Long Arm Stapler
A podcast about zines.
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Long Arm Stapler
S9E4: Evan Chelsee
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Welcome back to Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about zines! This episode, I'm joined by Evan Chelsee, a zinester and zine fest organizer located in Long Beach, CA. They organize the Biggest Little Zine Fair and are a founding co-editor of Double Text Media, as well as running Uncommon Practice Studio. We talk about their zine making practice, what it's like to organize a zine fest, making lists, and more!
Find more of Evan's work:
https://www.instagram.com/evansees_/
http://evanchelsee.com
http://uncommonpractice.studio
https://blzflinks.carrd.co
Find more of my work:
http://linktr.ee/LNGRMSTPLR
http://ko-fi.com/LNGRMSTPLR
http://instagram.com/maiiira.png
Thanks for listening, thanks for supporting the podcast, and stay tuned!
Logo by Miquela Davis: @ghostsb4breakfast
Intro/outro:
Who Likes to Party Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Hello, and welcome back to Long Arms Days War podcast about zines. I'm your host Vera. We're still in season nine. Um yeah, excited to talk to this episode's guest, Evan Chelsea. Uh they them. They are a working artist living in Long Beach, California. They're a founding organizer for Biggest Little Zine Fair and founding co-editor for Double Text Media. Since 2024, Evan has supported nearly 200 attendees at zine making workshops, and that's pretty cool. They're usually casually obsessed. Hello, Evan. Hi. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk to you about your zines and your zine fest. Um, and yeah, let's just get into it. So, how did you find zines or how did zines find you?
SPEAKER_01Um, I feel like I just sort of like ambiently knew that zines existed, probably from Tumblr or like somewhere else on the internet. Um in high school, some friends and I made a digital zine. Um, but I sort of got into zine making in the way that it exists in my life now because my friend and co-organizer Ra Avis started making zines, and she like went full special interest and suddenly like everything was zines. Um, and I had some poems that I was like, maybe I want to put these together into a zine. Can we like talk about zines? So we got coffee, we talked about zines. Um those poems ended up becoming an entire book. Um, but after we hung out, I went home and I made my very first mini zine. Um, and have just been hooked since then. Yeah. And when was that? That was in August of uh maybe it was a little bit earlier than that. It was in 2024, so it's like relatively recently. Oh wow, cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What has kept you interested in zines since then?
SPEAKER_01Oh, uh I mean I love that zines can be like kind of anything, like they're very shape-shifter-y, and I like that that like I can do different things with a zine, like um it can be a playlist, or it can be a brochure, or it can be a mini zine. Um or the mini zine can like open up and have something different inside, like it can be a lot of different things. And I also then love that like zines can meet people in really different places. So obviously, zine people are always seeking out zines, but um you can leave zines at a bar or in a coffee shop or like in all kinds of places where maybe people who don't know about them would encounter them. And I really like am into the uh the multifacetedness, I guess, of zines.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of leaving zines at a coffee shop, I actually had never encountered a zine in the wild at a coffee shop until I was in Long Beach um last December, and I found one of your zines, and I think I emailed you because I needed to follow up with you anyway. And I was like, oh my god, I'm in Long Beach and I just found your zines at a coffee shop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we biggest little zine fair runs a little zine library at Recreational Coffee, which is where we do some of our events. And um we love Rec. And they were like, Do you guys want to like have some zines here? And we were like, Yes, definitely. So it has like I'm always putting zines in my own zines in there, but also like free zines that people send us. We have a zine database, a free zine database through Biggest Little Zine Fair. So if people send us zines, one-page zines, we save them in the database and periodically like print them out and and those go in the zine library.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I like that. Um I run a zine library at a local coffee shop, even though I just said that I had never seen zines at a coffee shop. Um I have. Well, I hadn't until like sort of recently. Anyway, um, but I like the idea of like printing out zines for other people and just leaving them in there as opposed to like because I've just been kind of culling my own collection and hoping that other people bring in zines. And people have been bringing in zines and like making them at the zine workshops that I do there, but like I like the idea of being able to just print stuff for people who may not be able to make it in person.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Just leaving them there.
SPEAKER_01Well, the biggest little zine fair zine database is at your disposal. Um, it's on our website, but also I will make sure to send you the link. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02And I'll eventually um I'll say this again, but I'll put the Biggest Little Zine Fair um link in the show notes as well. So it'll be for everyone's perusal. Um I have a question about your zine format, I guess. So do you find that you're mostly drawn to mini zines? And if so why?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I have primarily made mini zines. Um I've done some other formats. I feel like I'm I'm like just starting to do like folio zines, but the thing that I love about mini zines is that you can uh fit like a deceptive amount of stuff in a mini zine, first of all. But I really like the structure of it. Like, okay, you've got six interior pages. Um like it kind of gives me a scaffolding to think about what do I want to say. And then I have to be concise about what my point is and break it down to fit in that container. So I think that's a big part of what draws me to mini zines. And then um I also like that you can sort of play a little bit with the mini zine format. Like, I don't know if I sent you this one, but I have um a zine about how I picked a new name for myself. And that one is uh horizontal rather than vertical, and so the front of it like looks like a name tag. Um, and so it's still your kind of stand, it's a it's a mini zine, but it looks a little different than like what you might expect from a mini zine. Um, or one of my zines uh is about kind of alternate universes, and you like open it up and there's a mirror image of the zine on the inside.
SPEAKER_02Um my god, I didn't even notice that. But I'm looking at it right now, that's wild.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was like, okay, how can I like use the format in a way that is kind of uh evoking what I'm talking about or like what I the experience I want you to have. So yeah, there's uh an alternate uh reality, I guess, on the inside.
SPEAKER_02That's so cool. I like I'm not in the habit of opening up mini zines, but I feel like I need to be because I feel like more and more people are like putting stuff on the other side of them. Um, and so I need to just be in the habit of like opening them up and yeah, like checking to see what's in there.
SPEAKER_01Cause you really if for the most part you can't tell if there's something printed on the inside. Um, so yeah, like when I table, I'm always as soon as somebody picks that up, I'm like, there's another version of the zine on the inside.
SPEAKER_02It's like letting them know to look for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Which honestly, I feel like that hooks people. Like once I'm like, there's a mirror version image version on the inside, then people buy it.
SPEAKER_02But that's a sales. So it's a it's a sales, okay. Yeah. No, but I mean it makes sense. Like it's you know, it's it's doubling the value or whatever. Um if you're into that kind of thing. Um no, I think it's so cool. Um, I recently my my copier started working again. I got a new part for it, and so I had like printed off a bunch of um, I had like scanned a bunch of fabric. This is super tangent, but I had scanned a bunch of fabric and I was just printing it to make sure that it like worked. So I had all these really beautiful pieces of paper, but then I was like, what the hell do I do with these? Like I can't print on them. So I printed a bunch of informational mini zines about Bay Area Queer Zine Fest on the other side. So it's it's not as exciting as like another zine on the inside, but it's a very nice like interior if you were to open up those zines to get some beautiful fabric.
SPEAKER_00I like that idea.
SPEAKER_02I really was just like, I spent too much toner um to just recycle these.
SPEAKER_01So they need to have a use now. I had a like really large stack of like misprints or like just like papers that I was like, I'm gonna do something with these. And I have used them a little bit, and then I moved and I had to be realistic that I could not be. I already have way too many like zine things in my apartment. I could not be moving a giant stack of scrap paper, basically.
SPEAKER_02It accumulates so fast, I feel, for zine sters, like the scraps, the the tools, the just the flat or like the master copies, like just everything. It's it's too much. But it's so much fun. It is, it's worth it. Unless you have to move, and then it's maybe a little less worth it. Uh um, back to the the the pre uh the predetermined questions. Um, no, but like, so do you think that your as far as like your zine making process goes, do you feel like that's changed at all since you started making zines?
SPEAKER_01Hmm. I don't know. Um not really like some uh I approach some zines a little bit different. So sometimes I am like physically mocking up the zine. Um and then it's like helpful to have a piece of paper in front of me and engage with the thought that way. Sometimes I just immediately go to like doing stuff digitally and am just shoving text um into text boxes on Canva and being like, oh, that's too long, we gotta move that around or say this more succinctly. Um so I would say like my process is not 100% like consistent, but in the the general workflow, I actually feel like is is pretty similar now as it was when I first started.
SPEAKER_02Um, what's that workflow like?
SPEAKER_01Um, I have an idea and then I stop whatever I'm supposed to be doing. Uh-huh. And I work on that instead.
SPEAKER_02Solid, yeah. Relatable. Zines are more important than I mean, we're like when you have a z an idea for a zine, I feel like it's very important to just like lock in and kind of maybe not do other things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, otherwise I am liable to like overthink it and then not do it. I mean, I'd like to believe that all the ideas um that are that they're percolating, like that I'll get to them all eventually. Um, but I default to just being like, I'm just gonna make it right now.
SPEAKER_02Are you one of the kinds of zine sters that like keeps a list in their phone or like a notebook of just every zine they have ever wanted to make or something like that?
SPEAKER_01No. Uh that would be a great idea.
SPEAKER_02That's kind of where I'm at too. Like, yeah. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_01I do have um, I would say I have kind of like a I make a lot of my zines in Canva, and I have kind of like a a Canva idea graveyard of like things I've started and haven't finished. So like maybe that's my list in a way. Um but I think also I do have a lot of ideas, um, but I just execute on them for the most part. And so there's there's not a ton of need for a list, at least not yet. We'll see.
SPEAKER_02I think where I land is similarly, like if I have an idea, I just kind of drop everything and start on it. Um and it's it's funny because I feel like every time someone comes on the show and is talking about how they have a list in their phone or in a notebook, I'm like, oh, that's such a good idea. Like, I should do that. Because I keep tons of lists for like every other thing.
SPEAKER_01Like I've got lists of insane.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got lists of shows that I'm currently watching. I've got lists of Halloween costume ideas, I've got lists of things that I want to put on mixtapes. Like, there's just so many different lists on my phone, but zines not one of them. I don't know. Yeah, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01If anything, I maybe need to make a list of the zines I've already made. Um, because the like the list is getting long and I sometimes forget. Accidental part two.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah. That's actually probably like a better idea for me as well. Oh, just because like yeah, I've forgotten a lot of zines that I've made. So like I think ones that I have a karaoke list and it's songs that I've sung. I feel like zines that I've made would be like in line with that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that that's I think that's I might have to actually do that. I have like a I have a spreadsheet that has like price information for my zines in it and some amount of like I've sold this many at whatever fest. Uh, so I am often like looking at that to figure out what I have, but now I've got like several disjointed lists. Um yeah, I think just like a uh a master list of my zines is my homework for after this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, let's both do it and I'll email you to follow up and be like, have you done this yet? Um when I when I get your your logo for the promo image. Not just randomly. I'll like I'll have another purpose for the email, but I'll be like, have you done it? Because I don't know if I have. Um I'm hoping to though. I feel like I've been pretty good about like the the homework that I've assigned myself to do from talking to different guests. Um, just because I get so inspired after like talking to people that I'm like, okay, I have to like execute this idea now. Yeah otherwise everyone's gonna hate me because I said it on I recorded it, and everyone's gonna be so mad if I don't do it. Just me. I'm I'm gonna be the only person mad.
SPEAKER_01No, but it's good to capitalize on the the energy when it's there of like, okay, we talked about this thing, I'm enthusiastic. Um yeah, I think that's a good strategy.
SPEAKER_02So I'd love to hear more about Biggest Little Zine Fair. Um how did it come about? Um just I guess tell everyone what it is. I want to know all about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, so Biggest Little Zine Fair is kind of a I'll say like a distro style zine fair. So rather than many people running their own tables, we have people fill out a submission form with one of one of their zines. Um and then they send their zines to us. We run communal tables that have zines from people from all over the place. And then all of the sale, all of the proceeds from sales minus the three print, three percent credit card processing fee that we have to pay go back to the zine makers. So essentially, we are doing all the work of a zine fair for you. Um, and yeah, selling your zines. And it it started because not me knocking my microphone over. Um, it started because my friend Raw, after she got into zines, she tabled at LA Zine Fest. And she was like, this is really cool, but it was a lot, it was overwhelming. Um, if I like she has a big internet following um and is also formerly incarcerated, so a lot of her zines are about that. And she was like, if I didn't have these like specific things going for me, I don't know that I would have gotten a table as like a new zine maker uh who had not who had done like other kinds of tabling but had never tabled a zine fair before. And LA zine fest is like huge and very competitive. And she was talking about this with the owner of a local bookstore here in Long Beach called Page Against the Machine. Uh his name is Chris. She was talking to Chris about like LA zine fest and the just like that the barrier to entry can be really high if you are a new zine maker and you want to like share your zines with people. And so the two of them started talking, and he was like, Well, I would really love to do a zine event here outside of the store. And between the two of them, kind of like came up with the very like bare bones idea for Biggest Little Zine Fair, and then Raw kind of tapped a team of us in. So this was like shortly after my conversation with her of like, can you tell me about zines? And I was kind of like looking for more creative stuff to do. She asked if I wanted to co-organize. Um, she reached out to our friend James, who was a photographer, to do like media stuff. Um, one of our other founding organizers, uh, Engie, had like a history in zine making, but was like zine events are really overwhelming. And so, like, she came in and we uh uh started hosting Biggest Little Zine Fair. Um, and then in our second year, Josh joined the team and he's a graphic designer, and so he like made everything look very cute and slick. Uh, so that's kind of the BLZF origin story. That's cool, and you have it twice a year, right? We um uh did in our first two years, it's so 2024. 2025. Um, this year we only did we're only doing one, or at least that's the plan. Um we were like, we're gonna have a chill year and like get get things in order. Um, we are very bad at being chill, but so far, just the plan for that one. Um we actually have not decided what our plan's gonna be going forward. Um so TBD.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um the this year's fest was pretty recently though, yeah?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was May 31st. So the time we were recording a couple weeks. Um, it was great. We had over 350 different zines from makers all around the world. Um, like people shipped us zines from India, China, Australia, France, the Netherlands, UK, Canada, all across the US, um, which just like blows my mind. Um, that people are just like, yeah, I will pay exorbitant shipping to send my zines to a complete stranger. Um, and everything is so cool. Um, but yeah, it was a great event. Um the turnout was we had so we had a ton of zines. The turnout was really great, it was a lot of fun. Um we kind of reimagined the event a little bit to folk to to kind of structure it so that people had more time to like hang out with the zines. Um and so what we did this year is all of the zines were organized alphabetically by zine title in little bins like a record store. Um, and so you just like flipped through zines to like find hidden gems. Um and people just were there, like we had 350 zines, and people were like, Okay, well, I gotta work quickly if I'm gonna see all of them. Um uh, but yeah, just like spent hours hanging out and like reading zines, and um it was very cool, it was great.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. And that sounds like such a cool way to like display the zines in little so yeah, you you're just kind of like digging through the zine stacks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. We in the past we had a friend who made us these beautiful wooden shelves. Um, and we had displayed the zines on there kind of in a similar fashion to like how you would see them on people's tables at a fest. And that I mean it worked pretty well, but one of the couple of things that we found were um the shelves are actually like so nice that it just sort of like changes your interaction like with the zines and the event in a way that it like it sort of made things feel like too polished. Um and so we're like, okay, how like uh that was a thing that was on our mind, and then we just like didn't have enough shelves for the amount of zines that we wanted to host. Last year, 2025, we were supposed to have a holiday event, and we had to cancel it because of rain, which was a huge bummer. We had all these zines that people had sent us, and so we ended up just kind of putting the word out that we were gonna be inside at the coffee shop, uh, because the event was supposed to be outside. We're like, we're gonna bring some like craft stuff if people want to make zines, and we will bring the zines that we were gonna have at the event with us, and we just had them in like a I can't think of a like the big um plastic bins that you buy at like Target or whatever to store things under your bed, like just like hundreds of zines inside one of those bins, and people had a great time just looking through this giant singular bin that was not at all organized because it was purely just like how we were storing things, and the sales were like very good for people buying them out of a bucket, and we were like, okay, so if people spend time with zines, they buy them because zines are awesome and we want to sell zines to people, like we want to get them in people's hands. Um, we want zine makers' stuff to reach new people. How can we like structure the event to like make that happen? So that's yeah, kind of where we're like started thinking more. How can we go like record store, comic book shop, and and bring that experience in a little bit?
SPEAKER_02That's so cool.
SPEAKER_01It also we uh I like that we moved to organizing everything alphabetically. In the past, we tried like group our very first event, we tried grouping things by price point, which um people just like don't look at the more expensive stuff when you group things that way is one of the things that we learned, which in retrospect, we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Um, or they just buy fewer things. And then we'd had them like organized by category, which like seemed logical, but like some people just like wouldn't look at a particular category, which is fine in theory, but sometimes things are like they're maybe not what you would expect if you're just like, oh, I'm not interested in a travel zine, but like actually you might be. Um and so the alphabetical um came out of there's a publisher that now I can't microcosm, um, who publishes books and zines. And uh I was reading something from them, and at one point they had like a storefront and they had things categorized by like by category, the way you would find in a bookstore, and they reorganized it to be alphabetical based on because they were like pulling things off the shelves to fill orders, and they found that they sold more things when they were alphabetical because people just looked at more stuff. Um, because it just it gets you get more exposure. You're not just like I'm gonna cut to this one specific thing that I have a preconceived idea that I'm gonna like. So you just you see more things. It did mean that like uh we have somebody, a local person who really loves cat zines. So he was like, How do I find all the cat zines? And I was like, Unfortunately, it's not great for that, but he just like went straight to the C section in the hope of cat titles. So he still bought a lot of zines, so I think it works.
SPEAKER_02That's so fun that you just have a local zine star who like collects zines of a very specific flavor.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, he's like an older guy, and he he made a zine um with pictures of cats in different, almost like yoga positions, and then he named like it was great, but I was like, go in.
SPEAKER_02That's something I really love about zines, though, is like you can make whatever. I mean, you mentioned this earlier, but like they can be about anything, like you can make whatever you want, like you can make a cat yoga zine. Like it can truly just be whatever, and like yeah, I love when people just get weird with it. Um and just truly like make the zine of their wildest dreams, you know? Absolutely. I think zines should be fun like that. I don't think I'm alone agreeing statement. Yeah, I agree. Um, I do want to talk to you about some specific zines that you sent me. Um which one first?
SPEAKER_01I really like all of them. I don't even remember what I sent now. I was just like zines, zines. I was so excited to send them out that I just man, throwing my mic all over the place. Um I was so excited to send out zines that I just grabbed a bunch of things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, great choices. Um, and I I've loved having a P.O. box um for like the purposes of this show, but also because I get to just go somewhere and pick up a bunch of zines, and it's kind of like getting a present in the mail. Um and it's I mean, this is exactly what it is, but it's so fun. Um, and I just love being able to like open my P.O. box after like a week or two weeks or however long I go without checking it, and then I've like got all these zines and I'm like, haha, yes, I'm rich. Um, rich in zines. But the first zine I wanted to talk to you about um that you sent me is junk. And I really like this zine. It to the the listener at home, um is it all the same location? It's just photos of like things left outside of uh a house or apartment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they were um around the apartment where I was living, there were two alleyways, and people would just leave furniture and things, and it was so like there's so many things that people just leave out, and so I started taking pictures of their abandoned furniture in the alleys.
SPEAKER_02I think my favorite is the bowling pins in front of the sign that says no dumping. Yeah. Um, none of the bowling pins are upright, I will say. Um, they have all been scattered, um, and they look a little worse for wear. So like I I can understand why somebody's like getting rid of them. But yeah, the juxtaposition of the like the discarded stuff right in front of the no-dumping sign was I really liked.
SPEAKER_01I like the two. Where did those bowling pins come from? Like, who just has bowling pins sitting around to abandon somewhere?
SPEAKER_02Did they get new ones? I have so many questions. So many questions. Like now I'm just thinking of all the questions I have for this person who discarded the bowling pins. But like, yeah, like did they replace them? Are they an avid bowler? Do they have are they in a league? Like, what's up?
SPEAKER_01And they they look kind of old, so I'm like, were these someone's like childhood, like bowling? In which case, like, were they sentimental? Like, where did they cut? Just yeah, we got a lot of questions.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've known a lot of people who bowl in my life, but I've never known anyone who like had personal bowling pins. Yeah, really makes you think. Um, and then yeah, I really like the dollhouse one too from January 20th, 2025. Um that one I liked it, but it also like made me a little sad. Like, but I hope that the dollhouse found a good new home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there is something abandoned dollhouses are there's uh it is sad and like maybe slightly sinister. I like can't really say why, but there's just like something weird about them. Like, is it cursed? Is that why you left it in an alley?
SPEAKER_02You're like trying to pass that curse on to someone else.
SPEAKER_01Like, what's and that and that dollhouse was like really big, like um maybe like not as tall as me, but like very tall.
SPEAKER_02Damn. I also like the drawers full of stuff, yeah. Like on a separate page, somebody those like clear like plastic drawers that you get from like Target or wherever, just full of belongings.
SPEAKER_01Was this a breakup? Were they like I'm just this is the easiest way to clean things out? I don't know, but yeah, overflowing bins of stuff.
SPEAKER_02I like the mystery of it, and I like the the cover, it is junk mail um that you turned into a cover, which I think is really cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I felt very clever being like, I'm gonna take this like mailer for a furniture store and I'm gonna photocopy it. And um there's my I think it's my website, is like on the back, and I printed the text on like a little tie on a slip. I printed it on a piece of paper in a sort of um typewriter-y looking font that kind of looked like what was printed on the mailer, printed it out, uh pasted it to the mailer and then photocopied it that way. The same thing with the title on the front. I like printed it out, pasted it, and photocopied.
SPEAKER_02It did look very like seamless, so I was kind of wondering how that was accomplished. And now I know.
SPEAKER_01Now you know.
SPEAKER_02Let's see. A lot of good stuff in this envelope that I received. Um, I did, I really liked the the ones that came in the little like CD, the poems. Yeah. Um, they come with playlists. Um, it's existential euphoria and then existential crisis, but it's cute. And I really like these poems. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I have a playlist. Like to do blackout poems, and I make a lot of playlists, and I had a bunch of CD sleeves from like a really long time ago, and I was like, if I'm gonna hold on to these, I need to do something with them. Um and those all sort of came together into that zine.
SPEAKER_02I think more zines should have accompanying playlists or mixed CDs. Um I got this idea from Elliot Giannini, who does um craft or DIY, and they have done a per zine series for a long time called Wanderer, and it always comes with a playlist, and so I was like, I I think more zines should come with playlists or like CDs. And then um another person I've talked to, uh Lane from Loveless Press, has been putting out zines with CDs too, and I'm just like it's such a it's a lost art making a play like a good playlist.
SPEAKER_01Yes, agreed. I wish that I had a CD burner because that is the main thing preventing me from from making mixed CDs. Maybe I'm gonna have to put that on my list of like buy CD burner.
SPEAKER_02I got a relatively inexpensive one from Best Buy. It's like a USB because my laptop doesn't have a CD drive anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I don't know if they even make them with CD drives. Um, I certainly haven't seen one, but yeah, okay, that's good to know. I'm gonna be on the lookout.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or like probably any big box like office supply store. Um, but it's great because now I can watch DVDs and also burn mixed CDs. So highly recommend. Yeah. Um, okay. I also loved the visit the darkest timeline travel brochure. At first I was like, what did they send me? And then I like opened it up and I was like, oh, like I thought it was like just I didn't realize that it was intentional at first, and I was like, oh, this just got included, but it's and it's for traveling, but like, no, it's intentional and it's great. I liked it a lot.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Um, I in November of 2024, I was like, I'm gonna make a zine every day. So I did, and um, one of the zines was an earlier version of that Visit the Darkest Timeline brochure. So I like physically mocked it up um with like a little stick figure on the front and and standing in front of like flames, and I was like, okay, and I want like this kind of stuff inside. Um and then I like had a digital version of it. Um and at the time I did not have a good printer. Uh so like a friend printed like a singular copy for me so I could like see it. Um, and for a long time that was all that existed. Uh, that one copy, so I could be like, I made this zine today. Uh but then I was like, Canva offers printing services and they want to give me a discount, and I want to know if the printing's any good. And so I was like, I'm gonna order brochures. Um and so I did an update on the visit the visit the darkest timeline brochure. I spent a lot of time trying to pick what what image of a smiling lady in front of like destruction should go on the front cover. Um I looked at so many options, so many smiling ladies and so much destruction.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I the the cyber trucks being on the reasons to visit the darkest timeline really got me as someone who lives in the suburbs with many a cyber truck uh to be found.
SPEAKER_01There are there are many little like Easter eggs in that zine. So um the address on the back, which is the like um you know, address for the office of the the darkest timeline is the Amazon office in Seattle. Yeah. The phone number goes to like a defense contractor. Um for the website, I just put Facebook. Um yeah, so it it has some little um some Easter eggs in there.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. Um I have one more that I want to specifically highlight. Um, and then I also want to hear about your makeazine every day in November project that you did a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But the last one I want to like specifically talk about is there will still be crushes in the end times, um, which is a poem that you wrote. And there was a how many lines? It was like it was like one sentence, one or two sentences that I pulled out and wrote a note about because I really liked them. Um, but it was we need beautiful things to remind us of the difference between surviving and living, to remind us what we're surviving towards, why we fight for each other, why our hearts still continue to pump, and it is not a waste. Um, and I really liked that series of lines. Thank you. I like this one a lot.
SPEAKER_01That was the first zine I ever made.
SPEAKER_02Um, I almost just did a spit take with my Trader Joe's Cherry Cola. Um that's wild.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I folded a mini zine and I hand wrote the poem inside, and then I was like, I don't know what to do with the cover. So I wrote the title of the poem on a sticky note that I like cut to fit the mini zine and like stuck that to the front so there would be like something happening. Um, yeah, and now I printed on. Colorful paper, but the original version was just like white printer paper that I was just photocopying.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah! That's so cool! That's so exciting.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02This is your first scene.
SPEAKER_00My very first. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I am glad that you um that you like the poem that that uh you connected with it. I honestly um I had a crush on somebody and I was like, this is terrible. And also I was like, there are so many more important things happening in the world than for me to be like agonizing about like, does this person notice me? Are they also thinking about me? Um, and so then I wrote a poem about it to be like, actually, it feels good in the way that sometimes it feels bad to have a crush, and like uh human feelings are important, and we actually don't get anything out of being like, well, there's worse things happening in the world, and therefore, like my feelings and problems don't matter.
SPEAKER_02And I mean that's really what separates us from the robots, is they can't yearn. So exactly. They they might be advancing, but like they can't yearn the same way like a human can, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I a friend sent this meme the other day that now I have to pull up because I was like, this is it. Um a computer can never be horny or sad, therefore, a computer must never make an artistic decision.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna I'm gonna co-sign that. I disagree wholeheartedly. Um okay, yeah, I want to hear about the time you made 30 zines in 30 days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I uh in the past have done National Novel Writing Month, which the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel. It takes place in the month of November. And I've done that in the past, uh, which is cool and also an insane thing for a person to try to do. Um and it was November, and other people were doing that. And I was like, well, I'm not like working on a writing project right now, but I would like to be in the spirit of I'm gonna do a ridiculous creative undertaking. And I was just getting into zine, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna make a zine every day. And they ranged from like some days I was like, all the energy I have is to like make a list and I'm gonna like fold this piece of paper in like a weird way, and like that was the zine, and then other days it was like an elaborate, like multi-step process. Um, but it got me to try out new things. So one of the zines that I made, and I have only just made this one copy because it was a pain. Uh, but I made I basically hand folded an envelope and like printed on the inside of the envelope is a love poem. So it's like a it's a love letter. Um I made like the early version of the Visit the Darkest Timeline. I made a list of like a zine prompts zine. Um and then some of the zines I have now like done kind of several iterations on. So like I had an essay about the book Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, which is one of my favorite books. I made that into a mini zine. The very first version was basically just the essay like shoved in there. There was not really anything interesting happening. Future, like now I have a version that has like some pictures in it. I've changed the text some, like it's a little bit more engaging. But I just kind of wanted to see like what could I come up with and like what what is possible if I was like, I'm just gonna make a bunch of zines and and see. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02I love the idea of a challenge like that, like Inktober or something similar, you know, where you're just kind of you have a prompt and you're doing one creative thing every day. I've never really been able to get past day four, um, but I always really admire everyone who does and people who really like push themselves to to follow through on that kind of stuff. Someday I'll do it.
SPEAKER_01One of the things that helps me is to be clear on what my goal is, and then also to have like a minimum threshold where I can be like, okay, I've done the thing. So I the kind of deal I made with myself was like, I just have to have a draft of a zine. It does not have to be a completed zine, it does not have to like be in a format that I would otherwise show to anybody else. It just has to like capture an idea of what a zine would be. And so that like helped me be a little bit less of a perfectionist and just be like, I just gotta do something and then it counts. Um and similarly, like my goal was to try some new things and just make a lot of zines. And so between those two things, I was willing to just try things and see what happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02F around and find out. I can swear on this show, it's my own show. Fuck around and find out. Uh yeah, so um those are those are good things to keep in mind, I think, personally, for the next time such a such a list of prompts or creative challenge comes up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because if I like have not I will like get in my head about it and be like, well, did I like do it enough? Is this like a good enough zine to count as like I made a zine? And just being like, I just have to do something and like the what's the minimum viable product? Um, that like helped me.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. Yeah. Um, are you currently working on anything?
SPEAKER_01Um, I a zine that I have uh started that I need to finish. Uh it's called Defund the Cop in Your Head. Um and it's gonna be a zine about how like uh we people often will kind of enact various uh cop behaviors, even when they are like anti-cop. And like what does it mean to stop policing other people inside your own head and like stop policing yourself? Um what are what do those alternatives look like? Um so that is a zine that I am working on. Um and then I have a couple of other like early stage ideas that I haven't I have not taken any action on yet, so they're not quite there.
SPEAKER_02Is there any other zine stuff that you want to talk about?
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. Um big question for the end of the interview. I know. I'm like I could talk about so many things about zines, but is there any um no, I think I don't have anything that I'm like, we gotta talk about this.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um, where can people find your work online? Either you or Biggest Little Zine Fair, or actually ideally both.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Biggest Little Zine Fair has a website, biggestlittlezinefair.com. That is also our Instagram handle, Biggest Little Zine Fair. You can find me on Instagram at Evan C's underscore, like see with your eyes. Um, and then my the website that my zines are under is uncommonpractice.studio. You can also go to evanchelsea.com and that will show you a bunch of other things about me, including my zines. So those are some places to find me and Biggest Little Zine Fair on the internet.
SPEAKER_02Cool. I'll put links to all of those in the show notes. Awesome. Um, yeah, Evan, thank you. This has been a delight. Um we finally got to like yeah, and yeah. Yeah. Um thank you everyone for listening. Um, super stoked about season nine. Um thank you to all of my monthly Kofi podcast supporters. It really means a lot. Um, it helps subsidize the cost of editing or hosting and production, um, and it adds up. So thank you so much. Um, if you've been enjoying the podcast or if you found a new zine maker you like from the podcast, please consider throwing me a dollar a month. Um, I don't know why my voice got so high when I said that, but yeah, it's a dollar a month. Um and if you want to talk to me about your zines, or if you know someone who you think might want to talk to me about their zines or their zine fest, um send them my way. There's a link in the show notes or on my link tree, which is also in the show notes. Um, a lot of stuff in the show notes. Um, so check them out. Uh talk to me about your zines. Um thank you for listening. And again, thank you, Evan, for being on the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02All right. Enjoy the rest of your podcast listening experience.
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