initiative, Zines Now!
Funded by a UVA Arts Council grant headed by Dickey and fellow librarians Amy Hunsaker and Rebecca Coleman, the yearlong Zines Now! project includes zine-making workshops, exhibitions and displays in Library spaces across Grounds, and a public guest lecture in partnership with the Department of Art. “Zines are about making and sharing,” Dickey said.
Zines have seen a resurgence in culture in recent years, after first appearing in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance and then enjoying periods of renewed cultural interest, most famously in the punk and alt-rock scenes in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Today, zines offer low-barrier publishing, anonymity that can be hard to find in a digital world, and elements of community-building since they’re often shared by hand.
“Making zines reminds us that art allows us novel ways to process and interpret the world as we experience it,” Dickey said. “Using your hands and your imagination stretches the brain! And distributing zines proves that there are alternative ways to share information, and that it can be fun to experiment with what alternatives might be possible.”
A community of makers
Last week Zines Now! sponsored a workshop on handmade zine covers in Shannon Library’s Scholars’ Lab Common Room. Led by printmaker Josef Beery, who instructed students on his small, portable letterpress (known as the BookBeetle), the workshop touched on the importance of collaboration in creative expression.
“When we engage our hands with physical materials, those materials, their nature and the techniques for using them, can become satisfying creative partners,” Beery said. “Likewise, a community of makers sharing their work at a table together encourages supportive, honest, compassionate expression. The making of zines has the potential to give voice to a human spirit not necessarily accessible through a keyboard.”
On Nov. 11, the program will hold another workshop in the Scholars’ Lab, this one focusing on the way zines can be used as tools for connection, social change, and personal growth. “Zines for Change” will be led by Jess Walters, a multimedia artist and disability justice advocate currently serving as a FusionLab Arts Research Fellow at the UVA Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, which is cosponsoring the event.
Walters, who has experienced chronic kidney disease, has used zines to educate legislators about health disparities and barriers to healthcare access. In tomorrow’s workshop, Walters will introduce zines as advocacy tools, present a variety of approaches and styles from different zine samples, and demonstrate how to fold a single sheet of paper into an eight-page mini-zine. Participants will be prompted to create their own zine around an idea or cause they are passionate about. “We’re eagerly anticipating Jess Walters’ workshop,” Dickey said.
Looking back, looking ahead
One goal of the Zines Now! initiative is to showcase the history of zines as an art form. In September, Margaret Galvan, an Associate Professor at the University of Florida, delivered the keynote lecture for Zines Now! to an audience of UVA community members and the public in Campbell Hall (in partnership with the UVA Department of Art). “Her lecture, ‘There Truly was a Queer Zine Explosion: How Cartoonists Made Zines and Built Community in the 1990s,’ sparked excited conversation that continued during the post-lecture reception,” Dickey said. Earlier that day, Galvan spoke to more than 40 students from three different Studio Art courses, leading them through a mini-zine-folding tutorial, sharing examples from her personal zine collection, and discussing methods of zine distribution before the popularization of the internet.
Dickey said she is particularly excited about next semester’s panel and workshop, “Zine Your Research,” to be held on March 25 in Shannon Library Room 330. “Four UVA researchers — from the Department of Drama; the School of Medicine; the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality; and the School of Architecture — will discuss how they use zines in their writing, pedagogy, and research, sharing examples of how attendees can use zines to translate aspects of their own research for a broader audience,” she said.
In addition to Dickey, Hunsaker, and Coleman, Zines Now! is supported by UVA librarians and staff members Laura Miller, Ammon Shepherd, Brandon Walsh, and Amanda Wyatt Visconti, whose Zine Bakery @ Scholars’ Lab provides a space to collect, make, and analyze hundreds of zines. Librarians Haley Gillilan and Veronica McGurrin created a research guide of zine resources.
For more information about Zines Now!, contact Erin Dickey via email or find her in the Fine Arts Library