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Amanda Keeley of Exile Projects was one of the many exhibitors at the Book//Zine Fair. (All photos by Rachel Wright)
On October 11, Atlanta-based nonprofit contemporary art magazine Burnaway hosted its first annual Book//Zine fair at Goat Farm, which attracted between 700 and 1,000 attendees, according to organizers.
Bringing together creatives from 56 independent and zine presses, along with 33 exhibitors who sold their work at the Fair’s “community room” table, Book//Zine was the first zine fair in Atlanta since 2017, according to Madeline Benfield, Burnaway’s programs and operations coordinator.
The Fair is part of the zine format’s popular re-emergence, which has steadily grown in response to the ubiquity of social media and algorithmic tastemaking. This, Fair attendees and vendors agreed, is because zines are exactly the kind of democratic, creative, person-to-person communication many people long for right now.
According to Emma K. Shibley of the zine Something in the Water, the format’s strength comes from its freedom from the digital and economic demands of contemporary media. “It’s [often] just one person’s vision,” she said, “completely unfiltered or uncompromised by any of those outside or traditional capitalist forces. Zine makers are in it for the love of the game.”
Zines’ immediacy and accessibility are part of the appeal, agreed Diana Chu, half of the Milwaukee-based BearBear x Co. “Anyone with a pencil or a piece of paper can make a zine,” she said, explaining that makers expand on the format however they want.
Kailey Chin of Black Sheep Press said that zines attract readers because of their physical nature, calling the format the “the counterculture to the digital age.” “I think people are really longing to get back to analog mediums,” Chin said. “To hold things in their hands — to feel what people are putting out into the world instead of looking into things digitally.”
That tactility was on full display amid the throngs of fair attendees who cheerfully perused thousands of often handmade zines and small-press books throughout the day, chatting enthusiastically with the people who made them.
“How often can I walk into a library or an art gallery or an art museum and literally talk to the person who made the thing that I’m attracted to?” Chu asked. “It’s such a cool thing that we’re literally standing face-to-face over a table, and we can actually touch things” — unlike at gallery or museum, where the art is off limits. “You can’t walk into a bookstore and find this,” she added, gesturing to the lively attendees.
“I think zines make you very curious,” said Amanda Keeley, founder and director of Miami’s EXILE Projects, echoing Chu’s sentiment. “You kind of want to peek inside and see what’s going on in someone’s head.”
She explained that the close creator-to-consumer dynamic is a major draw at fairs like Book//Zine. “I always say that artists are like antennas,” she said. “We pick up what’s going on in the community. And if you come to a zine fair, you get to really see what’s happening within your neighborhood.”
Benfield was encouraged by Book//Zine’s success, seeing it as a signal that people are hungry for more access to zines and art books. “The one thing I kept hearing all day was how much community was being built and how real connections were forming,” she said, adding that she’d like to expand on the Fair in the future. “Next year, we’ll add more programs, like panels and workshops and more activations and collaborations with our exhibitors — I can’t wait!”
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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University and an MA from the University College Dublin, both in creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.
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