Riot Grrrl, part 2: Me and the ‘Zines
Between 1992-1996, during my late teens, I published a series of personal ‘zines. The first three editions I called Busy Bea’s Bush, as a play on Beatrice, my middle name. But I then got a bit shy about the title and decided to change to the more aggressive, less personal Beri-Beri (after the song by the Swiss band Kleenex) for the next two issues.
At any one point, I was corresponding with hundreds of people from across North America. Every day, I could expect a zine or letter waiting in my mailbox when I came home from high school. Yet once I started college in 1994, I had less time and less need to publish a zine and by 1996 I stopped all together. Beri-Beri no. 3 never reached beyond the draft stage.
But now, with the aid of modern technology, here at last is the Beri- Beri lost edition!
It’s basically a look back at one year of my life (age 19) jumping from Antioch College to Boston to Pittsburgh to New York City before I disappear into ‘zine oblivion. Embarrassing as it is for me to share this now, some fifteen years later, I have to say I am proud of what I accomplished then and still carry myself with that riot grrrl empowerment in everything I do.
On a somewhat related note, ZineWiki has done a fantastic job collecting and cataloging zines from around the world. The Queer Zine Archive Project is a more genre specific web based project dedicated to archiving and sharing queer zines. Both are worthy of attention and support by anyone interested in independent publishing.
So great, Nicole! Thanks for sharing. It gave me tingles and brought back my own (angsty) typewriter memories.
thanks Brie! I also so glad I discovered the ZineWiki and Queer Zine Archive project in my research for this post. Such passionate and wonderful projects.
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