Amber Ridenour, who also writes under the name “Starlite Motel,” answers a few questions about process, creation, and reputation. With her husband Chris, Amber is the author of many zines, including Autobiographical Alley Map and Night Bomb.

How would you define the word “zine”?

I tend to define “zine” as a sort of pirate printing operation. For next to nothing, you get to put your words/art into people’s hands, usually bypassing all the niceties of conventional publication (editors, ISBNs, agents, blah blah blah).

It’s the kind of thing that blogs are supposed to achieve, but I think communication is more direct with a little stapled or beribboned zine. It’s hard to hold a zine in your hands and not feel, somehow, that the author made it for just you. And in a way, they did.

What is your writing process like? What do you find most rewarding about publishing a zine?

My writing process is both unique and pedestrian, which I guess is the case with everybody. I’m more of an editor than a writer. I’ll sit down in a dive with a cheap pint or a coffeeshop with really strong coffee until I get a few pages scribbled out, then I go home, tear it all apart, and rearrange it like a puzzle as I type.

For me, music is essential. I’m one of those people who always has a song in their heads. I will put the same song on repeat and keep it going for as long as it takes, if I’ve decided it sets the mood of something I’m trying to edit.

This can get annoying for anyone around me, since I tend to be inspired by Sun Ra’s more out-there stuff. And I’m really, really freaky about editing on a computer screen. One word is not the same as another, in my opinion. Not with poems. Not with prose. Every syllable counts. So does every comma or blank space.

Even different fonts have different moods to me. I have literally killed entire days and packs of cigarettes doing stuff like deleting a word, staring at the page, putting it back, deleting it again, trying a different one, etc. Words are the one area of my life where I am a straight-up control freak.

Why is independent publishing important to media today?

As a freshman in college, I had a very important poet-in-residence from New York professor tell our class that the way to get published was to go to high-end cocktail parties and shmooze the right people, and he was serious. I see this as the basic problem with mainstream publishing — it all seems to be a cocktail party.

I’ve picked up copies of many, many lit mags claiming to support “emerging voices” and “novel styles” and seen the same ol’ internationally best-selling authors listed as contributors to that issue.

I even attended a grad school for a while, and part of the disgust that drove me to leave it stemmed from the so-called “university” publication in which no student could ever be published. As a matter of fact, there was no submission information to be found anywhere.

This is why we need indie media. We need literature and art that is free, rule breaking, subversive, and fearless. We need artists who don’t have to conform or be in anyone’s pocket to get their unique visions out into the world.

“I try to read literally every zine that comes through our doors,” manager Luke Sinclair says.  The distro, which opened its doors in April of 2001 after Melbourne artist Simone Ewenson visited a similar shop in Amsterdam, carries a variety of zines, “artist books,” and other independent publications.  Through support from the Victorian government and the Australian Council for the Arts, Sticky is able to nurture independent artists at every stage of the process.

The distro, self-described as “an artist-run initiative fusing an exhibiting and open-resource working space with a non-profit retail environment, housed in Degraves Street Subway under Flinders Street, Melbourne,” provides a uniquely collaborative experience between staff and artist, reader and creator.

A zine-maker himself, Sinclair is very familiar with the joys and (financial) downsides of the process.  “Very few zines make any money," he says.  "I have personally lost thousands of dollars on my various zine projects over the years, and it has been worth every cent.”

He defines a zine as something “made for love, not profit,” a phrase that could serve as a mission statement for the store.  This spirit drives the creation of zines – a love of the printed word and the artistic process, not money and fame.

Although Sticky offers important resources for artists, it has also created something much greater – a fun, intuitive, and innovative environment.

Various activities have grown up around the Melbourne zine distro, from a thriving community of passionate volunteers and zine makers to events like February’s Festival of the Photocopier and an online "zineopedia" that keeps track of artists, titles, and other important contributions to Australian zine culture.  Sticky Institute lists events for zine makers all over Australia and other distros, in addition to hosting monthly meetings of “The Opinion Society” and a few workshops of its own.

To Sinclair, independent media isn't just cool; it’s a social necessity for creating a sort of alternate history.  Individual expression is the only way to maintain control over one’s artistic vision, something that’s of utmost importance to the members of Sticky.

“Every time something I have been involved in has been represented by the mainstream media, it has been misrepresented," Sinclair says.  "So it is important that we tell our own stories and our own history, or else nobody else will.”

He’s practical in his expectations of personal storytelling, however.  His advice to anyone who wants to make a zine?  Trial and error.  “Make terrible mistakes in your first issue and learn from them to improve your second issue," he says.  "And bring in ten copies of your zine to Sticky!”

- Mallory Gevaert

Zine Scene is a biweekly column about writers’ and artists’ adventures in the world of independent publishing.

That’s how zinester/blogger Tom Moniz describes the uniquely organic process of creating his zines, which cover topics like trans and queer fatherhood and the anarcho-punk lifestyle.  His works describe not just the parenting styles of its subjects but their lives and passions.

With parenting, family life, and childcare increasingly being pulled together into one narrow view of what’s "safe" or "healthy," Moniz reveals new and exciting ways to think about those other families that dare to do things differently.

Moniz’s pet project, Rad Dad, draws together all of these viewpoints.  Inspired by the mid-'90s zine Hip Mama and other works about radical parenting, Rad Dad explores issues that affect all families while focusing on the experiences of commonly overlooked groups of people.

One of those groups might as well be parents who write zines.  Moniz is used to the surprised reactions that his zines get from many people.  He knows that parenting zines aren’t just for parents, though.

“The best parenting zines are as much about parenting as they are about trying to live an authentic life, about trying to love honestly and consciously, about working to create a better world,” Moniz says.

The social possibilities of zines became apparent to Moniz when he began to see them distributed at political rallies.

“As I became more involved, I realized that zines were an excellent way to fill in the gaps, to voice issues not normally addressed," he says. "So my first zine project was about people of color in the anarchist community.  Once I saw how easy it was, nothing could stop me.”

He comments that he’s proud to "continually put out marginalized voices” through his remarkable zines about parenting and living outside the norm, and he wants everyone to hear those voices.

“I’m ready for the next shocked reaction when a person sees my 40-year-old butt sitting behind a table trying to sell zines," Moniz says. "‘Here,’ I’ll say, ‘read this and let me know what you think. I wrote it just for you.’”

- Mallory Gevaert

Zine Scene is a biweekly column about writers' and artists’ adventures in the world of independent publishing.

And Metzler certainly seized his chance, turning his job history into art.  Anyone who has worked in customer service will immediately find a kindred spirit in Metzler.

His one-shot comics about the crippling boredom and strange characters that one encounters in the workplace ring, sadly, very true.  Populating his comics with bored desk jockeys, rude bosses, and strange customers, Metzler shows his affinity for the working everyman while tweaking the usual formula of workplace comedy.

Copyjerk, his smarmy and satirical webcomic — published online since 2008 and recently available in zine form — transforms these experiences into a surreal but immediately recognizable world that will elicit knowing chuckles from anyone who’s had to deal with customers and coworkers.

“Most people can relate to the strife of retail," he says, "so I hope that I've sprinkled enough of the universal code of ‘work sucks’ throughout the book that people can get a giggle out of it, at least.”

It is this element of "we’ve all been there" comedy that makes Copyjerk work as well as it does.  Though workplace humor is, admittedly, as old as the hills, Metzler’s works focus on the common experiences at the heart of the business, like over-friendly colleagues and surefire time wasters, in order to form a real connection with his audience.

At its heart, however, Copyjerk reveals Metzler’s very real angst and frustration with the retail world that his characters inhabit.  As with most sources of pain, turning it into art and comedy seems to effect a catharsis — for the writer and the reader.

“Art has always been my escape route from social drama," Metzler notes, "so creating an imaginary world or two with a slightly skewed basis in reality has appealed to me ever since I knew there was an actual market for it.”

Ultimately, Metzler sees his comic as many things: “It's a story, a joke, a window into a life, an artistic outlet, a marketing ploy, everything that can be challenging to a creative mind. When it's done, I'm just glad that I made it through the process without overdosing on caffeine (and that someone may actually enjoy reading it).”

- Mallory Gevaert

Zine Scene is a biweekly column about writers' and artists’ adventures in the world of independent publishing.

“During the summer of 2004 I was cobbling together found poems from a variety of sources: an old Boy Scout Handbook, the owner's manual of an oven, craigslist personal ads. Some of them made me laugh and I found I wanted to share them but didn't know how.”

Haegele, author of the found poetry zine Word Math and The La-La Theory series, was working as a professional writer for several magazines and newspapers when she found that her ideas for writing wouldn’t quite fit conventional publishing standards.

The La-La Theory 6 by Katie Haegele

The zine format was clearly a boon for her, as she describes her current method of writing: “I think about my writing in a more physical, visual way than I used to. The way it will sit on the page, and the way it will relate to the other pieces of writing surrounding it, has some bearing on the way I write it in the first place.”

“The open-endedness of it means I can do whatever I want, but the book structure gives it shape.”

Her most popular work’s namesake, “la-la theory,” reflects the lighthearted tone of her works. “The name comes from a 19th-century theory about the origin of language that suggested people invented spoken language to satisfy the human need to express poetry and love,” she explains.

“It's pretty fanciful, maybe even silly, but it's just fabulous if you ask me, and Darwin liked it too.”

With witty wordplay figuring heavily in her work, it’s no surprise that playfulness and freedom of creation are big themes in Haegele’s conception of art.

“My feeling about art in general is that it exists for all of us to make and enjoy. You don't need to think of yourself as a writer to make a zine – or to write anything, for that matter. It's just human.”

Katie Haegele: thelalatheory.com

Zine Scene, by Mallory Gevaert, is a weekly column about writers and artists’ adventures in the world of independent publishing.

The resulting collections of short stories and typewritten journals follow ordinary people, from retail drones to historical Moravians, and trawl their everyday actions for meaning.  The most recent issue of Big Hands comments on everything from family Thanksgivings to Foucault’s panopticon, with an eye for finding truth in short interactions.

His latest work, Unemployment, is similarly scientific in its exploration of what happens when we have too much time on our hands.  Smith says, “Unemployment is about having dreams that get put on the backburner for when you ‘finally get some time’. But when we actually get the time to do what we want, we fail to act."

"My amateur sociological research reveals that people are deeply affected by their social relations and their routines—if you are surrounded by people who do nothing, you will do nothing.”

Big Hands 6 by Aaron Lake Smith

Thriving subcultures have been developing around zinesters and distros since the early days of the format, leading to festivals, conferences, online writers’ communities and the “We Make Zines” website, which is devoted to social networking between writers, distributors and fans.

These groups have made zine-publishing faster and easier than ever, as well as increased their readership and exposure.

In this age of mass-produced media, news organizations have begun to report on the growing influence of zines on culture, while museums and art galleries have held exhibitions of zine covers and artwork.

Even major bookstores are branching out to carry the more in-demand titles of zine media.  Remarkably, zines have weathered this popularity boost while retaining their special charm and artistic purity.

Zine Scene will cover topics in zine culture and a variety of publishing styles, from online to homemade cut-and-paste.  It’ll include information about recent releases, stories and experiences from writers, and much more.

Zine Scene, by Mallory Gevaert, is a weekly column about writers and artists' adventures in the world of independent publishing.