Broken Pencil Issue 81

Global Zine Report: Dispatches From Zines in Every Hemisphere!
Plus: Urinal Fiction, Communist Zine Archives and More!
THE MAGAZINE OF ZINE CULTURE AND THE INDEPENDENT ARTS
THE NEW
NOIR
$7.95 | issue 81
www.brokenpencil.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Broken Pencil ISSUE 81
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Global Zine Report ... 12
Pencil Sharpeners Reviews
Soviet Zines Live On! by Hal Niedzviecki … 5 Zines … 29
Coffee People Zines by Daniela Barrera Murcia … 6 Music … 49
Museum of Symmetry by Jonathan Valelly … 6 Books … 50
Comics Fiction
Burgomasterpiece Theatre by Cullen and Burgomaster … 9 Closer by Jason Arias … 63
Babcia by Marta Chudolinska … 10 The Morning After by Charlotte Van Ryn … 67
Edge Desert by Sophie Yanow … 10
The KKK in Kanada, Part 2 by Gord Hill … 11 Excerpts
8-Bit by Steven Kraan … 11 Are You My Home? by Rachel Jackson … 29
Hamilton Sub Register by Ben Needham & Tara Bursey … 30
Columns Grow Your Own Plants from Veggie Scraps by Outasight … 32
Art Holes by Areeba Siddique … 7 National Teenset Outsider by Will Carroll … 34
Zinester’s Toolkit: Collagio by Lisa Pijuan-Nomura … 8 The VENT 2.0 by Piankhi Squabblez … 35
Exposure Unit by Rabeea Syed … 9 279 by Alecia Gatlin … 36
Zine Philosophy: Community Zines by DEWAC Zine … 72 Hey! You! by Blake Lewis … 37
Even Monsters Are Growing by Roy Luo … 38
Features Industry Standard by Trevor Clement … 39
Global Zine Report by Broken Pencil Staff ... 12 Just Encased by Danielle Susi … 40
The New Noir by Leah Coppella … 20 Squid-Gee by Keenan Poloncsak … 41
Around the (Printing) Block by Anisa Rawhani … 25 Statues by Eryn Lou … 42
FME: Supporting the Weird by Shelby Monita … 48 This Was Then This Is Now by Kira Buro … 44
A Vancouver Alphabet by April Milne … 45
Folio Fake Bands by Isabella Laird … 46
Potlatch Punk by Whess Harman… 26 SKY WRI TEI NG by Nasser Hussain … 51
FALL 2018 1 BROKEN PENCIL

MASTHEAD
Editor: Jonathan Valelly ([email protected]) CONTRIBUTORS

Assistant Editor: Anisa Rawhani ([email protected])
Fiction Editor: Sofia Mostaghimi ([email protected])
Associate Fiction Editor: Ana Machado ([email protected])
Publisher: Hal Niedzviecki ([email protected])
Associate Publisher: Tara Gordon Flint ([email protected])
Summer Students: Daniela Barrera Murcia, Ari Cannarozzo, Leah Coppella, Caleb De Jong
Design: Ian Sullivan Cant ([email protected])
Illustrators: Patrick Burgomaster, Marta Chudolinska,
Gord Hill, Stephen Kraan, Areeba Siddique, Chelsea Watt, Sophie Yanow
Copy Editor: Nico Mara-McKay
Cover Photography: Lindsay Duncan Leah Coppella is a student
Cover Illustration: Anisa Rawhani journalist at Carleton University.
Cover Models: Jean Mathew, Tamar Mugler Dividing her time between Toronto
and Ottawa, she writes weird fiction
and indie music reviews, and is
Contributors: usually caffeinated.
Downtown Eastside Women’s Collective, Jason Arias, Daniela Barrera Murcia, Joshua Barton, Scott Bryson, Kris Bone,
Megan Clark, Richelle Charkot, Fiona Raye Clarke, Leah Coppella, Cam Gordon, Jana Gregorio, Whess Harman,
Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy, Chris Landry, Jean Mathew, Jenna McClelland, Shelby Monita, John Nyman, Nick Pearce,
Lisa Pijuan-Nomura, Graham Sigurdson, Rabeea Syed, Clayton Tomlinson, Charlotte Van Ryn,
Joel W Vaughan, Andrew Woodrow-Butcher
CONTRIBUTING TO BROKEN PENCIL
Writing Broken Pencil encourages submissions of original Copyright and licensing information
articles, essays and columns relating to the subject of inde- All material herein is copyright Broken Pencil. No part of this
pendent arts and culture. Please send article proposals and publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
writer profiles to [email protected]. If you would like or transmitted in any form without prior written consent
to become a regular reviewer for Broken Pencil, please email from the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other
your areas of interest and samples of your work to editor@ reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright, Rabeea Syed is a 5th year at
brokenpencil.com. accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777. Material from other pub- OCAD University. She is a freelance
lications that appear in Broken Pencil is used by permission of
Artwork Broken Pencil encourages artists and illustrators graphic designer and printmaker/zine
those publications and is copyright those publications. creator. She also runs a screen
to reach out for publication or collaboration. Please send
proposals to [email protected]. If you would like to Broken Pencil is archived in the online database “Alt- printing studio and hosts screen
become a regular illustrator for Broken Pencil, please send a PressWatch” available through ProQuest, proquest.com. printing workshops for new artists.
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Fiction Broken Pencil accepts submissions of short fiction
(50-2,000 words) between February 1st and September 15th, Our Supporters Broken Pencil acknowledges the sup-
and for Indie Writers’ Deathmatch between September 16th port of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for
and December 31st. For more information, visit brokenpencil. the Arts. Broken Pencil acknowledges the financial support of
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in our marketplace which appears in each issue of the mag- Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S7 Canada
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brokenpencil.com. Hamilton-based collage artist,
Subscribing to Broken Pencil Subscribe online
storyteller and creativity coach. She
at brokenpencil.com/store. Or send a cheque or money order Fall 2018 issue 81 | ISSN 1201-8996 has always loved zines and has created
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Collagio is a collection of thoughts,
tional costs $70 USD. Institutional subscriptions cost $40 for 4
quotes and lists about collage and
issues in Canada, $60 USD in the US and $70 USD for interna-
creativity. In 2019, Lisa will do the
tional. Questions about your subscription? Email subs@broken-
final installation of The Artist Is In,
pencil.com. A note to subscribers: On occasion, subscriber names
her public performance of art, a
and addresses are made available to select organizations that have
project that she has been working on
cool stuff you might want. If you do not wish to receive these
for the past 5 years. For more info see
mailings, please contact us at [email protected].
www.girlcancreate.com

EDITOR’S NOTE
EVERY DAY I WAKE UP

and I feel this funny mixture of emotions. It’s
part dread and part anxiety; that kind of knot
in your stomach. But it’s also a weird focus, a
kind of conviction.
The world is bleak right now. There’s no
denying it. We are asked to measure out our
sympathies, and to cry proportionally for each
crisis. We weep for starvation in Venezuela,
unspeakable tragedies in Yemen, serial gun
massacres across America — all while grappling
with Canada’s complicity in the geopolitical
chaos. That’s not to mention our paralyzing
inability to reckon with ongoing colonial vio-
lence and inequality right here on this land.
And yet I also feel the fire, the urgency. I’ve
never felt more committed to supporting the ever more stacked against the well-being of the masses.
organizing I care about. Yet, the creators using noir to reflect back society’s ills in
After Trump was elected, I even felt, for 2018 are doing so with a new analysis around gender, race,
the first time since I moved here nine years ago, and class that is subverting and challenging noir’s tradi-
that it might be worthwhile to go home to tionally macho-white-guy underpinnings. It’s an awesome
Philly and join the fight. Of course, I was thing, and profoundly telling of the world we are
quickly reminded of the fights in my own back- negotiating.
yard here in Toronto: the Overdose Prevention As I try to wrap my brain around the horrors happen-
Sites on the line, Stolen Children camps in ing here and elsewhere, I also find myself delighted and
Saskatchewan and Queen’s Park, racist police, surprised by the ways people resist, small and large. I had
the housing crisis, teachers fighting for the the privilege of interviewing more than a dozen zinesters
right to knowledge and respect for LGBTQ stu- and organizers from around the world for this issue. I made
dents in Ontario. Shit is rough, it’s complex, new friends from Slovenia to South Africa, and learned
and it can be paralyzing to think about. about how zine communities new and old continue to cre-
And somehow, we are asked to push for- ate spaces where artists, writers, and everyday people can
ward with the mundane tasks of our day-to-day share their practice on their own terms. The emerging
lives. We go to work, we see friends, we make scenes in Beijing and Shanghai, the long held and diverse
dinner. We make art, and we manage to build zine scenes in Indonesia, the absolutely massive and vibrant
resilient communities. Most importantly, we Australian zine scene, they all give me hope.
speak back to the dark clouds above. I don’t know if zines alone will save the world,
Perhaps that’s why we see a resurgent destroy fascism, and redistribute wealth (though a girl can
interest in noir, the genre of bleak criminality, dream, right?). But when on any given day you might wake
nihilism, and, somehow, a dark romance. As up and find out that Trump has cut off aid to Palestine,
Leah Coppella argues in our cover feature, noir that another journalist was killed in the Congo, that the
is coming back because once more, our political Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has left this dimension…
structures, our environment, our cities seem Well, I’ll be damned if we don’t create our own narratives,
our own networks, our own knowledges. It’s okay if we
can’t always do it all, cry for everything wrong in our
hometowns or other hemispheres. But let’s keep making
our own small beacons of hope and power if we can.
Jonathan

LETTERS AND MISC
In July, Broken Pencil hosted a zine workshop at the LitBang pop-up space in Toronto. One of the particularly memorable
zines that came out of that workshop is this nose-themed zine by Ari Cannarozzo, our incredible summer placement
student. Here’s the full spread of the zine, ready to fold and cut. We’ll miss you, Ari!

PENCIL SHARPENERS: NEWS & CULTURE
Soviet
Zines
Live On!
When Mark Yoffe was a teenager in
Soviet-controlled Riga, Latvia,
everything looked ridiculous. As he
tells it, both the Soviet bureaucracy
of censorship and control, and the
ultra-serious resistance to it in the
form of dissidents and nationalists,
seemed silly and pointless. What
mattered? Rock n’ roll, weird art and
anything that showed the adults
what fools they were, of course. In
1977, he and his pals published what
is now described as the “first ever
Soviet rock zine,” Bez Zhmogas. They
then formed garage avant-garde
ensemble Путь толстых (“The
way of the fat ones”) that made
home recordings ranging from
mocking audio plays to conceptual
music. Yoffe and friends also
released the underground art and
literature almanac Дело #1. But, as
Yoffe tells it, the second edition was
never published because the only
original was “borrowed” by a com-
panion and known KGB collabora-
tor and never seen again. Yoffe had
enough, and eventually made his
way out of the USSR and to the US.
Today, he presides over one of
the world’s largest collections of
Soviet and Perestroika era zines as
part of the International
Counterculture Archive at the
Global Resources Center of George
Wa s h i n g t o n Un i v e r s i t y i n
Washington, DC. The collection is
open to the public by appointment,
so if you’re in DC, drop by and check
out a one of a kind historical archive
that includes Yoffe’s first zine!
More info on the archive at:
home.gwu.edu/~yoffe (Hal
Niedzviecki)

PENCIL SHARPENERS: NEWS & CULTURE
Coffee People Zine Museum of Symmetry
Museums parade as halls of cultural authority, but as any kid who has
ever tried to sleep over in a planetarium can tell you, they are only what
the visitor makes of them. Montreal-based comic artist Paloma Dawkins
has memories of compulsively exploring the Natural History Museum
near her childhood home in Ottawa. In her new virtual reality game,
the Museum of Symmetry, Dawkins invites the user to use her psyche-
delic, intergalactic museum space to travel through the colour wheel
on their own terms.
Zines and coffee: a classic, undeniable

match. And now, Kat Melheim has cre-
ated the perfect zine to go with a steam-
ing cup of joe. The collaborative Coffee
People zine, based in Denver, CO, is
focused on everything coffee-related:
coffee farmers and processors knowing
their rights in the workplace, the artists
that work with coffee, and the art of
“We wanted it to be purely experiential,” says Dawkins, who worked
preparing coffee itself. For every zine that
with programmers and designers at the National Film Board and Casa
she sells, Melheim donates $1 to a differ- Rara Studio to make the game happen. While so many games ask you
ent coffee charity. As Melheim says, “it’s to “master something,” she “wanted everything in this space to be intu-
good stewardship to engage responsibly itive.” The 20-minute game is on tour in Canada and beyond and is
available to download on STEAM and VIVE now. Check out medias-
within this world, I must share my space
pace.nfb.ca/museumofsymmetry to see more! (Jonathan Valelly)
and my resources.” So, this barista
dedicates her free time to running this
zine on her own. “There’s a richness and a
depth in this community,” she reflects. “I
was lucky enough to find it.” You can
purchase issues 1 and 2 — in print and
digitally — on coffeepeople.org, as well
look for as issue 3 on September 22nd,
and issue 4 on December 21st. (Daniela
Barrera Murcia)

COLUMNS
ART HOLES
Creators diagram where they work
by Areeba Siddique
I’m an art student and illustrator based in Karachi, Pakistan. My illustrations usually deal with normalizing Muslim women on the
internet (find me: @ohareeba). I sometimes write poetry out of rage, too. I am messy when it comes to my art, I cannot work
without a pile of paper cut outs and my art supplies spread everywhere. This is why I like to set up my disposable workspace on
the floor. It also enables me to work anywhere. Cleaning up afterwards is the hard part but at least I can have all the fun while I
am working on my art pieces.

COLUMNS
ZINESTER’S TOOLKIT
Zinester’s toolkit is a column where creators share tools, tips, and tricks they use in their
practice. In this edition, we adapted parts of the zine Collagio.
by Lisa Pijuan-Nomura.
I AM A COLLAGE ARTIST based in Hamilton, ON. about two hours a day cutting and pasting.
It all started about 28 years ago when I fell in love with an old postcard. It was a It was all going very well, and then sud-
cheesy image of two people kissing on the streets of Paris. I wondered what the denly things went bad. Two years ago, I was
world of these two was like, and dreamed of a life of love, travel, and art. diagnosed with breast cancer. And that sucked.
After that, I started collecting postcards. Soon, I was going to all the antique Like, it sucked a lot.
markets and picking up old books at garage sales. I liked the look and feel of them, and When you are spending all of your energy
I loved the inscriptions in the margins: “To Birdy, I love you dearly and always will. going through treatment and getting better, you
Frances, may you enjoy these delightful stories on your 16th birthday. Para mi amor, have no energy left at the end of the day. So col-
mi vida. 1942.” lage stopped for about eight months. When I
I couldn’t stop thinking about those who had lived before me and written came back to creating, I didn’t quite know what
these messages. One day, I noticed that some of the pictures were falling apart to do. I wanted to lessen the pressure that I placed
and wondered what would happen if I used them for collage. For two years I spent upon myself, so I started making what I call col-
lage sketches. They are simple collages that I cre-
ate in timed sessions. Just playing with paper. And
slowly but surely I got back to creating.
Collagio is a zine about cutting and pasting,
creativity, life and books. Each page has thoughts
or quotes on them and they can be used as a
prompt for your own paper playtimes.
Start with these simple prompts. 10 min-
utes a day.
How to Start a
Collage
1. Start with an image that you love.
2. Pick three other elements.
3. Glue them down.
4. Have fun.
5. Listen to podcasts or your favourite music.
6. Once you are finished start again.
Collage #1
Late night thoughts make me giddy
Playing with paper
Abandoning all sorts of meaning
Just paper to paper.
Collage #3
Nothing.
Ever.
Makes
Sense.

COLUMNS
Exposure Unit
Exposure Unit is a new column by Toronto-based zinester Rabeea Syed.
HELLO, Broken Pencil reader! And culture hasn’t always been a breeze. they are easy to make and that there are
welcome to the magazine’s newest reg- There are things that a creator has to be no limitations on how they’re made and
ular column, Exposure Unit. I’m Rabeea prepared for when presenting work in who makes them. Thankfully, zines
Syed, a zinester and arts organizer based any environment. don’t belong to any one person or any
in Toronto. Let’s start with a little bit For me, it was the fact that my one group. They go beyond the tradi-
about me. I’m currently studying graphic work was directly related to my identity tional notions of artists and writers
design with a completed minor in print- as a Muslim Pakistani-Canadian woman. even, making them an extremely acces-
making. I love making zines, and I am This opens me up to unwanted com- s i b l e fo r m o f r e p r e s e n t a t i o n fo r
lucky enough to have been creating and ments and questions that I feel as oneself.
partaking in zine culture for three years though I have no choice but to answer, I hope that in the issues to come, I
now. I became interested in making especially when displaying my work can help open up conversations about
zines when I first decided to take a in-person at a zine fair or festival. the promises and pitfalls of zine culture,
minor in printmaking. Soon I realized But those who ask these invasive and the issues that affect us as zinesters
that there was this unexplored form of questions would be likely to do so making work, tabling at festivals, and
expression and I decided to pursue it. regardless of my art form. I would not sharing ourselves to the world. This can
Eventually, with my experience in consider it to be a setback that is spe- be as far ranging as how to make zine
graphic design as well as in printmaking, cific to zine culture, but it’s worth spaces more accessible, the challenge of
I was able to use this medium to explore unpacking how it plays out in those par- collaborations in self-publishing, the
my identity in a way that I had not pre- ticular contexts politics of representation in DIY, and
viously realized was possible: through Zine making and the culture sur- maybe even the big question of how
self-publishing. Being able to photo- rounding it is one of the most freeing zines fit into the digital media land-
graph and write about moments and things I’ve been able to do, and the most scape. Really, anything that comes up in
experiences, and to compile them into fulfilling community I’ve been able to be the life of a zinester!
something I felt captured the emotions a part of. If there are topics you’d like to see
surrounding my diasporic identity was In this column space, I plan to elab- covered, from a zinester’s perspective,
brand new to me. Now, it is a key part of orate on how zines are able to express or any questions you have for me, please
how I view art and its possibilities. so much in so many ways, yet remain an shoot me an email at rabeea@bro-
Of course, participating in zine accessible form of media for all, in that kenpencil.com. Let’s talk zines!
Burgomasterpiece Theatre by Cullen and Burgomaster

COMICS

COMICS

FEATURE
SECTION HEADER
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The State of the Zine 2018
We hear from zinesters of all stripes here at Broken Pencil. From teenagers making their first mini comic
to designers of high-art multiples. We also get mail pouring in from all over the world, bursting with zines,
prints, and letters from zine enthusiasts. It made us ask: What’s going on across the globe in the zine
scene? What kind of similarities can we find in zine cultures across hemispheres, and how is each scene
unique? While of course we couldn’t do a full history of every local zine scene, we interviewed local zin-
esters and organizers in a bunch of different corners of the planet to get a snapshot of the cultures on the
ground. A State of the Zine, if you will. Here are a few of our findings!

FEATURE
of the hardcore and punk community,” Wawancara says. “What

I experienced when I finished my first zine was so empowering
that I wish for more people to experience it too. In an environ-
ment where we were told that ‘media’ means mainstream media,
INDONESIA to be able to make our own is actually so important.”

Vantiani isn’t the only zinester to bring the zine ethos out-
side the underground scene. Rizkiana does zine workshops with
When zines grew more popular in Indonesia, it wasn’t just children in rural areas. She started back in 2015, when she made
because they were an alternate creative medium. It was because, zines with children about rivers and other places kids were living
in a country where censorship is common and the distribution as a way to respond to environmental issues happening in Jakarta
of information homogenous, zines offered Indonesians the free- at the time. She started the workshops through Jakarta Biennale
dom to access knowledge in new ways, says Annisa Rizkiana, a — an event of Indonesian contemporary arts — and Sanggar
zinester based in Jakarta. Anak Akar (a Jakarta-based alternative education model for poor
“Individuals and collectives that were active in the under- children aged six to 12 years old).
ground scene started to build embodied communities through “Zine-making is so liberating,” Rizkiana says, but it isn’t
zine-making as a form of resistance, open knowledge, and fun,” without its distribution and censorship challenges in Indonesia.
Rizkiana says. “Nowadays, youth are also so aware of the possi- The government blocked Tumblr — a critical platform for
bilities they can access in order to build more supportive so many zinesters worldwide — for the first time back in 2016.
communities.” Its reasoning: the website was providing the citizens in Muslim-
The beginning of Indonesia’s zine scene has a familiar plot: majority country with access to porn.
political punk bands began circulating zines about gigs and other “Many zinesters here lost access to their digital archive,”
events. The focus was music, politics and anarchy, often in Xerox Rizkiana says. “We still try to sort of reclaim it back, but Tumblr-
black and white, according to Ika Vantiani, an Indonesian zin- ing zines may not be the same anymore.”
ester. That was until the 2000s, when zines grew more popular,
turning to topics such as sex, art, and film. CHECK OUT:
“The most important change is thatthere were more women * @autonica
making zines that were not only talking about music and politics, * Bandung Zine Fest
but also other topics never talked about before,” Vantiani says. * Jakarta Zine Fest
In 2001, Vantiani established her zine distro, Peniti Pink (Pink * molekulikan.tumblr.com
Safety Pin), where she organizes workshops and zine campaigns. *Sangkakalam
“The main goal in Peniti Pink is actually to bring zines out * @vantiani

FEATURE
Find La Maleta Fanzinera on

Facebook to keep up with the
Bogotá zine scene.
COLOMBIA
We asked Catalina aka Rapiña to write us a zine report about Bogotá, Colombia.
This is a zine report about what happens in these lands of the mango. For three
years I’ve worked in La Maleta Fanzinera (which translates to “Fanzine Suitcase”), which
has zines from all over Latin America. Thanks to this project, I’ve gotten to know more
about the zine movement, and we are always getting new volumes in our collection.
Bogotá is a great place for zines — we frequently have workshops, zine fairs,
and small independent presses. Indie projects that use zines as a means of distribu-
tion, and a platform to find new ways of expressing their ideas, are coming to light.
There are plenty of great spaces to find fanzine treasures. One example is A la
postre 101, a zine library that’s open to the public and holds lots of ’80s and ’90s gems,
along with a little café. The Distribuidora Libertaria Rojinegro is a distro you can
find in one of Bogotá’s old-school neighbourhoods, and it promotes the development
and spread of free thinking. The Valija de Fuego bookstore is a punk home base. It
has been open for a bit more than eight years, carries a super rich range of zines and
has its own small press.
Amongst the workshops there is Colmillo, a risograph and serigrafía studio,
where they illustrate cassettes and always release accompanying zines. Another place
to find the movement would be the women who run the Histéricas collective, a group
of empowered women who use zines as a medium to share knowledge about diversity
and the social problems faced by women in Colombia.
This city is in continual movement — some projects end, and others gain
strength in the indie scene. This is just the tip of the iceberg of cool zine projects in
the country of mangos.

FEATURE
INDIA
In May of 2017, we caught wind of some fascinating zine projects happening in
Mumbai and across India.
In January of that year, the first ever Bombay Zine Fest was held in Mumbai
(Bombay), bringing together a large volume of self-published books and zines to
the public in India.
We chatted with the same organizers as they went on to organize a travelling
exhibition of zines called You Deserve to DIY. They call themselves Bombay
Underground, and since we last chatted they’ve gone into full force zine organiz-
ing across the country.
This year, they hosted the second edition of their growing Bombay Zine Fest.
They’ve also made good on their promise to set up a permanent zine library in
Mumbai. But their show is on the road, most recently with the travelling Sister
Library project, which brings artists books and zines around the country to open
conversations about the representation of women in Indian literature and arts.
“There is a rich history of self-publishing in India. Various social justice
movements often make easily distributable small publications,” said Aqui Thami,
who is from Darjeeling and has led the Sister Library project. “While there are
various artists and designers making art books, which they sometimes even call
zines, I think the first people in Bombay to actually make zines and hustle them
in the streets was Bombay Underground.”
They’ve attracted plenty of attention with their projects, and while not every-
one gets zines, the response has been generally positive. And zinesters have been
sending their love. CHECK OUT:
“Zinemakers and distros all over the world lent us their support on social * Bombay Underground
media and also sent us their zines,” said Thami. * Bombay Zine Fest
The collective also engages local communities through collaborative projects * Dharavi Art Room
at the Dharavi Art Room. It’s safe to say zine culture in India is in good hands! * Sister Library

FEATURE
CHINA to document them by interviewing the people

affected and drawing portraits of them. They’ve
“Shanghai is really high-pressure, everyone’s running after the money all the time,” found an audience for their project in the DIY
Zovi Weng told Broken Pencil over a noisy WhatsApp call earlier this summer. Loud and underground arts scene of Beijing.
conversations, car horns, and static confirmed his characterization of the bustling “The underground music scene is huge.
city. “Everyone is overworked, but I wanted to find a place to actually have fun.” You’ve got punk, you’ve got rock, you’ve got hip-
Instead of finding it, Weng and his friend, Jar Mark Caplan, decided to make hop, you’ve got all these local artists — very
it on their own. They had already asked for submissions for their Shaving in the Dark down to earth people,” describes Wang. The
Zine, an underground platform for comics. But when they started hosting Drink music scenes and other underground culture
and Draw events for contributors to meet each other, they saw a community form. makers are linked primarily through groups on
“It kind of happened by happy accident,” Weng laughs. the social media platform WeChat. But while
Getting a zine off the ground in Shanghai can be tough, Weng and Caplan digital connections keep the scene thriving,
told me. There are stern government regulations about publishing, and you have Wang and Kaneko wanted to make something
to be discreet. you could hold.
“Doing anything indie in publishing is really difficult with the regulations,” “As artists, we like tactile things, and we did
says Caplan, and getting an official publishing license is almost impossible. “But start through offline publishing,” says Wang. “We
I feel it’s gathering steam for sure… The demand is there.” still all gather together and support each other.
Most of the zines they encounter in Shanghai are apolitical, for obvious We like to see a live band or an art market.”
reasons. Censorship in China is stern, and you have to play the game. “That also creates a connection, a human
“We know what we cannot do,” says Weng. “It’s kind of in the air, this sort to human connection that we can’t really get
of self-censorship.” online,” adds Kaneko.
Rather than address issues head-on, zines and art about identity and personal As with so many zine cultures, self-publish-
stories projected into the realm of suggestion and fantasy are much more likely ing in Shanghai and Beijing seem to be connected
to survive than a straight-up punk or radical zine. to broader communities of underground media
Yet, 1,300 kilometres north in Beijing, Hole in the Wall Zine gets away with a makers. While strict oversight from the state
little bit more. The zine, started a bit over a year ago by friends Jinna Kaneko and keeps people careful about publishing projects, an
Shui Wang, is meant to capture the large-scale, government enforced displace- emerging zine scene makes space for subtlety.
ment that is rapidly transforming Beijing neighbourhoods.
“They evicted everyone who isn’t a Beijing person,” explains Jinna. “From CHECK OUT:
little, small food sellers to cigarette sellers to people who sell flowers.” * Hole in the Wall Zine
Jinna and Shui watched small businesses and underground spaces disappear, * Shaving in the Dark Zine
especially the hidden alleyways and courtyards known as hutongs. They decided * Spittoon Literary Magazine

FEATURE
comparatively huge number of enquiries ... from

people wanting to stock their zine, but very few
orders.”
More zines means a greater variety, but it’s
also created tension. There’s been a surge in
“designer,” high-priced works in a world that was
once dominated by cheaper cut-n-paste zines.
“There is confusion out there about what
AUSTRALIA is a zine and what is an artist book,” Davidson

says. “I think a lot of the confusion actually
stems — in Australia at least — from institu-
When Sticky Institute, a zine shop in Melbourne, opened its doors in 2001, it had tions like art galleries getting in on the zine
12 zines on the shelf. Seventeen years later, they’ve just stocked their 15,000th title. scene. I think that changes the way people first
“Which is pretty amazing because the shop is really small: it’s only four encounter zines. Rather than finding zines
metres by four metres big,” says Luke Sinclair, one of the shop’s coordinators. firmly attached to a subculture, or as a subcul-
“In ’99, I remember having this conversation that zines would be gone by 2002. ture in themselves, zines are presented as this
Completely the opposite has happened.” general medium of artistic self-expression.”
Likely the largest in the world, Australia’s massive zine scene is growing — and “It is a thing that is hard to grapple with,”
with no sign of stopping. More zines are being made, fairs are expanding, and it’s she says. “In the early days, we definitely turned
clear that big institutions see the value of zines enough to invest time and money. down a lot of submissions on the grounds that
Take the example of Sticky Institute. Their digs are dead centre in Melbourne, they were bordering on not being zines. It
but they didn’t pay rent for the first eight years because the building was owned raised the very frustrating question of how do
by local council. “By the time we had to stand on our own two feet, we had a big you define what a zine even is, and who gets to
enough audience and lots of zines moving through,” Sinclair says. “[That’s] the decide?”
only reason we were able to survive.” Though Davidson doesn’t think the art
The State Library of Victoria is another big supporter, buying one of each world and zine world “are always mutually exclu-
zine that’s come through Sticky Institute to add to their collection, which is made sive,” poorly defined parameters causes confu-
up of thousands of zines. sions at zine fairs, where zinesters table alongside
“It’s professionally curated by librarians,” Sinclair says. “[It’s] tempera- creators selling limited edition $50 art books.
ture-controlled, [zines are stores] in these tram track cupboards, and are stored Sinclair says he felt the same struggle in his
in folders for the months that it was donated. So if you want to look at what zines own shop. “We had a lot of punks volunteering
looked like in August 1996, you can go to that cupboard, open it up, put your with us five years ago and they said nothing
gloves on, and you can look at it.” over $10 … It used to cause real tensions in the
Australia’s zine scene took off in the late ’90s, when a big zine fair, This is shop. People would not like that. They would
Not Art Festival, was started under the umbrella of a larger festival called the want that $30 glossy thing.”
National Young Writers Festival. For a zine scene as massive as Australia’s,
“Within the next few years, people would travel from all around Australia to growing pains are understandable. But with such
go to that zine fair,” Sinclair says. “It brought everyone together.” dedicated groups like Sticky Institute and Take
Since then, a big change to the scene is the sheer number of zines being Care Zine Distro in the community, it’s bound
created. It can be challenging to keep up with, Sinclair says, and that’s something to work through this uncharted territory.
that Emma Davidson agrees with.
Davidson is the co-founder of Sydney-based Take Care Zine Distro and has CHECK OUT:
been involved in the scene since the ’90s. * Sticky Institute
“After a few years, we stopped taking submissions,” Davidson says. “We got a * Take Care Zine Distro

FEATURE
CHECK OUT:
* Dobra Vaga
* Selmica1992
* Tea Hvala
* Stripburger
* Zine Vitrine
SLOVENIA
This small, pastoral post-Soviet country is known for its quiet beauty and delicious
wines. But a little poking around and you’ll find that, like anywhere, Slovenia’s
cultural history is rich with complexity, community and, of course, a rebellious
underground. Yet, even we weren’t prepared for how deep its zine history is!
Stripburger, an underground comix zine, began in 1992 and continues on today.
“We were lucky to survive that long,” said editor Katerina Mirovic. “The
whole story is actually about ... struggle to get readers. This is quite the problem
because Slovenia is really small, it’s two million people, and we speak Slovenian,
which no one else in the world speaks.”
While many of Slovenia’s early punk scene zines, like Rock Vibe and Psst…,
haven’t survived (though they have been well documented), Stripburger has pushed
through into a new era of zines and has established itself as a key force in bringing
alternative comics into more traditional artist’s spaces, as well as to youth and
students.
“In Slovenia, we are also facing a boom of zines and self-publishing,” said
Lara Plavcak, a scholar and curator who helped edit a catalogue of Slovenian zines
in 2017 and who started the Zine Vitrine zine library. “The difference is in clearer
orientation towards the design, illustration, drawings, photography, and similar
works of art and artistic value.”
Indeed, Mirovic echoes that. While the zines from the era of Stripburger’s
inception were more community projects or regular, serial fanzines, today’s pub-
lications are “more about showing more personal, more intimate work … In com-
ics, you can see lots of these designer comics with lots of colours.”
Plavcak also notes that, while there is an increasing academic interest in zines,
and a turn towards design, they haven’t necessarily given up the original zine ethos.
“Most visible zine authors are, in general, academically educated artists, but
the majority of them got to know zines through punk or skate subcultures, of
which they were or are part of,” she told Broken Pencil, later adding, “The prevail-
ing values remain creativity, independence, non-profitability, networking and
communication.”

FEATURE
CHECK OUT:
* Alphabet Zoo
* ANY BODY ZINE
* Artwolfe
* The Bubblegum Club
* Cape Town Zine Project
* Gethering
* Keletketla! Library
* Lephephe Print
* Pxssy on a Plinth
* Title in Transgression
* Tow Aways Zine
SOUTH AFRICA
Zines have always been a small but active subculture in Southern Africa, and South Africa
in particular. DIY publications, zine fairs, libraries, and festivals have popped up sporad-
ically in Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town. But it’s certainly still underground.
“The challenges we face in South Africa are the lack of awareness, value and edu-
cation about self-publishing/publications,” said the members of Alphabet Zoo, a zine
collective based in Johannesburg. “Your average South African will not pick up or buy
a zine thinking its a brochure or a catalogue of some sort.”
Alphabet Zoo has been around since 2012. What started as a group of eight print-
making students became a project of two, Minenkulu Ngoyi and Isaac Savale. Their
zines are often striking, highly visual projects, and they’re a huge force supporting the
zine scene in South Africa. Check out their Tumblr page and you’ll find links to zines
talking back to legacies of colonialism and racism, high concept art zines, streetwear Van Straaten, who was also part of
projects, and more. And while they describe challenges around an awareness of zines, the Namibia-based zine Artwolfe, says that
they also have noticed that the word is spreading. the interplay between the process of mak-
“We’ve noticed that the zine culture has grown quite [a lot] since 2014, especially in ing a DIY publication and the content
Johannesburg,” said Ngoyi. “There is a whole new fast growing community of zinesters.” within gives it a special intrigue.
In recent years, artists from other disciplines have been taking up zines to tell their “There a is a really nice sort of flow
own stories. Illana Wellman, who works under the moniker Lani Spice, has been a part between these small paper objects that
of that wave. A photographer by trade, discovering the possibility of lo-fi, self-propelled can hold information, but also the body
photo zines was a game changer. Her zine, Tow Aways, became a bit of a hit, and even- holds so much information, and the
tually she became one of the go-to people for zine culture in Johannesburg. exchange between the two,” she explains.
“I’ve always actually had this itch to create a platform, because there is no real Of course, as artists from different
platform here in South Africa, there is no online store dedicated to zines and there is experiences, disciplines, and means come
no real store, like a physical space that was dedicated to zines only,” she describes. Soon, into the community, it too has to grow.
she was tabling her own zines and her friends’ zines at art festivals like Sunday Editions “There is this sort of performing arts
and even high-end galleries. community that is interested in engaging
Amongst the other zines that span disciplines is the aptly titled ANY BODY ZINE. with the content. And then there is this
The zine was started by members of a dance community, of all things, to create a pub- whole other community, which is the
lication that was by and for artists working in the medium. zine-making community, who are also
“Film and fine arts have a large body of texts or literature supporting them, but obviously interested in new publications
it’s not so common with the performing arts to find a kind of library or lineage of texts that crop up,” says van Straaten.
behind that,” said Nicola van Straaten, one of the zine’s editors. “Just doing it ourselves She adds, “The zine community, at least
felt like the most immediate way to slightly change that.” from what I found, is really welcoming.” bp

SECTION
FEATURE
HEADER
FEATURE
THE NEW
NOIR Terminal City at the
heart of a genre's
renaissance
VANCOUVER , CITY OF GLASS, shining light
on the Pacific surrounded by the fringes of the Rocky Mountains and lush
northwest rainforest islands. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.
It’s also ground zero for the emergent revival of small press noir. Noir in gor-
geous, pastoral Vancouver? It’s not as incongruous as you might think, explains
John Belshaw, historian and co-author of Vancouver Noir, a photographic chron-
icle of the so-called Terminal City’s postwar era of graft, gangs, and grifters.
“There’s the opioid and mental health crises in the Downtown Eastside,
Photography by Lindsay Duncan
and the sense that the old city core is so much rotting flesh at Vancouver’s very
heart. There’s a general sense that politicians and planners are in the pocket of
developers. Money laundering — like the organized sex trade, and illicit liquor
sales in the noir era — has been taking place at industrial scales under the nose
of the VPD [Vancouver Police Department] and political elites. There has even
been a resurgence in anti-Chinese feeling associated with off-shore condo sales.
And there’s a sense, too, that elites have been profiting from all of this,” Belshaw
says bluntly.
FALL
FALL 20182020BROKEN
2018 BROKEN PENCIL
PENCIL
SECTION
FEATURE
HEADER
“There is
Murder, drugs, hostility to the poor and displaced, accompanied
by ample rewards for the greedy, narcissistic elites overseeing the sys-
tem? This is noir in a nutshell, the core of a genre steeped in a pessi-
mistic, anxiety-ridden mix of desire, distrust and destruction.
satisfaction in
Not to be confused with mystery or private eye fiction, noir is a
nihilistic genre that follows its characters down darker and darker
alleys. It’s a genre coined by the French in the 1940s in response to the
emergence of a new wave of cynical crime movies emerging from the
US. In literary terms, Andrew Pepper, a scholar who authored The
Contemporary American Crime Novel, writes in an essay published in
The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, that literary noir
is all about “the corrosive effects of money, the meaninglessness and
absurdity of existence, anxieties about masculinity and the bureaucra-
reading ... the
tization of public life, a fascination with the grotesque and a flirtation
with, and rejection of, Freudian psychoanalysis.”
And so, back to Vancouver, a city so overflowing with conflicting
plotlines that it finds itself poised to become the North American noir
story of someone
striving for
capital. Indeed, the 21st century has already given us an abundance of
noir-themed Vancouver texts. These include a bevy of true crime books,
several photo histories, and more than one noir anthology. A nadir
comes this fall with the arrival of a new Vancouver noir anthology from
something they’ll
Brooklyn-based small press Akashic Books. Akashic, with a long-run-
ning series of city-specific noir fiction anthologies including Toronto,
Montreal, Buenos Aires, Singapore, and even Cape Cod, offers up what
might very well be the crown jewel of Vancouver noir texts.
never attain."
Crime writer SG Wong, a contributor to the Akashic Vancouver Noir
anthology, says she’s attracted to the genre because of its dark, Sisyphean
poetry. “There is satisfaction in reading (or watching) the story of some-
one striving for something they’ll never attain. Noir forces me to consider
my own stand: Do I keep trying? Or do I throw in the towel? It’s a bleak
questioning, sure, but I think it’s necessary.”
Whether intentionally or not, she echoes the city’s recurrent
struggles with racism, drugs, inequality and, of course, real estate. Does
Vancouver keep trying? Or does it just give in?
“The Olympics, the amount of popular TV and film that is shot
here, has all contributed to Vancouver becoming more recognizable in
the culture,” notes Sam Wiebe, editor of the upcoming Akashic anthol-
ogy. “The city works hard to maintain its tourist-friendly image. But at
the same time beneath that, you have a city with a severe fentanyl over-
dose problem, a city which is ground zero to the country’s Murdered and
Missing Indigenous Women movement, and a city where housing costs
are pricing out an entire generation. It’s a city in crisis, and crime fiction
is the one place where that is acknowledged — it certainly doesn’t seem
to be in the mainstream literary world.”
“We’ve got, once again, a rolling list of panics and crises,” notes
Belshaw, who also worked on another small press noir book, Vancouver
Confidential. “Homelessness and squalor as an issue has produced — in the
Sahota family, for example — some high-profile profiteering landlords who
have achieved a level of notoriousness unseen in decades. Indeed, housing
is so obscenely expensive it effectively creates in the larger public a vulner-
able and righteously angry class comparable to the unemployed in the
Great Depression. People talk about the hollowing out of the middle class,
but it’s the working class that’s been priced off the map ... There’s also the
creeping realization that the gangs and the condo-flippers are living the
good life, and the rest of us are suckers. And that’s as noir as it gets.”

FEATURE
Brian Busby, editor of Montreal-based Ricochet Books, a Véhicule Press series Pasquella’s Toronto set noir thriller, Yard Dog
that recovers and reprints vintage Canadian noir from the ’40s and ’50s with titles (Dundurn Press) and Lisa de Nikolits’ Rotten
like Blondes Are My Trouble and The Crime on Cotes Des Neiges, makes a similar point. Peaches (Inanna Publications). Additionally, the
Noir often exposes “an underside that is typically absent in Canadian literature. I recent past has no shortage of noir small press
won’t say that reading noir is akin to slumming, but it rights an imbalance.” According anthologies, including several from Toronto
to Busby, postwar Anglo Canadian writing, set in Montreal and elsewhere, tended press Exile Editions such as 2015’s The Exile Book
to set its plots amongst the city’s wealthy. Only the noir novels of the time effectively of New Canadian Noir.
captured the dingy truth of Montreal’s brothels, clubs, and seedy nightlife. “Noir feeds off corruption, greed, and sun-
“William Weintraub documented these years in City Unique: Montreal Days dry fuckery that drives the absurd,” explains
and Nights of the 1940s and 1950s, but in fiction, it exists only in the noir paper- Michigan-based Vern Smith. “And where are
backs of Brian Moore, David Montrose, Douglas Sanderson, and a handful of we, as a culture? Well, here in the US, we have
others,” Busby says. a former game show host as president. He
Indeed, the noir renaissance is acute in Vancouver, but criminality, class war wants to arm teachers with guns. Dennis
and exploitation are everywhere, and the genre is re-emergent elsewhere. In addi- Rodman is fast becoming the go-to consultant
tion to Akashic’s Vancouver noir, upcoming small press books billed as noir on international relations. Shootings are an
include Michigan-based Vern Smith’s The Green Ghetto (Run Amok Books), A. G. everyday thing. Not 20 minutes from where I
live, 40 or so people are getting shot a week,
only you’re not supposed to talk about it. If all
that wasn’t bad enough, the Nazis are back.”
In noir, the cause of ruin is not the crime
nor the character; it is society itself. Thus, the
world depicted by noir finds new ways to mirror
our 21st-century reality. Characters are hopeless,
the settings are gloomy and the themes, dismal.
And so, it’s no surprise that writers — and read-
ers — are turning to the new noir. As Smith
puts it, it’s hard to remember a time “when
we’ve been so desperately divided, or a time that
we acted so viscerally and literally truculent;
and that makes for a noir world.”
But noir is not without its critics.
Traditionally, the genre was male-dominated and
misogynistic, with women serving as little more
than objects or side characters. Does the new noir
represent a return to old clichés? Are these pri-
marily texts in which failed white men flex their
muscles in mirrors reflecting back their sallow
faces, empty bottles, and defeated womenfolk?
“In older noir stories, women characters
usually fall into three categories: the Femme
Fatale, the Damsel in Distress and the Dead
Body. I have definitely noticed an attempt in
contemporary noir to address these inequalities
and make female characters, even if they’re not
the protagonists, more well-rounded and more
essential to the plot,” says first-time noir
author, Toronto’s A.G. Pasquella. In 2016, for-
mer Broken Pencil fiction editor Pasquella and
Terri Favro edited PAC’N HEAT: A Noir Homage
to Ms. Pac-Man. The book consisted of submis-
sions from writers that approached Ms. Pac-
Man as a noir protagonist.
Noir author and enthusiast Lisa de
Nikolits also discusses potential mutations of
the genre. Last year, she ran Sixteen Shades of

FEATURE
Noir, a series that attempted to highlight noir’s bleed into other genres. The columns
included noir subgenres ranging from revenge noir, Catholic noir, graphic noir, and
even comedic noir.
“I was trying to demonstrate that aspects of noir are being used in brilliant ways
in all kinds of fiction in order to add more to the stories, to layer the characters not
only in darkness or satire or comedy, but in noir, that almost-elusive, most elegant time
bomb of destruction,” de Nikolits says.
The rise of modern noir has also meant the arrival of what might soon qualify as
newly important subgenres, if they don’t already — Indigenous noir, Black noir, queer
noir are all appearing both in the small press and indie arts communities.
In 2017, a team of Indigenous female developers based out of Hamilton, Ontario,
created a noir video game. The company, Achimostawinan Games, produced Purity &
Decay, a detective game that not only confronts the male-dominated game industry,
but also the testosterone-burdened world of noir. Billed as a “visual cyber-noir novel”
the game asks, “Who killed Merriam LaPensee?” Even as that question drives the plot
forward, Purity & Decay also contemplates another, deeper, inquiry: What does an
Indigenous future look like seven generations from now?
Noir graphic novels and comics have also been subverting the traditionally white
genre. Incognegro, written by Mat Johnson and illustrated by Warren Pleece, was orig-
inally published in 2008 and republished last year by Dark Horse Comics. It tells the
story of Zane Pinchback, an African-American writer in the 1920s. Pinchback passes
for white and reports on lynchings in the Deep South. Another book, set in the time
of the Harlem Renaissance, is in the works.
Likewise, 2016 gave us Black Mumba, an anthology short stories set in Mumbai
self-published by graphic novelist Ram Venkatesan. It’s crime noir but, as the online
promo text explains, “there are no real criminals in Black Mumba. The city itself is the
quarry and the bleak, weird and yet magical nature of life on its streets is at the heart
of the stories.”
Perhaps that’s the key to noir’s resurgent appeal, especially in the small press and
indie arts world. There are no criminals per se, no heroes and, ultimately, no winners.
It’s a genre released from the expectations of success and striving, a genre devoid of
morality, a nihilist comment on how power and politics fail us. In a sense, noir is a
genre that tricks readers into exploring sensitive topics like poverty, addiction, corrup-
tion, and gentrification that they may otherwise shy away from.
Says SG Wong, “The exploration happens, as with any meaningful literature, when
the reader is drawn into the characters’ conundrums and moral ambiguities. Real life is
far from straightforward. When noir best explores these topics, I think it’s using the grit
and darkness of its tropes to build a mirror that transforms into a magnifying glass.” Or,
as Sam Wiebe puts it, “Bad shit happening to people much like ourselves. It’s about the
dark things we instinctively know, but choose to ignore — until they catch up with us.”
What comes next for the noir indie culture resurgence is up to this generation of
writers and the presses that work with them. Lisa de Nikolits sees the ongoing return
of classic noir spilling into every possible genre. Vancouver’s Belshaw is more pessimis-
tic. He’s concerned that we might soon reach peak noir, and come to see noir as an
empty marketing term.
“About eight years ago, Diane Purvey and I coined the phrase ‘noir Vancouver’.
Now I hear people using that term as though it’s a pair of well-worn shoes. I’d be happier
about that if noir-scale slipperiness wasn’t back in style,” Belshaw says.
Whatever shape noir takes in the future, it seems that a genre bathing in pathos,
deception, gloom, and hopelessness is quickly becoming a favourite in a supposedly
peaceful country of bucolic countryside and well organized, low crime cities. This kind
of stark incongruity makes it clear that society is looking for some sort of response to
a looming disarray many sense but cannot quite articulate. The new noir gives us a
momentarily safe way to consider the late capitalist chaos — coming for some, already
arrived for others. bp

FEATURE
Excerpt from
THE BODY ON
MOUNT ROYAL by David Montrose
Originally published in 1953. Republished in the Véhicule Press Ricochet series edited by Brian Busby.
THE TRAFALGAR. For me, pretty boy. He had a lean and spare face semi-circular MacArnold. He was laid out
it’s as much a part of Montreal as the great with a strong jutting jaw and narrow, neatly, following the contour of the furni-
electric cross atop Mount Royal. It’s a little straight nose. His pale blue eyes were ture, like a tired sickle lying on a shelf. He
Sherbrooke Street hotel with a small, dark wideset under light brows, and his skin was snoring.
bar. All the waiters have worked in the bar was mottled with freckles. He had a small MacArnold, the prize of the morning
at least fifteen years, and they all know me white scar in his upper lip and another Clarion, was a man who always wore a tweed
well enough to call me by name. Not that above one eye, not disfiguring marks but jacket which never matched the tweed pants
I’m a bar-snob, but it’s nice to know that enough to suggest he might be a very he always wore. He claimed it was impossi-
if you take one over the nine you’ll be put competent barroom fighter if aroused. ble to keep a press in these tweeds, and his
to bed in a room upstairs, not in the gut- I guess I stared at him a little too appearance gave no reason to doubt his
ter with a curbstone for a pillow. long, because he grinned a rather sheepish word. MacArnold was a black Scotsman,
I came to the Trafalgar and walked grin and said, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m that with skin so thick and heavily pigmented
into the bar, and I was too late. There were Jimmy Montgomery.” doctors always thought him anaemic, and
three youngish women resting their feet “What Jimmy Montgomery?” jet hair, smooth and a bit thin on his wide
after buying out Holt Renfrew, cooling “I found a body on top of Mount skull. He had heavy lips that might be called
their tongues with creme-de-menthe Royal this morning. I thought maybe sensuous unless you knew the thing they
frappes. There were several parties of two you’d read it in the papers.” most loved to touch was the rim of a glass.
or three men. There was one tired young “Oh, sure,” I grinned back. “I remem- I shook his bony shoulder. “Hey,
businessman, sitting alone, watching me as ber. What I liked best was it didn’t spoil wake up!”
I came in. But there was no MacArnold. your breakfast.” No response. Bob, the waiter, was
Bob, the youngest and shortest of the “The hell it didn’t.” circling around with an expression half
waiters, padded up to me. “Afternoon, Mr. “That’s what the paper said.” between amusement and disapproval.
Teed,” he said. “Reporters have to say something.” “Get me a tall glass of ice water, Bob,” I
“I was supposed to meet Allan He shrugged. “Like that story about me said grimly.
MacArnold here,” I told him. taking a walk on the mountain every MacArnold opened one eye wide.
Bob started to say, “Mr. MacArnold morning. Hell, I’d been out on an all-night “No, you don’t,” he muttered. He dropped
is—” But the tired young man had hoisted toot and walked home across the moun- his lank legs to the floor and stretched his
himself to his feet, and interrupted. tain to sober up. I didn’t want them to convex spinal column back to concave. He
“MacArnold’s over here,” he said. “He print that, so I told them to use their looked at me balefully. He said, “And I
got a little tired and he’s resting. I’m Jimmy imagination.” asked you here to do you a favor.”
Montgomery. We were waiting for you.” “I think I’m going to like you,” I said “And I’m doing you a favor,” I pointed
A tired young businessman, I’d called candidly. “Tell me, where’s MacArnold?” out. “I’m getting worried about you. I
him. He was slim, wiry, three inches Montgomery pointed. There was a think I’ll read you the lesson right now.”
shorter than my own six feet, and I’d say semi-circular sofa beside the chair he’d Montgomery was either a sensitive
about 35 years old. His hair was wiry as he been sitting in. It was a substantial, high- type, or he felt a bit responsible for getting
was, strong sandy hair that oscillated back backed affair and I had to walk right up to MacArnold drunk so early in the day. He
over his skull in a series of perfectly uni- it to see that there was anyone in it. colored slightly and edged off on a stroll
form waves. But I don’t mean he was a In the semi-circular sofa was a that took him to the men’s room. bp

FEATURE
by Anisa Rawhani
Interview with Hope Amico of Gutwrench Press
Letterpress printer based out of New Orleans, Louisiana
I MET HOPE AMICO this Bible. Letterpress printing is a kind of making something beautiful in the most
past June at a massive librarians’ confer- relief printing — there is some kind of affordable, accessible way possible. You
ence (the ALA) in New Orleans. We were image and the ink is rolled across the top can still photocopy the insides and create
tabling in the Zine Pavilion — me for — a stamp is relief printing! So are wood a printed cover
Broken Pencil and Hope for Gutwrench cuts and linoleum.
Press, which she founded in 2008. I remember during your talk at the
Gutwrench Press produces zines, What’s your process? Zine Pavilion you told this story
hand-bound books and, my personal I rely mostly on computer images and text about a snafu with a printer and an
favourite, the Keep Writing Project, a that I manipulate, and then order a hard airport. What happened?
monthly interactive postcard subscription polymer plate to be made of my design In 2012, I studied abroad for six months,
(I’m two months in and loving it). from a company in California called but I did not want to abandon the Keep
Hope started the Keep Writing Crown Flexo. Then I print using the plate. Writing Project. I bought a gocco printer
Project “as a way to keep in touch with — a Japanese all-in-one printer that works
friends and penpals that grew to a sub- What other techniques do you use? kind of like silkscreen and kind of like a
scriber list of 200, from many states and I’ve also used a risograph machine — stamp. The screens can be exposed with a
countries.” Each month, she collaborates which is like a copier crossed with a silk- flashbulb, from an image drawn in
with an artist to design a letterpress card screen. Screens are burned in the copier, sharpie. Very low-tech and self-contained.
comprised of two detachable postcards: which allow toner through that corre- I figured each month I could draw one
one is a letterpress print you keep, the sec- sponds to your image. Riso printing can screen and print the postcards I needed.
ond poses a thought-provoking prompt be done in a variety of colours, though When I got to the New Orleans air-
Subscribers respond to the prompt each generally one colour at a time. port I checked two bags and carried on my
month and mail the second postcard back bag with the printer. It had everything I
to Hope to exhibit. She just finished pre- What’s your advice to zinesters needed to print — very flammable oil-
paring her 112th postcard, and the proj- who want to branch out from, say, based ink, flash bulbs and batteries. When
ect’s 10-year anniversary is around the cut-and-paste techniques? I got to security, I quickly realized the error
corner. It’s clear Hope’s been around the Be intentional with your print choices. of my ways: I was bringing something
(printing) block. So, I asked her to share Use the medium that is suited to what you explosive onto a plane! They swiped every-
some of the basics to catch me up. want to accomplish and is reasonably thing I had, and asked me a million ques-
affordable! tions. I am lucky and they let me go, and I
What exactly is letterpress printing? I definitely think there is a place for barely caught my plane. bp
Traditionally that means using moveable printing in zine-making. There are low-
type to set every letter of your text, just tech ways of silkscreening using stencils. gutwrenchpress.com/subscribe
like Gutenberg did for the first printed What I’ve loved about zine culture is keepwritingpostcards.tumblr.com

FOLIO: RE/MIXING MEDIA
In each issue, Broken Pencil asks an artist to curate Folio — a section highlighting creators working in unexpected media and materials.
This edition is curated by Whess Harman.
Whess Harman’s ongoing series of work, Potlatch Punk, uses contemporary beadworking to engage with conversations about urban
Indigenous identities and visibility — as well as to refute expected representations and colonial measures of authenticity. The jackets
blend together DIY approaches and traditional materials. In this manifestation, they explore and pay homage to the wealth of
dedication, time and love required in the tradition of beadwork. This patient richness runs so contrary to modern fast and easily
reproducible fashion. Each jacket is approached as a method of continual adaptation and portraiture. It is as much about the creation
of each work as it is about the time spent with it, in a spirit of humble and engaged study, without the pursuit of perfection.


Whess Harman is a mixed

race, trans/non-binary/2SQ
artist from the Carrier Wit’at
Nation. They currently live
and create as an uninvited
but grateful guest on the
ancestral territories of the
Squamish, Musqueam and
Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

ZINE REVIEWS
ZINES
growing up, and hanging with their father is evocative enough to create tone, pres-
on weekends. Are You My Home? is a mem- ence, and meaning. It’s a relatable story,
oir (sort of), but it’s also a series of ques- and one shared bravely. (Cam Gordon)
tions and statements. Displacement and
restlessness are central themes as Jackson
uses words mushed up with some great
drawings and collages to tell her tale. The
tone is not especially sad. Instead, there
are tinges of confusion, uncertainty, and
realizations about her personal reality. In
that sense, you could argue this is a some-
Are You My Home? thing of a coming-of-age story. She
Zine, Rachel Jackson, 16 pgs, touches on university and wanting to
[email protected] ditch campus, permanently or semi-per-
manently. Friendship also comes up a few Boston Review
There are houses and there are homes. times and, more than anything, it would Zine, JM Francheteau, 14 pgs,
There are also RVs, cabins, rooms above seem that Jackson is looking for a place to @franchetoast
motorcycle shops and friends’ basements. be, paired with people who need or want
These are a few of the places where Rachel something similar. Rachel shares plenty This Boston Review is definitely not the
Jackson and her siblings spent time in a few short pages and the artwork alone quarterly literary and political journal that
EXCERPT
FROM Are You My Home? BY Rachel Jackson

ZINE REVIEWS
has been published since 1975. It is a Francheteau’s late arrival to the reading,
poetic, dejected, infatuated letter by JM or that hardly anyone was there, or that
Francheteau (of the zine Night Shift and the parking ticket capped off all the dis-
many other titles), written to the city her- appointment, but I’m reminded of my
self after what sounds like a bummer stop own most memorable touring bust. It
on a reading tour. was a portentous van breakdown in
In a quarter-size zine with text Marion, Indiana, sending the band and
blocks cut and pasted onto images of the I home, tails betwixt legs, tour can-
author and company in and around celled, and deep wounds to tend. It is
Boston, Francheteau lays it out. His not easy for the travelling artist to drag
words are frustrated, but funny, and themselves into a town, offer their soul,
unpretentious as far as poetry goes. He and have the city and circumstance pay
frames Boston as a “half-listening bar- no heed. But that’s essentially the gig we Get Off
tender.” Having come expectantly for sign up for. Francheteau’s poetic purge Zine, Alexandra Mae Jones,
t h e p o e t r y r e a d i n g , Fr a n c h e t e a u of unrequited loose ends is something thevologgingnook.tumblr.com
explains what he’s witnessed: clean far more productive than I was able to
streets, newsletters with racist editori- conjure from my experience. (Joshua Alexandra Mae Jones’ zine chronicles the
als, and a $75 parking ticket, but little by Barton) frustrations and fears of first learning how
way of reciprocation from the fair to masturbate as a person with a vagina.
C r a d l e o f L i b e r t y . P e r h a p s i t ’s With brothers and boys around her who
EXCERPT
FROM The Hamilton Sub Register BY Ben Needham AND Tara Bursey
reviewed on page 31

ZINE REVIEWS
tout their ability to “get off” so frequently reviews don’t actually say much about the hand-illustrated zines on Etsy under the
that one of their arms is stronger than the food, rather about the experience: “I’ve moniker Outasight Zine.
other, she continues to try. Yet, she only eaten at Buddy’s, but have no memory of Re-growing processes are illus-
finds herself steeped in a gross, unresolved the quality of subs, probably due to the fran- trated for avocadoes, green onions, let-
feeling. Get Off is illustrated with a collage tic state of mind I was in trying to navigate tuce, cabbage, bok choy, and more. It is
of images of hands and human figures, this hell-hole pocket of the city by bicycle.” a small but mightily resourceful zine for
adding a dreamy and quick element that This is all very my style. As a loyal anyone interested in reducing food
invites readers to breeze through her diasporic Philadelphian, I am a champion waste. (Joshua Barton)
short paragraphs about masturbation. of the hoagie and cheesesteak, but also
This zine offers an honest and succinct endlessly curious to try new sandwiches
story about one process of growing up in new places. I also am the kind of guy
that not all experience, suggesting that who writes sub reviews about a place even
perhaps, with more attempts, something if I can’t really remember what the sub
will eventually work. (Richelle Charkot) was like. The writing is funny, the whole
thing is tongue in cheek, and Tara Bursey’s
drawings just sweeten the deal.
If you enjoyed the 1996 PBS special
Sandwiches You Will Like, think reviews
are good for a goof, or have a heart made
of ham and cappicola, this zine is for you.
(Jonathan Valelly) Iambic Marrow #1 and #2,
Perzines, Marin Doyle, 28 pgs and 20 pgs,
etsy.com/shop/marinboyle
I picked up lots of awesome zines at the

Hamilton Zineposium this year, but these
The Hamilton ones stood out. As soon as I saw Marin
Sub Register Doyle’s table, I was excited about their
Zine, Ben Needham and Tara Bursey, work, since I’m such a sucker for perzines
16 pgs, [email protected] and political zines, especially with a queer
twist. As they put it in their bio, Doyle is a
Have you ever read a zine and just a few nonbinary, queer and disabled artist who
pages in had the feeling that the creator published their first zine in 2015 and has
really, truly, deeply understood something “been writing their fingers to the bone ever
about you? That you unexpectedly shared How to Grow Your Own since.” I, for one, am so glad that’s the case.
some crucial experience, opinion, or pas- Plants from Veggie Scraps Each issue of Iambic Marrow starts with
sion with a stranger? It’s happened to me Zine, 8 pgs, @outasightzine, a short timeline or list of accomplishments
a few times, normally with people writing etsy.com/shop/OutaSightZine and events from the year (2016 and 2017) —
about the stuff that has been so key to my going back to school, getting collared by
life, such as queerness, anarchism, survi- Folks on the lookout for DIY waste-not- their partner, getting into therapy, stuff like
vor justice, etc. But this time it happened want-not tips are in for a treat — and that that. But their accessible, classic perzine
with something so near and dear to my treat is a vegetable! How to Grow Your Own style writing brings these events to life.
heart that it might actually be what my Plants from Veggie Scraps shows you how to Doyle shares short essays about topics
heart is made of: sandwiches. do exactly what the title says. You don’t have such as Tourette’s Syndrome, about being
Author (critic?) Ben Needham’s zine to compost those green onion nubs or toss a sex worker and the way people treat sex
begins with an anecdote decrying the sad that avocado pit. Make new food with them! workers, and about how fucked up social
lack of tolerable hoagies (subs, grinders, This folded, one-sheet, eight-page zine assistance and disability support bureau-
whatever) in his hometown of Toronto. is abundantly clear in its colour illustrations cracies can be. While some of their other
Hamilton, it would seem, has sandwich and concise in its guidance, impressively so zines are more specific to issues, these are
options that can actually rival their for how compact it is. Illustrated and writ- a mix of diary entries and musings and calls
American counterparts, and the rest of the ten by hand on notebook paper, the pages to action, punctuated by bits of art. Their
zine is dedicated to breaking down the have been scanned and resized to fit the writing is strong and accessible throughout
smattering of options in the city. Classic one-sheet, eight-page form. the works and gets more confident and
heavy hitter Bonanza sets it off, though It is by an unnamed creator who purposeful in the second issue. This is what
Andy’s and Duarte hold their own. Some sells similarly handwritten and perzines are for! (Jonathan Valelly)

ZINE REVIEWS
oldschool feeling I enjoy and, beyond the it is impressive just how much they fit
NoBunny interview, so much of this zine in this small zine. If a piece doesn’t land
is a throwback: female wrestling, Beavis for you, there’s another one right after
& Butt-Head, pizza, hillbilly music, can- that is probably worth your time. The
nibals, and a whole bunch of other weird National Teen Set Outsider is insolent
crap. I used to know this zine as the enough for you rebels (“The lay teachers
Rochester Teen Set Outsider, but they’ve were drippy hippie folk mass freaks, who
clearly gotten too big for their britches helped drive most of my generation
and are now mass communicating the towards the dark and harsher sounds
big topics: like diabolical clowns, the and themes of the metal”), heartfelt
National Teen Set occult, comic artist Al Jaffee, a back- enough for you punks (“It’s easy to lose
Outsider # 35 handed obit for Billy Graham, and your way in the endless days of misery
Fanzine, edited by Will Carroll, enough immature jokes to make your and bullshit”), and funny enough (“the
32 Edmonds St. #1, Rochester, NY, 14607 subway or waiting room experience a bit fucking zoo animals escape after drink-
more bearable. ing water with PCP in it”) to hopefully
Rochester cut-and-paste punks are back I am always jealous of zine editors make you put down your phone for just
with Issue 35 of this very approachable, that can corral this many weirdos a second.
occasionally goofy, quarter-sized gem. together and produce something that I kind of want to write for them.
The National Teen Set Outsider has an holds up well as an organic whole. And (Chris Landry)
EXCERPT
FROM How to Grow Your Own Plants from Veggie Scraps BY Outasight
reviewed on page 31

ZINE REVIEWS
reconnecting with her Indigeneity has interview with Matt Hern, a BC activist
helped her embrace her own sluttiness, whose name I’ve occasionally seen in
non-monogamy, and confidence as a sex- the AK Press catalogue, was super
ual being in the world. It’s a complex, but insightful. It gave me lots to chew on
ultimately hopeful narrative that reso- about the way the myth of the troubled
nated with me as someone who has expe- “inner-city” doesn’t hold up in the age
rienced sexual assault and negotiated of violent, rapid gentrification. Hern
non-monogamy and promiscuity through urges us to look to and learn from the
that lens. communities on the periphery of our
This an excellent zine, building on urban centres. “The suburbanization of
the work of other brave perzinesters like poverty and racialization of the suburbs
Clementine Morrigan (who is promi- is happening in cities across North
nently thanked) and others. (Jonathan America, both with incredible speed and
On Being a Fucking Slut Valelly) also kind of stealthily.” Hern works
Zine, Anonymous, 36 pgs, super hard to defer to the expertise of
lookmumzinedistro.blogspot.com the communities themselves and, of
course, it’s a little awkward reading this
I picked up this beauty at the Hamilton interview with some white dude about
Zineposium, where it was being distrod how to go work in Black and Brown
by the fabulous Look Mum! Distro. The communities. But he knows that it’s
zine is impossible to miss, not only for its awkward, and I enjoyed reading how he
provocative title (and subtitle: A Femme attempts to work through that.
Perspective on Surviving Rape & Getting The next interview is again some-
Laid) and sensual cover image of an ass thing completely different. It’s an inter-
having its panties pulled down. The let- view with Karmin, who went on a
tering and image are also done in a shiny seven-month sea voyage with her
copper foil that shines at the reader or estranged dad. It’s pretty wacky. Not only
browsing zine fair customer defiantly and does she have to reconnect with her pops
glamorously. Shoes Fanzine #8 and negotiate complex emotional
There are so many important and Zine, Nate, 72 pgs, $3 (free to prisoners), dynamics, they run out of gas in the mid-
wonderful perzines and resource zines [email protected] dle of a lightning storm and visit Easter
out there about sexual assault, consent, Island, among other episodes. Following
survivor narratives and tips, and sex pos- I’m a sucker for a good old punk political that is a straightforward punk scene
itivity. Each one of these is unique and zine. The first zines I encountered were interview with Shellshag. A bit of inside
useful in its own way, and I salute the anarchist tracts and manifestos, and I’m baseball, but still a fun read.
brave writers who share these stories with still drawn to any zine that I think might Last up, and I guess I would have
the world to empower themselves and be instructive for my own politics and seen this coming if I had bothered to
others. That said, I’ve personally read so activism. I’m much more likely to read an read the table of contents… there’s an
many of them that I sometimes get desen- activist interview, essay of social com- inter view with zine legend Aaron
sitized to the powerful charge and intense mentary or breakdown of some heady Cometbus! Whoa! Apparently, the
vulnerability of the genre. This zine shook theory if it’s in print form and handed to author met him in New York years ago
me out of that. me then if you send me yet another and they stayed friends. The interview
The anonymous author writes hyperlink over email. The blogosphere, is cool because it uses the same inter-
unsparingly about her experiences of the Facebook hot-take machine, the view questions from the first interview
rape, domestic violence, and abusive rela- unreadable design of RiseUp — I’ll take a they did 18 years previous, and you get
tionships, detailing the unique dynamics good old zine any day. to read both the old and new answers
of different situations. I found the author’s So, when Shoes Fanzine #8 came in and see how they’ve changed. I’m not
ability to honestly discuss how she felt at the mail and the very first piece was gonna give much away, but I wouldn’t
the time of different incidents — con- about a teenage punk organizing a chap- blame you if you skip to the end of the
fused, culpable, trapped — and tell the ter of Anti-Racist Action in ’90s Sarnia, zine for this one.
story of how she came to identify abusive Ontario, I knew this would be up my I don’t know this Nate fellow or why
situations after the fact. Most impor- alley. This issue’s theme is interviews I haven’t read Shoes Fanzine before, but
tantly, she walks us through how her old and new. That particular interview holy crap, this was a good, solid, classic
ongoing healing and learning through real was from 2006, but is followed by a few zinester’s zine. I had a blast. (Jonathan
friendships and community and m o re re c e nt o n e s . T h e e x t e n d e d Valelly)

ZINE REVIEWS
looks unmistakably illegal. Francheteau missing some background detail. All art
provides a map and a list of locations and imagery in the zine comes from
where the rusted remains of these art- Rocky Dobey’s art, but the dull grays of
works have survived over the years, the photocopier did not do justice to the
most of which are in Toronto’s down- brash texture of the original images.
town west end. Dobey remains a reluc- Still, I was glad I got to check this out
tant subject, shying away from elaborat- and look forward to reading more from
ing on his work. Francheteau. (Chris Landry)
I found the tone of Souvenir a little
formal at times, and my copy was missing Check out a review of Souvenir Issue #1 on
at least one page, so I am probably page 47 in the Lit Zine section.
Souvenir #2
Zine, JM Francheteau, Issue 2, EXCERPT
Twitter: @franchetoast
FROM National Teen Set Outsider EDITED BY Will Carroll
“For a festival worker, nightfall smells
like trash” opens one of two essays in this
zine, followed by a methodical, well-rea-
soned, and first-hand account of the the
disconnect between message and reality
when it comes to the environmental
i m p a c t o f o u t d o o r fe s t i v a l s . J M
Francheteau made Souvenir at the
Toronto Zine Library during a “zine off”
and while presumably it was hastily
pulled together at an event, it has a thor-
oughness readers will appreciate. I
learned a bunch from Francheteau’s
experiences and thoughts, which are
a u t h o r i t a t i v e l y b a c ke d u p w i t h
footnotes.
But where the zine really shines is
the opening piece on Toronto street art-
ist Rocky Dobey. Culled from back-
ground reading, an interview, and face-
to-face appreciation of the work itself,
Francheteau details the four-decades
long career of its socially engaged street
artist whose works often stand as trib-
utes to the marginalized or departed.
Dobey’s works are not the product of
wheat paste or spray paint, but rather
highly detailed metal, wax, intaglio
prints, and etched copper plates. The
black-and-white format of the zine
doesn’t do these works justice, so I
found photos of his work in a 2008 issue
of Fuse Magazine, which included colour
reproductions of Dobey’s installations
in support of the Tyendinaga Mohawk
titled 200 Years of Land Struggles. The
texture of the text, embossed or in
relief, carrying a certain gravitas, but
have the hand-forged imprecision that reviewed on page 32

ZINE REVIEWS
involuntary servitude, except as a pun- a surprisingly vibrant zine publishing

ishment for crime whereof the party culture. I’ve read prison zines before but
shall have been duly convicted, shall never one so timely.
exist within the United States,” and it is The VENT, in reference to the air
one of the social obscenities of our vent in a prison cell, is the platform that
time. It’s hard to wrap your head around delivers poetry, rap, and political com-
the fact that a country that comprises mentary to a rapt, incarcerated audience
4.4% of the world’s population houses every night, reverberated through an air
around 22% of the world’s prisoners. duct. The zine strikes a jubilant tone at
Technically most prisoners are the outset, “no busters allowed clause in
guaranteed the right to access some full effect” but the subject matter is harsh,
level of educational programming. the delivery is colourful, and the level of
The VENT 2.0 Despite institutional resistance towards enthusiasm is through the roof. Most of
Zine, Edited by Piankhi Squabblez, actually making that access a reality (as the material in The VENT takes the form
ACB Zine Distro, PO Box 721, Homewood, IL, the recent prison strike indicates, they’d of written raps that range from dense
60430, USA, betweenthebars.org much rather enlist prisoners in labour metaphysical agitprop to more straight-
that pays them mere pennies), super forward gangsta rap with Onyx-level
The 13th Amendment to the US resilient writers, artists, and activists bloodlust. So much of it speaks directly to
Constitution says “Neither slavery nor on the inside have been able to sustain our time.
EXCERPT
FROM The VENT 2.0 EDITED BY Piankhi Squabblez

ZINE REVIEWS
On Black Jewelz, B.G. (Demetrius

Howard) brings Chuck D or Paris to mind
COMICS AND ART ZINES
with his dense verse, “howcan [sic] I not
cry after what I saw on world news, up into a neat little pocket zine that you
couldn’t even hide or deny a world of hate can take anywhere. The content of 279:
and war against us, where our place less cute. Alecia Gatlin is the creator,
beyond the basketball court or football and she’s engaging in some real talk.
field, entertaining you.” My inner rap dad You kind of just need to read it, but she
was duly head nodding. writes about her confusion, her emo-
There’s a pretty strong macho vibe tions and her general brain activity on
that runs through the whole thing. the whole. This zine feels a bit like a
Affectionate line drawings give a face to thought exercise, and Alecia should be
the written verses. The VENT touts its commended for being brave and spit-
“grimey consciousness,” and this issue 279 ting it out on paper. Of course, for all of
includes references to police slayings, the Art zine, Alecia Gatlin, 8 pgs, its complexity, it’s not uncomfortable to
undermining of DACA, and other mani- AleciaGatlin.com read. It’s actually pretty universal. Some
festations of systematic discrimination, might file this under “random existen-
all the while managing to be harsh, Firstly, the format of 279 is super foldy tial musings,” but I found it to be more
heartbreaking, and joyful all at once. and very cute. It’s borderline origami. than that. There are some interesting
(Chris Landry) Printed on legal size white bond, it folds drawings and sketches in this zine that,
EXCERPT
FROM 279 BY Alecia Gatlin

ZINE REVIEWS
I think, are perhaps the star attractions. And that’s just what’s on front and back
The words support, but the imagery covers! Blake Lewis is a photographer
essentially sets the pace and the words based in London, UK, and Hey! You! is his
layer on top in a “yup, we’re fucked” first zine, a collected work steeped in inti-
kind of fashion. macy and some ickiness (the good kind).
The zine also has some valuable Lewis captures a wide range of everyday
thoughts on friendship and inclusivity scenarios here. There are a lot of street
that seem to have been written by a young scene and images of people mid-activity.
person, but are likely of most value to an It’s more grime than glamour but then
old or semi-old person. The cover is red again, this is photo realism in the abso-
and has a vague 1970s-ish look and feel to lutely most literal sense.
it. That’s not a statement on content but Hey! You! One of the most appealing aspects
more on the zine’s playful aesthetics. Zine, Blake Lewis, $5 plus postage, of this collection is the complete absence
(Cam Gordon) 24 pgs, [email protected] of pretense. Lewis isn’t trying to portray
anybody or anything “living their best
A menacing point. Some shadows. life” or whatever jargony rubbish ideal-
Blurriness. Confinement. Confusion... ists and semi-bummed 40-somethings
EXCERPT
FROM Hey! You! BY Blake Lewis

ZINE REVIEWS
are using in their Instagram copy these better for the experience. Again, this is monsters can provide a boost of any-
days. Instead, we get actual snapshots of 101 stuff but it’s also delightful stuff. thing, why not put them to the task?
humdrum life. People smoking, playing Affirmation of anything can be hard to They’re just oozing and wallowing oth-
guitars, relieving themselves on street come by these days, so if hopeful lil’ erwise. (Cam Gordon)
corners, or being dead in a graveyard
(spoiler alert). The zine is also darn cool,
because to some this could have just
EXCERPT
been a Tumblr page, but Lewis chose to
print everything instead. Provocative
FROM Even Monsters Are Growing BY Roy Luo
choice. (Cam Gordon)
Even Monsters Are

Growing
Art zine, Roy Luo, 20 pgs,
Instagram: @RoyLuoArt
A wee bit of “I’m OK. You’re OK” rheto-

ric can apparently work wonders if
you’re a monster trying to find its way
in this crazy, mixed-up world. Or com-
pletely unreality. Either/or. Even
Monsters Are Growing addresses real
issues for fake creatures. One could sur-
mise self-doubt and emotional turmoil
is rampant with these cute critters, as
artist Roy Luo’s focus is on monsters
that are gloomy and glum. It’s super sad.
However, transposed with the sorrow is
uplifting platitude that are a bit meme-
ish in a fairly positive fashion. Short
thoughts like “It’s natural to be scared,”
are smushed together with monster
doodles, giving this zine the feeling of a
collection of graffiti or quick etchings
on the wall of a high school cafeteria.
It’s clean and simple. Luo does well not
to overcomplicate things and the pack-
age is a brisk look-and-read that’ll take
mere minutes, if not seconds, to get
through. You could probably jump in
anywhere, ogle a few monsters, absorb
a bit of positivity and leave feeling

ZINE REVIEWS
photos of actual small-scale wrestling singular lesson in unique zine design and
leagues, the square-jawed Mattick rages and construction. (Joshua Barton)
prevails against his opponents, bedecked in
punk rock black and cool-ass tattoos.
Honestly, I have zero interest in wres-
tling, but this zine is remarkable as an arti-
fact. It is z-folded with cardstock covers
printed in two-tone colouring, with its
interior pages in black and white. Going
from front to back, the zine is read in two
parts, the first beginning with a tipped-in
Industry Standard #3 photo of Mattick printed on transparency,
Photo zine, Trevor Clement, 66 pgs, and the second with a full-colour photo of
[email protected], Mattick (and manager?) ringside. There is
trevorclement.com, $10 PPD to USA, no narrative, only the images of Mattick
$12 PPD to Canada (USD) crushing it. In terms of weight, it is a hefty Just Encased
zine, clearly a labour-intensive creation. Art zine, Danielle Susi, @daniellesusi, $7
Mattick is the star of this third issue of If you like seeing two dudes (pretend
Trevor Clement’s wrestling photo zine, to) beat the shit out of each other, come “I know my origins may be a little ques-
Industry Standard. In what looks to be for the wrestling, but then stay for the tionable,” a pleasant anthropomorphized
EXCERPT
FROM Industry Standard BY Trevor Clement

ZINE REVIEWS
hot dog says, “but I wanted to take some the other individual, touching on the realization of differences in real time, a
time to tell you about myself.” Danielle death of a friendship, and who may friendship that, though fun in the begin-
Susi’s short zine shows a cute little hot really be to blame. ning, can become exhausting.
dog with arms and legs, illustrated by Julia Barata’s section examines a Powerpaola and Willwin Yang explore
Siobhán Gallagher, explaining how it friendship where the cause of death is feelings of being used, and the need to
came to be as a “tubed” and tough amal- unknown. 20 years later, social media admit to oneself that you’ve been made
gamation of different animals. It is an momentarily resurrects it, if only for a to act as a social currency or a distrac-
irreverent, yet meaningful allegory for all brief moment of fond remembrance and tion for those friendships that the other
the parts that make us whole, served up acknowledgment that what was there person has chosen to prioritize. AnnGee
as a very easy read. Simple, clean and to was good. Miun’s comic depicts a Neo’s comic closes out the anthology,
the point. (Richelle Charkot)
EXCERPT
FROM Just Encased BY Danielle Susi
The Ship’d Sailed:

Stories About Friendships
and Loss
Comic, edited by Amy Ng and Weng Pixin,
40 pgs, etsy.com/ca/shop/pikaland
Comprising stories from seven women

artists from around the world, The Ship’d
Sailed: Stories About Friendships and Loss
collects stories about specific friendships,
exploring what happened that led to its
end or withering.
The work here is deeply personal
and extremely relatable. Friendships can
be a fickle thing, and each of the artists
excel at exploring the different forms
that they may take, and the equally
unique ways through which they may
decline. In Amy Ng’s section, three sep-
arate instances of friendship hurdles are
presented, those awkward moments
where you’re not sure how to respond to
a social slight. I cringed and actively
began to feel anxious at one of Ng’s
pages, the comic depicting a moment
that I’m sure many know, and that they
hate to both experience and hear about.
Likewise, Weng Pixin’s section relates
the deterioration of a friendship, the
realization that one’s own investment in
a relationship may differ greatly from reviewed on page 39

ZINE REVIEWS
their story of a close friend who, after a not really a license for a plus-sized squid Better still, the action sequences scream
trip, became inexplicably distant. As to run amuck in the city, but I don’t off the page and even death and destruc-
with Ng’s section, I found this immedi- know, here we are! The zine itself looks tion is handled with grace. There’s zero
ately relatable (especially Neo’s wearing great. The artwork is top notch and feels dialogue, but that’s completely fine, as
only “black band tees”), and the visceral contemporary even though the subject these drawings, all of them, speak vol-
reaction the comic elicited made me matter is steeped in monster movie chic. umes. (Cam Gordon)
pause and think back on my own
friendships.
In terms of theme, The Ship’d Sailed EXCERPT
is perhaps one of the most relatable
FROM Squid-Gee BY Keenan Poloncsak
anthologies I’ve read in a while. Each work
is at times deeply personal and immedi-
ately relatable, with one being able to find
themselves, or people they know, in every
artist’s contribution. “When did being
friends become so hard?” Ng asks. Who
wouldn’t relate to that? (Graham
Sigurdson)
Squid-Gee
Comic, Keenan Poloncsak, 44 pgs,
pro-can.org
Kraken angst has plummeted in recent

centuries (I think). Nevertheless, there’s
still enough concern out there to fill one
more zine, the creepy and compelling
Squid-Gee. This wordless wonder was cre-
ated by Keenan Poloncsak, and depicts a
world overcome by a super squid doing
super scary shit. Mad tentacle action,
man. I’d love to know what the motiva-
tion was behind Squid-Gee. Most folks
have some symbolic (or possibly literal)
behemoth in their lives, only too happy
to fuck shit up and push over items and
whatnot. Here, there’s actually a bit of
science behind the story, or at least sci-
entific history. We won’t spoil it, but a
teaser: the story takes place in Montreal,
and Montreal millions of years ago was at
the bottom of a prehistoric season. That’s

ZINE REVIEWS
of the zine including an original drawing. ‘theme’ that binds together the work in
Lou’s comics have a strong sense of Statues, but this is not to its detriment.
motion. The wavy line of their figures’ Each comic stands alone, with the typi-
clothing giving a sense that nothing is cally short length of each letting them rely
really standing still. The characters billow on their own strengths. A single figure
out to fill the panels and pages, like an poses, two converse entirely in punctua-
elaborate haute-couture design, each one tion marks, a cowboy realizes the truth
unique and wholly unto themselves. The behind ‘riding into the sunset.’ The brevity
two-page spread at the centre of the zine of each piece only makes them stronger.
best exemplifies this, a vibrant border sur- There’s no real need to ‘breathe’ between
rounding two figures waltzing, their bod- each comic as one moves onto the next.
ies seeming to meld into one mass as they It’s a light read, but that’s not to say that
Statues flow into one another. In another comic it’s a weak one. There’s a palpable sense of
Comic, Eryn Lou, erynlou.com — a small, silent set of four-panels — a an artist exploring themselves and the
figure walks as their pants balloon up in ways they want their work to be seen. I’m
Statues collects a number of recent comics size, threatening to overtake them. excited for what’s next. (Graham
from Toronto’s Eryn Lou, with each copy There’s not really a sense of any Sigurdson)
EXCERPT
FROM Statues BY Eryn Lou

ZINE REVIEWS
comics by Stechschulte, with writing but things, an almost motionless comic that
Chen-su Huang. nonetheless feels drawn out and intense.
I’m not the biggest fan of comics on In the next, a park ranger gives a tour of
newsprint, mostly due to the difficulty in an Indigenous mound site, a series of
storing them and their unwieldiness. quiet vistas disrupted only by the wind,
However, when it’s done right, there’s which Stechschulte depicts almost as
nothing quite like it. Stechschulte expertly though it were tears in the page.
works with just the black of the ink and In the interior, Jennifer Chen-su
the greyed newsprint, his strong sense of Huang lists 115 memories that the sound
working with a limited colour palette, as of the wind evokes, a series of personal
Suite of 3 Broadsheets previously and masterfully seen in his recollections ranging from the minor to
Comic zine, Conor Stechschulte Generous Bosom series, conveying an array the deeply personal. In the final broad-
and Jennifer Chen-su Huang, of different moods. sheet, two friends have tea and discuss a
conorstechschulte.com, huangchensu.com In one comic, a woman rises from protest. The focus is on the hands — the
the water to tell the story of a park ranger. small actions of preparing tea or unpack-
Suite of 3 Broadsheets collects just that, The minor changes in movement and ing a bag overlaid by conversation. The
three works on broadsheet, comprising space convey a stillness and weight to hands go into a bag, pulling out the sign
EXCERPT
FROM Statues BY Eryn Lou

ZINE REVIEWS
one the friend brought to the protest, to something more, and the unfolding of collected, they’re all the stronger, the
the broadsheet’s interior, when opened, the broadsheets themselves as you read interplay of ideas and themes creating a
revealing the sign itself (and doubling as build towards a larger perspective. Much cohesive and stronger whole. (Graham
a poster): NO RACIST LEADERS. like a suite of music, the individual works Sigurdson)
All of these small moments amount here stand on their own, but when
EXCERPT
FROM This Was Then This Is Now BY Kira Buro
reviewed on page 45

ZINE REVIEWS
moment. Picking this up, it doesn’t seem

like a souvenir or tourist-oriented crap.
Rather, it seems like something you’d find
in an independent bookstore, organic
restaurants, or perhaps mentioned as part
of a CBC Radio segment about local
artists.
What also makes this work stand out
A Vancouver Alphabet is that it’s completely G-rated — any of
Art zine, April Milne, 32 pgs, the grit that makes Vancouver Vancouver
AprilMilne.com is conspicuously absent. So, while it may
be lacking something in terms of pure
This Was Then This work is whimsical. Very, very literal realism, it makes up for it by being some-
This Is Now too. For residents of Vancouver, you’re thing you can leave around the house and
Comic zine, Kira Buro, IG @kiraburo gonna see familiar sights matched up not be too concerned if toddlers start
against letters from the alphabet. This will ogling it. The fact it kinda looks like a
This Was Then This Is Now consists of nine include items from the natural world, colouring book helps too. It makes it feel
comics, the title of the collection serving areas, structures, creatures and more. In even more family-friendly, and yet not
to highlight the theme and motivation each instance, there’s a cute little illustra- overly twee. Feels like a slightly difficult
that runs throughout. In stark and flow- tion to prove the point. April Milne has a feat, but Milne somehow pulls it off in
ing black and white, Buro explores the great style and, visually, this is very of the style. (Cam Gordon)
intermingling of the past and the present,
how the thoughts, perspectives, and even EXCERPT
relationships from the past influence who
we may be in the present. Their line is FROM A Vancouver Alphabet BY April Milne
strong and varied, and passion permeates
the artwork. In these comics, Buro seems
to suggest that to reminisce is to not sim-
ply perform the act of remembering
something, it is a process of exploring
oneself, bringing into perspective how
we’ve arrived at our present moment,
leaving us to wonder where we may go
from here.
“I wonder if you know all the place
you’ve been simply because my thoughts
have taken you there with me,” Buro
writes in one comic, before concluding
with, “Today I threw my thoughts of you
down a mountainside … I didn’t under-
stand then. I don’t understand now.” The
past, it seems, it not something that needs
to be looked upon fondly and, in admit-
ting that, perhaps we can begin to move
forward.
At times, there is a sadness to the
comics here, but there is never hopeless-
ness. While the past may feel like it only
ever dominates the present, at the same
time, the past is just that — the past.
“This was Then This Is Now,” let the
present be something unto itself. Buro
understands this, and perhaps in reading
this collection, the reader will as well.
(Graham Sigurdson)

ZINE REVIEWS
LITZINES AND CHAPBOOKS

page one. “This is why I am not!” On the inventory of this counter-literature, under-
next page, the first poem opens with “I lining the means by which works like On
threw up on the sidewalk.” Dandyism by Baudelaire, or the manuscript
Bueckert’s situation doesn’t improve of Robert Serval in Perec’s 53 Days, works
much, as Friendly progresses: “When I hold that have not, in fact, been written, create a
fruit it rots,” she states. “No matter where Rubin’s vase in the literary realm. Siphoning
I’m going… I feel sick with lost chance but completed imaginary texts into the Lorem
what I’ve lost I have no idea.” We’re joining Ipsum publishing project, Noury writes by
Fake Bands her on a downward spiral as she unravels reading, as “to create out of one’s readings is
Zine, Isabella Laird, 14 pgs, her last few threads of optimism. paying off one’s debts.”
isabellalaird.wordpress.com Though it’s tempting to join The chapbook itself is beautifully
Bueckert in her apparent amusement at sewn together, jacketed with twice-ripped
Hit “Generate” enough times at bandnam- this state of affairs (“I’m sometimes pages from Virginia Woolf ’s To The
emaker.com and you’ll eventually get a attracted to the idea of eating an ash tray Lighthouse — ripped once out of the
usable band name: Wonderless Drunk, for breakfast”), she’s plainly illustrating book’s spine, and ripped second in half —
Screeching Deacon, Perverted Turnip of the toll that real mental illness can take, producing a resonance out of divided sen-
The Spun Maiden. (Why aren’t these taken?) whether it’s actually her own, or fictitious. tences: “She could see the words / rhyth-
Vancouver’s Isabella Laird took a The “I” in these poems can’t envision a mically in Cam’s mind, / after her how it
more thoughtful approach to the exercise. scenario in which anything might work was like a / garden, and there were little /
Fake Bands provides invented biographies out in their favour. opening and shutting, and…” Noury is, in
for five fictitious groups — one per decade Dig deeply enough into this melting content and form, re-imagining the liter-
from the 1970s to the present. The Queen’s pot of misery, and you’ll find an abun- ary canon. (Jenna McClelland)
Succubus (a 2010s heavy metal outfit) dance of dexterous metaphor and imag-
draws inspiration “from women and mag- ery. At her most memorable, Bueckert
ical creatures in European folklore.” Shrub writes in skin-crawling detail about others The Strong Badger
& Bush (a 1970s folk band) exclusively claiming ownership of her teeth: “I throw Chronicle
writes songs about plants and fungi. up again… I’ve had fingers shoved in my Litzine, edited by Brock Peters, 28 pgs,
Each bio is accompanied by a related mouth to get me to stop talking. They pet Volume 3, 679 Sargent Avenue,
illustration or logo, and while the band my molars. They say hello remember Winnipeg MB, R3E 0A7, $7 PPD.
histories are typically clever and amusing, me?... There is not enough ginger in the
it’s the artwork that stands out here. Laird world.” (Scott Bryson) These stories are strange enough to give
should consider a career in album cover the impression they’ve been going on for
design. (Scott Bryson) pages before you joined, even though
How I Didn’t Write you’re sure you started at the beginning.
Any of My Books That’s how The Strong Badger Chronicle
Chapbook, Aurélie Noury, No Press, 21 pgs, left me, just a little lost at the outset. It’s a
[email protected] slight Alice in Wonderland sensation
brought to you by the deliberately weird.
Noury’s essay is an ultra-violet light to the I appreciate the craft but I have trouble
literary canon’s invisible ink. How I Didn’t bending my mind to the frequency these
Write Any of My Books sharpens our focus short stories and poems are meant to be
on negative space, the work that “could enjoyed at. I think if I experienced them
not be written down on paper,” the empty being read aloud, with the full benefit of
bookshelf, the unfinished manuscript, the the vibe of the space it was created in,
pulse of life that remains in embryo, “fill- then I would get a better sense of it.
ing far more than pages, but entire lives.” The Strong Badger Coffeehouse is an
Friendly The labyrinth of books not written — arts space in the West End of Winnipeg
Poetry/photography zine, Emily Bueckert, both in the lives of fictitious characters and and this zine is published in limited run
34 pgs, emilybueckert.com, $5 “abstinent authors” — is an ensorcelling and written by the folks who frequent it.
concept, touching on what is intrinsic to the The photos are really stark, urban land-
Don’t fall for it; the title is a trick. “I wish artist: “a work is also everything that was scapes, and the hand stitching is a nice
I was friendly,” says Emily Bueckert on not.” Noury writes an almost encyclopedic touch. The stories and poems are lovingly

ZINE REVIEWS
typed on a turn of the century typewriter. Broodthaers’ work and folds it, shifting In the opener, “Real life,” we have
Based on this, I would like to check out the horizontal bars, he says, into “the hang some self-reflection in the form of con-
this space. and fold of sails on the mast… heaving ceptual gymnastics.
I’ll confess that most of these surreal beams and broken masts of a ship-wreck Francheteau performs exploratory
writings didn’t do it for me, but I think it’s of meaning.” Beaulieu’s nautical approach surgery on writers’ practice of symbolism,
really important for eccentrics to get is evidently inspired by Mallarmé’s origi- skewering the resulting distance from the
together in public and make things like The nal, which was heavy on upheaval, ship- everyday reality of the writer’s own life as
Strong Badger Chronicle. It’s really import- wrecks, and the movement of water. well as the reader’s. But it isn’t a critique
ant to put things out in the world about This far removed from its original of writing, per se; Francheteau is talking
coffee mixed with Ricola, about sedation state, the altered Mallarmé material is about himself, and his struggle to write
guns, about octopi and ladybugs. It’s more about associations, evolution, and honestly and authentically about his con-
important for the craft, as a gesture against performance than it is about poetry. If nection with his father after many years
the hegemony, for the good of society, or you’re not willing to dive into the history of separation and silence. The layers of
at least for people too smart and odd to of tattered sails, you’re not getting much Francheteau’s grappling peel back as the
even need to take drugs. (Chris Landry) more than slanted black lines. As a stand- piece goes on, landing on wise insight into
alone work, meaning is obscured — the the circularity of the struggle writers have
value is in the voyage. with subjective, personal experience. Is it
tattered sails (after un In circling back to the initial text the- life, or is it art? And are those categories
coup de des) matically, Beaulieu has provided us a clos- mutually exclusive?
Chapbook, Derek Beaulieu, 16 pgs, ing chapter — that we didn’t know we The second piece, the poem “There is
above/ground press, abovegroundpress. needed — for a process that was launched no physical copy”, is perhaps a practical
blogspot.com, $5 120 years ago. (Scott Bryson) exercise in what has just been explored in
the preceding prose. It briskly marks off
1969: Belgian poet Marcel Broodthaers chapters of Francheteau’s life, as a kind of
reimagines French poet Stéphane Souvenir #1 framework, before turning confessional.
Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira Zine, JM Francheteau, 22 pgs, My own confession: I got lost. Maybe it was
le hasard (1897), replacing all of its text @franchetoast the whiskey, or maybe it was my inexperi-
with solid black bars. The homage is an ence as a reader of poetry. Either way, I
attempt to amplify Mallarmé’s inventive Here’s a literary double-header from JM wanted to hang but could not. Nevertheless,
utilization of space. Francheteau: the first issue of the zine Francheteau, you are interesting and I want
2 0 1 8 : D e r e k B e a u l i e u t a ke s Souvenir. to read more of your shit. (Joshua Barton)
EXCERPT
FROM Fake Bands BY Isabella Laird
reviewed on page 46

MUSIC
FME:
15 Years of Supporting the Weird in the Middle of Nowhere
By Shelby Monita
Festival Musique Émergente (FME) is a music festival in rural Northern Quebec that has been giving the artist, freaks and freaky
artists of Canada a place to play. Celebrating 15 years this summer, FME threw yet another fun weekend full of the unexpected to
close out summer on Labour Day weekend. I spoke with Jenny Thibault, Vice President, Communications and Marketing Director
about the path FME is on.
How long have you been with FME?

Since the beginning! My friends and I were tired
to go to Montreal or TO to see good music con-
certs. So, we had this crazy idea late in 2002,
and we did the first edition in our hometown
in September 2003, with 22 bands.
The best way I can describe FME is a

festival for the Canadian underground
and obscure. How would you describe it?
It’s an indie music festival with a lineup of 75
artists running in a small mining town. We are
a multi-venue festival with more than 20 venues
all over the city, one central outside stage, and
pop-up shows happening everywhere: In a For the past eight years, FME has been focused on being environ-
garage, a backyard, on a lake, etc. To accomplish mentally responsible. Can you talk more about your efforts?
this, we have more than 300 volunteers. The Yes, it’s something very important for us. We are composting everything. We use
local community is very involved and you can reusable glass, recycling papers, and carbon offset.
feel the vibe of the festival all across the city.
Are there any performances that stick out in your mind?
What sort of advantages are there to We are building a lot of memorable souvenirs. It’s our trademark: GSYBE playing
having a festival in Northern Quebec in a church at midnight. Richard Desjardins on a stage on the lake. A Tribe Called
verses having it in a big city like Red at the opening night last year by -2 degrees. Pop up shows in a convenience
Montreal? store, in a garage, in the commercial centre. Random Recipe playing at 2 am at
I think it’s a mix of distance, remoteness, music the 24-hour poutine restaurant, John Spencer and his project Heavy Trash in a
enthusiasts, and passion. Every venue is located basement. Owen Pallet making everyone’s dance at the closing event…
into a walking distance. There is also a natural
selection. Only real music fans would drive After 15 years as a festival, what does the future of FME look like?
seven hours to go see some concerts in a small Good question! The concept of emergence is something very conceptual and always
isolated town. All these passionate people con- evolving. Therefore, this is why we don’t have a strategic development plan for the
verge towards Rouyn-Noranda for four days of upcoming years. We want to be agile and continue to propose new and innovative
intensive music and party! musical experiences that will touch people and reach new audiences. bp

MUSIC REVIEWS
SHiFT FROM THA 902

SHiFT FROM THA 902 LP
Independent
shiftfromtha902.bandcamp.com
Cape Breton Island’s Todd Googoo is at odds with himself. He dog-

gedly reps for his home turf — We’koqma’q First Nation — but his
gaze is focused forward and outward, his thoughts repeatedly turn-
ing to the future and to “getting out.” His style clashes with expec-
tations, too: piano, guitar, and orchestral flourishes mingle with
thumping beats and deck scratches. His lyrics follow current trends
in hip-hop — like wearing vulnerabilities on your sleeve — but
remain firmly rooted in old school motifs, like “chillin’ all day” (and
smokin’ all night). Through all the contradictions, he’s adamant
about one truth, “Life is such an uppercut.”
Bodega
Endless Scroll
What’s Your Rupture?
whatsyourrupture.bandcamp.com
Bands that write songs about themselves — “Bodega Birth” in this

case — typically have the goods to back up their cocksureness.
Bodega seal the deal with Wire-like post-punk and a lighthearted
swagger, as they unearth the meaning in mundane activities (like
collecting moving boxes from the liquor store), and ruminate on our
most modern affliction: “All day at work: stare at computer. Come
home from work: stare at computer.” The satire is obvious, but apt,
and there’s an unexpected tenderness hiding beneath their
Brooklynite angst. Debuts are rarely this incisive.
L CON
Insecurities in Being
Wildlife Sanctuary Sound
lcon.bandcamp.com
Something is coming for Lisa Conway. The song titles on her second
L CON full-length suggest she knows it: “There Was A Glow,” “Light
Come;” and “Some Sort Of Sign.” She’s ultimately hoping to be
shown “the answer to being alright” (as if there’s one concrete solu-
tion). Like in her other projects (Del Bel the most prominent),
Insecurities in Being is adorned with saxophones and horns aplenty,
but its primary vehicle is her voice. It’s equal parts desolate and
buoyant, turning from melodious to off-kilter on a dime. This is
avant-garde pop for wayward souls. (All reviews by Scott Bryson)

BOOK REVIEWS
FICTION
effect of going from chaos to calm, from premise doesn’t feel too repetitive.
loud to quiet. However, while Anderson’s curato-
Beaulieu has turned a novel into a rial skills are top notch, I would ask more
piece of art. Read it, use your imagina- from her in terms of editing. The best
tion and you can come up with your short stories are efficient, self-contained
own epic story. (Jana Gregorio) universes They leave the reader with
enough information to infer what isn’t
written, or with a clear understanding
that the ending is purposely ambiguous.
Several stories in this collection felt like
chapters in longer novels. Those authors
would have benefitted from the skills of
an experienced editor who could help
a, A Novel them build on the strong bones of their
Derek Beaulieu, 457 pgs, stories.
Jean Boîte Éditions, jean-boite.fr All that said, each story left me fall-
ing into the dizzying depths of my own
I’ve never read a book quite like a, A imagination. That alone makes this
Novel by Derek Beaulieu. The book takes anthology well worth your time.
Andy Warhol’s original work and deletes (Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy)
all the text, leaving behind punctuation
marks, onomatopoeic words and typists’ Alice Unbound
insertions. Colleen Anderson, 308 pgs,
When I started reading the book, I Exile Editions Limited,
had no idea how I was going to review ExileEditions.com, $24.95
it. There are no characters, no dialogue
or descriptions to get a sense of the You don’t have to be mad to enjoy the
writing style, and, most importantly, stories that make up Coleen Anderson’s
there is no plot. solo curatorial debut. Alice Unbound fea-
But as I kept reading, I started to tures short stories from 24 authors, all
create my own story. In my interpreta- drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s
tion, it takes place in New York City in classic, Alice in Wonderland.
someone’s apartment. This someone I thought the collection was pretty
really enjoys opera and is musical. Oh, wonderful — the stories were interest-
and really likes to talk on the phone. ing and well-curated, and you would be Anna, Like Thunder
There were some hectic moments in the hard-pressed not to find a story that Peggy Herring, 384 pgs,
middle with a lot of noise and action, didn’t tickle your fancy. Brindle & Glass,
and at one point, there’s a “SMACK” fol- Colleen Anderson was right when brindleandglass.com, $22
lowed by a suspicious “unintelligible she wrote “to say each piece in this
garble.” I mean, spoiler alert, but I think anthology is only about the forces of In 1808, the St. Nikolai, a Russian ship,
someone was just kidnapped. madness, or only about metamorphosis crashed on the coast of Washington
In all seriousness, this book was would be a disservice” to the talented state, stranding 22 Russians, one of
such a unique reading experience. It felt authors included in this collection — which was Anna Petrovna Bulygia,
like I was interpreting an abstract piece but, at the same time, it is easy to find 18-year-old amateur astronomer and
of art where the work could be analyzed similarities in theme and message wife to the ship’s navigator. According
in different ways. You can interpret the throughout the series. This is what to historical records, they were enslaved
pages through the punctuations, com- makes this anthology so good. Anderson by Indigenous peoples. These are all the
ments, and sounds left behind. There avoids falling into the trap of adhering historical records that Peggy Herring
are times when pages with a lot of peri- too closely to the core idea that shaped has to craft Anna’s story in Anna, Like
ods, quotations, and sounds slowly tran- the collection. It is easy to see how the Thunder. As months pass, Anna, sepa-
sitions to pages almost devoid of punc- stories connect, but each one is differ- rated from her family and home, begins
tuation and noise, and this had an odd ent enough that the Alice in Wonderland to learn the customs of the Indigenous

BOOK REVIEWS
peoples she lives and works with — and Our protagonist, Fitch, does not have
grows to love them. an actual private eye license, nor an office
Anna, who begins the novel very to bear his name. Not even a rundown
childlike, naïve and focused only on her- bungalow is shabby enough, Fitch is
self, experiences a year and half of behind on rent at a boarding house as we
growth and critical reflection. When she learn on page five.
is finally reunited with her husband and The rest of the novel runs this
other crewmembers, her new-found love gamut. There’s Adora Carmichael our
for the land and the peoples that inhabit villain and resident brunette, “built like
it are all too apparent. After her husband a coke bottle,” some tough guys, in this
mentions the fat seals he and others go case violent clowns known as the “dead
hunting for, he salivates on the thought clowns,” and other genre-specific
of Russians hunting every last seal. Anna accoutrements.
reflects on the horrible impact that it Dead Clown Blues Even so, this novel can take your
would have on the Indigenous peoples, R. Daniel Lester, 148 pgs, Shotgun Honey, breath away. For example, right as you
thinking to herself, “where would they shotgunhoney.com, $11.95 think this book is lagging, Fitch happens
get the shells and teeth and claws and upon the home of a criminal that he’s
whiskers and skins and stomachs and The first installment of Winner R. Daniel been tracking and he is struck in the head
intestines — to make their knives and Lester’s Carnegie Fitch Myster Fiasco closing chapter 10. Then, Lester smacks
tools…” And more importantly “What series is a classic noir story. The 2018 you in the face with Chapter 11.
would they eat instead?” Through Indie Writers’ Deathmatch semi-finalist’s In the time Fitch is unconscious,
Anna’s emotional narrations and per- newest book tells of Carnegie Fitch, a the reader is shown his dreams which
sonal journey, Herring crafts a page private eye in Vancouver, 1957. This is are scored by the sound of Church bells
turner that does not disappoint. myster y right out of the Dashiell ringing as “a mother and her son walk
(Daniela Barrera Murcia) Hammett and Raymond Chandler play- along Pender Street.” This chapter only
book, except lazier. spans pages 81-83, but in this space,
EXCERPT
FROM SKY WRI TEI NG BY Nasser Hussain

(FORTHCOMING FROM COACH HOUSE BOOKS THIS FALL)
STO RIS
SKY WRI TEI NGS Poems written entirely from
THE ASP BIT
CLE OPA TRA HUSSAIN, NASSER three-letter airport codes.
See letters take flight and
Coach House
map by Stephenson, Matthew leave their baggage behind.

Books
ABE MAY AXE

ISA ACS ARM

seat number
BUT JAH LET ABE OFF

18

SKY WRI TEI NGS
HUSSAIN, NASSER

ANU CAN FLY

AND AUK CAN FLY

EVE CAN NOT
EVE ATE THE APP LES

ISBN: 9781552453711
AND SAW THE LIE Available at chbooks.com
DAV GOT COM PUT ERS October 2018

BUT HAL CAN NOT SAY YES 18.95 CDN / 17.95 US

BOOK REVIEWS
Lester weaves a story about two parents EXCERPT

not meant to stay together. How this
makes that son, who’s really Fitch, take FROM SKY WRI TEI NG BY Nasser Hussain
off “to find adventure, to ride the rails.” (FORTHCOMING FROM COACH HOUSE BOOKS THIS FALL)
This brief glimpse into the psychol-
ogy of Fitch allows a substantially
deeper connection between the reader
and the character — allowing the story
to seem truer, less uninventive. That is
not to say Lester fails in any regard, it
just felt (despite the presence of a clown
posse) already done before. It would’ve
been great to see more development of
Fitch and his psyche. (Clayton
Tomlinson)
Infinite Gradation
Anne Michaels, 88 pgs,
Exile Editions,
exileeditions.com, $19.95
Confident that “morality is a muscle,”

and that the mystery of life is better
addressed by living than by knowing,
Toronto poet laureate and award-win-
ning novelist Anne Michaels has put for-
ward a small book with enormous scope.
Less a study or argument than a medita-
tion in the midst of death, Infinite
Gradation succeeds in its unique means
of “plac[ing] one myster y next to
another.” By composing across and
between genres — including fragments
of prose fiction, art criticism, philosoph-
ical aphorism, and lyric verse, all master-
fully executed — Michaels allows us to
dwell in her vision at the same time we
are exposed to it, making Infinite
Gradation both inspirational and pallia-
tive in itself.
The power of Michaels’ writing
derives from its sentiment, style, and crit-
ical insight, not from research or logic.

BOOK REVIEWS
Approached as a work of non-fiction, Q2Q serves as an engaging snapshot of

then, Infinite Gradation has its limita- contemporary Canadian queer theatre.
tions. Michaels’s deliberations on poetry The pieces in Q2Q are not very
and prose, for example, despite being diverse, though, in terms of content: each
refreshing and often brilliant in them- explores a particular facet of queer iden-
selves, make clear that Infinite Gradation tity through work focused on personal
is a book about living and writing — histories. On the more traditional end of
never one without the other. Moreover, the spectrum is Shawn Wright’s Ghost
her focus on artists deeply influenced by Light, an involving solo show about a gay
the events of World War II roots her ideas man and his memories of his glamorous
in a distinctly European tradition of but aging Catholic Acadian mother
20th-century art making. Q2Q: Regina. Meanwhile work like d’bi.young
But even without adopting Queer Canadian anitafrika’s androgyne, set alternately in
Michaels’ worldview, I found myself Performance Texts Jamaica and Toronto, seems less tradi-
thoroughly and exuberantly immersed Dickinson, Gatchalian, Oliver & Singh, tional, deploying poetry, dance, move-
in her thought. Michaels’ voice is pene- eds., 312 pgs, Playwrights Canada Press, ment, and other media, but at its heart
trating and compassionate, and it is a playwrightscanada.com, $29.95 this too is about the daily travails of queer
marvel to see her ideas expressed with folks as we feel our way through a hete-
such artistry. Meanwhile, those writers Anthologizing seven contemporary ro-patriarchal world.
and artists (of whom I’m sure there are Canadian performance pieces, Q2Q inves- The work is all solid, all worth read-
many) who have committed themselves tigates “what makes queer performance ing, staging, or seeing. At the same time,
wholeheartedly to Michaels’ vision will queer.” The editors strive to reflect diver- Q2Q doesn’t include any one piece that
discover in Infinite Gradation an invalu- sity in “gender, geographical, and racial really stands out — nothing that seems
able source of consolation and clarity. representation” in their selections, though essential, unmissable, or likely to enter the
(John Nyman) they note that a single volume must nec- capital-R Repertoire. Books like this are
essarily leave many gaps. Nevertheless, s t i l l i m p o r t a nt : t h e y re c o rd a n d
BOOK REVIEWS
disseminate ideas that might otherwise doorsteps — with all this drama and more perspectives, but also Nona’s, the Joes’
not be preserved. Rather than for the plot twists, you would think I was talking elderly neighbour who just can’t help
casual reader, Q2Q will be most appreci- about a telenovela and not Karen herself from spreading rumours. Even if
ated by scholars, critics, or others with a Charleson’s first novel. the focus is the Joe family drama,
deep, pre-existing investment in this Through Different Eyes follows the Charleson doesn’t shy away from polit-
material. (Andrew Woodrow-Butcher) Joe family, who live in a fictional ical comments. When they open the
Kitsum, a small fishing Indigenous town first elementary school in Kitsum,
north of Vancouver. While teenage which was severely underfunded,
Brenda worries about her pregnancy, Monica is determined to be “good
her aunt Monica returns for Christmas enough that she would never have to go
to help confront the local man that back to the Indian Residential School
Brenda was involved with. Monica, who ever again.” The matter of fact tone of
just left her long-term Vancouver boy- these sparing critiques don’t detract
friend, is conflicted when meeting the from the story, instead they leave read-
attractive loner that Brenda was ers to contemplate the conditions of
involved with. Meanwhile, Brenda’s Indigenous peoples in Canada.
mother, Ruby, deals with the multiple While the first few chapters draw out
rumours that her husband Martin had a bit slowly, once the drama starts for
an affair. As more family secrets and Brenda, Monica, and Ruby, the action
Through Different Eyes betrayals are exposed, and rumours unfolds and quickly snowballs, making
Karen Charleson, 226 pgs, Signature begin to spread, the Joe family begins to Through Different Eyes impossible to put
Editions, signature-editions.com, $19.95 unravel. down. (Daniela Barrera Murcia)
Charleson expertly uses an omni-
Love triangles, teenage pregnancy, (not so) scient narrator to show us a glimpse of
secret affairs, a baby abandoned on n o t j u s t B r e n d a a n d M o n i c a’s
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(:RLSL[HS>HUK +P]PKPUN[OL>H`ZPKL your stories in print and online with Langara’s one-year
9\[O9VHJO7PLYZVU 1LUU`/H`ZVT Publishing Diploma. Gain hands-on experience and build
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[VKH[L9\[O9VHJO7PLYZVU NYH]LS^LLKZHUK^PSKÅV^LYZ LangaraPRM.com and a new issue of Pacific Rim Magazine.
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JOHUNLPU[OLO\THUJVUKP[PVU www.langara.ca/publishing
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BOOK REVIEWS
recurring characters and places, and grandmother, Charna’s, when she was
imbued with repetitions such as the Soma’s age. Charna, having made it safely
phrase and ways in which “People are peo- to Canada from Ukraine, looks at how her
ple are people.” shul is affected by the developing
The book contains a clear reverence Holocaust, and the repercussions she suf-
for elders and those who have passed fers because of her choice to marry a non-
before her, and unpacks Soma’s relation- Jew. Meanwhile, Soma mourns Charna on
ships to mourning, loss, and mental ill- the fifth yahrzeit, or anniversary of her
ness with her brother, current day death. She realizes she has booked a vaca-
ex-partner, mother, and friend who com- tion with her partner during the yahrzeit
mits suicide. and has to deal with the mourning rites
Two themes resonate throughout and her partner, all while obsessing over
the book. The first is Soma’s father’s say- media coverage of the alt right’s rise in our
We All Need to Eat ing that “If anything terrible happens, time.
Alex Leslie, Book*hug, treat yourself to a nice meal,” which plays Leslie’s prose is fluid, occasionally
bookthug.ca, $20 out in Soma’s connection to food prepa- leaving this reader lightheaded. Nearly
ration as a Subway sandwich artist and each story feels like a narrative experi-
We All Need to Eat is a collection of nine cooking. The second, Leslie’s exploration ment, and at times the narrative is over-
linked short stories following the life and of the Ashkenzai tradition of naming a taken by her interest in breathless lyri-
family of Soma, a queer woman in child, which involves “tak[ing] the initials cism. Leslie’s weaving of the stories
Vancouver, ranging in time between of their dead relative and us[ing] them deepens the reader’s understanding and
Soma’s childhood through to her adult- again and again so that the letters are interest in Soma with each story, leaving
hood. Leslie’s stories are a process of never lost.” one full. (Fiona Raye Clarke)
enfolding. Covering weightlifting, suicide, A stand-out story is “Who You Start
Jewish identity, queerness, and more, the With is Who You Finish With,” which jux-
collection’s stories connect through t a p o s e s S o m a ’s s t o r y w i t h h e r
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BOOK REVIEWS
COMICS
shift at Uranium City, Daniel reassures his Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book.
girlfriend, Carole, that “a hundred days It offers a glimpse into a very specific lifestyle,
sounds long, but it’ll go by fast.” career and time in history that I have not
Unfortunately for the gentlemen stuck often read about in graphic novels. 100 Days
working in the mines, every day is a horri- in Uranium City is worth reading for a peek
ble, repetitive slog. into this harsh, lonely way of life. (Tina Olah)
The artwork (all rendered in greyscale
pencil tones) is fairly simplistic, though the
characters each have unique and memora-
ble looks. I particularly liked the visual
100 Days in design of Richard, who appears as though
Uranium City he just came out of a certain yellow subma-
Ariane Dénommé, 144 pgs, rine. I found the character designs to be
Conundrum Press, conundrumpress.com, $18 quite charming, almost cute, though never
to the point where they seemed overly car-
This book presents a bleak tale of man (yes, toonish or out of place in the serious
specifically man, as it is a very male-centered storyline.
story) and his struggle against an ancient, I quite liked the background art as well, Almost Summer (Vol. 1-4)
horrible nemesis: shitty jobs. Taking place ranging from peaceful forest and river Sophie Bédard, Pow Pow Press,
mostly in a 70s mining town, 100 Days in scenes to the dark and claustrophobic mine powpowpress.com, $22.95 ea, four volumes
Uranium City is a realistic look at the daily interior, the worker’s helmet lights provid-
struggles of mine workers. ing the only source of illumination in the It’s a webcomic fan’s dream to find a com-
Before leaving town for his first lengthy gloomy caves. pleted series to binge read from start to
NEW FROM
DRAWN & QUARTERLY
BERLIN COYOTE DOGGIRL WOMAN WORLD

Jason Lutes Lisa Hanawalt Aminder Dhaliwal
History remains timely in this epic about From the BoJack Horseman producer A riotously funny book about a world
1930s Germany and production designer with no men
DRAWNANDQUARTERLY.COM
BOOK REVIEWS
finish. No waiting for weekly updates, no kinda… never really left.” Good enough,
refreshing your browser over and over I guess. The dynamic wasn’t exactly a
again. Which is why I was excited when I d e a l- b re a ke r, b u t i t ’s c e r t a i n ly a
got my hands on all four printed volumes head-scratcher.
of Sophie Bédard’s Almost Summer — I was surprised to learn Bédard
freshly translated to English with the last started the French webcomic when she
volume just released by Pow Pow Press was 19 back in 1999, considering the
this fall. quality of the first volume. That being
Set in small-town Quebec, this slice- said, it was a real highlight watching
of-life comic follows a group of teens Bédard’s storytelling and characteriza-
through their last two years in high tion evolve over the course of four vol-
school. umes. Michelle is a hedonist to the end,
The series centres around best but the way Emily grows more trusting By the Forces of Gravity
friends and total opposites, Emily and and relaxed within herself was hearten- Rebecca Fish Ewan, 397 pgs,
Michelle. Emily is mistrustful and ing to read. Bédard weaves in new char- Books by Hippocampus,
reserved, and lives alone with her unlov- acters — a favourite of mine is good guy books.hippocampusmagazine.com, $24
ing, alcoholic mother. The bubbly and Anthony — and draws in new depth,
friendly Michelle is a downright hedo- w h i c h m a d e t h e l a s t v o l u m e my Rebecca Fish Ewan’s poignant graphic
nist with poor impulse control. They favourite. memoir will transport you to a time of
put each other down regularly, so I Judging by Bédard’s online portfolio bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes. By
often found myself wondering: why are (sbedard.com) she’s got some exciting the Forces of Gravity recounts a devastating
they even friends? The best answer I projects up her sleeve that feature a more tragedy in Ewan’s childhood through car-
could come up with was the one Emily diverse lineup of characters and subjects. toons and free verse. Set in Berkeley, CA.,
offers near the beginning: “We’re just I’d love to see more of her work translated in the ’70s, the book starts with 12-year-
used to being around each other. She into English. (Anisa Rawhani) old Ewan on a road trip where she first
sort of showed up in my life one day and meets her “soul friend” Luna. After
ne ve e
ur Ele s lik
When you’re not super,

r n
ae and poem
it is a tough world.
M e, her
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by Nin d ot
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Bi 11
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and other poems like “Bird”, “Nine”,

“x” and “Eleven” Michael Turner
INSOMNIAC PRESS
www.newstarbooks.com
BOOK REVIEWS
tripping on acid, the pair forge a deep and in 397 pages, the story could have realized during his almost four-month
connection (“I feel like we become so close been shorter. tour of Europe. After the success of his
/ Our souls connect / I wish we had a In the end, I was completely taken in critically acclaimed graphic novel
song” and become inseparable. Thus, their by the friendship. “We are soul friends / Blankets, Thompson embarks on a book
story begins. That’s a forever thing.” By the Forces of tour. During his journey in France,
Perhaps the most jarring aspect of Gravity is a beautiful love letter to a dear, Morocco, Spain, Thompson kept a sketch
this memoir is the fact that as a 12-year- dear friend. (Jana Gregorio) log that would eventually become Carnet
old, Ewan was already experimenting de Voyage. Thompson revised his 2004
with drugs, dropping out of school, dat- graphic novel in 2018 with an epilogue,
ing much older boys and living away reflecting on his previous travels, as well
from home. At one point she moves into as divulging to the reader the reason for
a kids’ commune with the full support of his need to record everything, even with
her father. But despite her extraordinary his crippled hand.
circumstances, many can relate to having Thompson does not sugar-coat his
that one special friend you’d do anything travels and often complains about how
for, the one who has a big influence on much he hates the trip, how sick, home-
your life. sick, and heartbroken he is. While the
Ewan’s writing style is touching, narrative of this graphic memoir isn’t its
humorous and full of teen angst. The strong point, Thompson captures the
simplistic drawings are charming and are Carnet de Voyage intricate layers of different cities and
paired perfectly with the verses. I actually Craig Thompson, 256 pgs, landscapes, and this redeems the text.
would have preferred more art and fewer Drawn and Quarterly, As a first-time reader of Carnet de
words. I had a hard time engaging with drawnandquarterly.com, $24.95. Voyage, but not of Thompson, I couldn’t
the story up until about halfway through. help but get frustrated by his incessant
I felt like the book took a while to get to Travelling alone can be daunting and complaints. Travelling alone doesn’t
the point. A lot of verses were repetitive, exhausting, as Craig Thompson quickly have to be the life-changing journey
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BOOK REVIEWS
that everyone expects it to be — some- pleasure to read her snappy dialogue.

times it’s okay to sit in your hotel and be Rayanne, a woman with a successful
overwhelmed by the entire experience. career but a less-than-successful love life,
Culture shock is a real thing after all! resists being set up by her friends and
Thompson’s constant self-deprecating coworkers, but longs for someone to share
comments and complaints are often her life with. Meanwhile, Ali is emerging
frustrating, but Thompson isn’t oblivi- from the fog of having recently lost her
ous to this. He has a travel mascot and wife, and is unsure of how best to move
conscience, Zacchaeus, reprimand on — if at all. Moments of quiet lust, lone-
Thompson’s character by telling him liness, and alienation are all captured in
that he’s “just whiny & egocentric & Forward ways that make Ali and Rayanne feel
somehow oblivious to the REAL suffer- Lisa Maas, 200 pgs, Arsenal Pulp Press, familiar, making their journeys navigating
ing outside” of himself because it’s “an arsenalpulp.com, $21.95 their lives all the more compelling.
American trait.” Thompson’s recogni- Maas’s art is first pencilled and then
tion of the futility of his problems reas- Sex, dating, and those first kiss butterflies inked and painted, and her eye for colours
sures us that Thompson isn’t out of in your stomach are all things that are for is keen. Every scene feels intimate, and
touch with reality, and he is just a young, straight people only — or at least Maas does an exceptional job of capturing
human struggling with his own self-dep- that’s what a lot of pop culture would the mood of each little moment. Though
recation, anxiety, and sadness. (Daniela have us believe. Forward, the new graphic it can be difficult at times to differentiate
Barrera Murcia) novel from writer and artist Lisa Maas, between Maas’s faces — many of the char-
challenges those assumptions with a mov- acters share similar features and haircuts
ing and lushly illustrated story about two — it rarely has an effect on the impact of
40-something lesbians struggling to find the scenes, and it’s a joy to look at.
fulfilling connections in BC. The strength of Forward is its ability
Maas writes characters who are liv- to make characters who do not normally
ing, breathing
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human beings, and it’s a find themselves in the spotlight feel like
“What exactly makes Canadians funny?

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makes us laughable.” —Toronto Star
Margaret Atwood, Austin Clarke, Leon
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Paul Quarrington, Linda Rogers, Morley
Callaghan, Jacques Ferron, Joe Rosenblatt,
Barry Callaghan, Andrew Borkowski,
Helen Marshall, Gloria Sawai, Steven
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Louise Maheux-Forcher, Marty Gervais,
Shannon Bramer, Aislin, and 20 more…
Available in print
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Michaels has written, Infinite Gradation is
a lyrically compelling praise-song to love
and the enduring mysteries at the core
of existence. Michaels considers the lives
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explores how art might serve as a wit-
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BOOK REVIEWS
old friends or family. Most people have the world these days, and I think we can all
found themselves lonely at some point in use a few more of those. (Kris Bone)
their lives; Forward is a good reminder
that we’re all in this together. (Kris Bone)
Squelette
Philippe Shewchenko, 84 pgs, Éditions Trip
Shit is Real Comix, editionstrip.tumblr.com, $20
Aisha Franz, 287 pgs, Drawn & Quarterly,
drawnandquarterly.com, $27.95 Plug your headphones in and let the
Ghost Stories soundtrack of Philippe Shewchenko’s first
Whit Taylor, 120 pgs, Rosarium Publishing, I began Aisha Franz’s Shit is Real prepared comic book carry you into a menacing for-
rosariumpublishing.com, $17.95 for some heavy topics, but it was less of an est filled with keys, doors, skeletons, and
exploration of how rough life can be and other fantastically creepy creatures that
Sometimes, especially if you (like me) have more of a testament to how your emo- speak in a coded language of symbols.
a soft spot for mainstream comics, it can tions can blur reality. Taking on every- Squelette not only comes with a soundtrack,
feel like graphic novels are dominated by thing from breakups and technology, to but also with a lexicon to decipher the skel-
work that is the equivalent of Transformers fish life and peepholes, the graphic novel eton language.
5: all flashy visuals and slick production has a simple black and white style that Shewchenko’s black, white, and yel-
values, with no trace of heart whatsoever. surprised me with its ability to pull off low illustrations create intricate and gritty
Thankfully, creators like Whit Taylor are detailed futuristic party scenes and dreamscapes not bound by gravity, where
here to help remind us what is possible abstract dream sequences. skeletons and other creatures move
when cartoonists are able to be emotion- Shit is Real follows Selma, who gets through the forest, attempting not to get
ally honest in their work. unceremoniously dumped, takes her few killed. It’s not all grim though, as
Ghost Stories, Taylor’s most recent col- possessions (including a painting of the Shewchenko integrates music throughout
lection, comprises three short stories deal- book’s title) and moves into an empty apart- the comic, music which brings the skele-
ing with relationships, trauma, and family. ment to sleep on a mattress on the floor. tons and ghosts alive through dance.
From the struggles of overcoming a sexual Through desert visions and stilted check- In the last two pages, Shewchenko
assault to the difficulties of navigating a ins with her friend Yumi, you learn that breaks from the coded language and nar-
changing friendship as years pass, Taylor she’s left her job and isn’t feeling the need rates, in French, the strange experience that
treats her characters with the nuance and to re-enter working society just yet, and you a skeleton had in this forest. As the skeleton
care that they deserve, and creates watch her struggle through modern chal- watches the ghosts dancing, it articulates
multi-faceted, engaging narratives. The lenges like ordering off of holographic the overall feeling that Squelette has on
stories feel particularly intimate, an effect menus. Some coincidences and some low- readers: “En fait, je ne sais pas comment
accentuated by her art — in an era of digital key stalking help her to start living in her expliquer l’expérience… La nuit est étrange.
illustrations, Taylor’s work retains its hand- absent neighbour’s apartment, trespassing La nuit est belle” (“Actually, I don’t know
made personality, marker lines and all. on someone else’s life and seeming happy how to explain this experience… The night
Of the three, my favourite piece was and present the more she intrudes. is strange. The night is beautiful.”)
“Wallpaper,” the story of a home and of A truly weird trip through one wom- The problem, however, when reading
growing up in it, as told via a selection of an’s depression and escapism, I was pleased this comic is the difficulty of deciphering
anecdotes accompanied by careful, with how much Shit is Real became about the symbols with the lexicon. Each symbol
close-up illustrations of different surfaces perspective, ups and downs, and female not only has three or four different possible
and wallpaper patterns. Taylor’s attention friendship. After reading it in one sitting, I meanings, but the way that Shewchenko
to detail when recreating white lace, expect to revisit it, mainly to enjoy a lonely arranges the symbols in the panels makes
autumn leaves, and Victorian peonies is and inappropriate, but still stubborn and them incredibly challenging to match and
strangely endearing, and lends the story a motivated protagonist, how many pages decipher. After I tired of attempting to
peculiar kind of weight. have little to no dialogue, and my own understand every single panel that
Ghost Stories feels like a quiet moment interpretations of some of the more out- included symbols, and focused on the
apart from the thunder and lightning of there sequences. (Carolyn Turgeon) visual narrative, the story really came alive.

BOOK REVIEWS
The strength of Shewchenko’s storytelling frame. While this may be classified as a premise, the women of Beyonce’s Thighs
power really comes through the careful graphic novel, I plan on using this as a cof- flourish. They organize town meetings,
composition of the panels as well as the feetable book. I’d rather look at the images build hospitals, develop alternative meth-
attention to detail of his illustrations. A than reassess my soul. (Arianna Cannarozzo) ods of pregnancy, write poetry, fall in love,
challenging and trippy comic that rewards and discuss the intricacies of their futures.
those that want to plunge into the depths A bunch of the strips offer a sharp and
of the forest. (Daniela Barrera Murcia) humorous critique of gender norms. In one
instance, Naomi, a young resident of
Beyonce’s Thighs, spends an evening col-
lecting razors for the community. When
women approach her to ask for razors,
Naomi replies, “sorry, no women’s razors,”
but later settles down to reflect with some
confusion, “I gotta figure out a way to
unload these men’s razors. They’re useless.”
Woman World The beauty of gender-specific marketing.
Aminder Dhaliwal, 256 pgs, Drawn & Woman World also engages gender.
Quarterly, drawnandquarterly.com, $29.95 In one town meeting, the women discuss
images that would best reflect their col-
The Traveller Livre II: Men have gone extinct. Now what? lective. “We need a flag for our district.”
The One Inbetween Aminder Dhaliwal fleshes out a manless “How about a vagina?” one asks. “But vagi-
FREDC & LPRZ, 108 pgs, future in her deliciously comedic graphic nas don’t represent the scope of woman-
TRIP comix & Éditions Moelle graphique, novel Woman World. The comic follows kind,” another replies. Intersectionality
editionstrip.tumblr.com, $20 the women of Beyonce’s Thighs (that’s the becomes a major part of her storytelling.
name of their district) as they navigate the Woman World is an incredibly timely and
I’ve probably had an existential crisis once survival of the human race. Despite a grim pleasantly funny read. (Jean Mathew)
a month for as long as I can remember. If
we’re going to be really honest, once a
month seems like a stretch and once a week POETRY
sounds a lot more accurate. The Traveller
opened a whole new can of worms. The cover is an ominous heat map
The second installment of this series showing a brooding, deadly swath of red
brings an unnamed character to over much of the northern hemisphere.
Amsterdam, to explore a metaphysical real- It’s almost as artful as it is terrifying, a tell-
ity and chase down the ominous Dancer. ing contrast.
“And how desperate they set out to The opening section has four poems
chase not a name but her naming,” says each beginning “Tar Songs.” It is our socie-
the protagonist. I get it, unnamed charac- tal addiction to oil that Whitt connects with
ter, I am also looking for constant reassur- the dying off animals in these poems, a
ance and validation. This is a main theme theme that plays out over the rest of the
throughout. The searching, the mystery, collection. She contrasts the ugliness of fos-
the yearning to understand more than Adagio for the Horizon sil fuel exploitation with the elegance of
what is. The Traveller touches on a part of Laurelyn Whitt, 106 pgs, formal musical language, writing of
the human experience that is not always Signature Editions, “Syncrude,” “a Hydrocarbon Concerto” and,
pleasant to think about — and it forces signature-editions.com, $17.95 more pointedly, “the Oiled Duck
you to really consider who are you and Symphony” at play.
who are you meant to be. Or maybe I’m Split over five sections, Larelyn Whitt’s A few stanzas later, in perhaps the
looking too hard for meaning. (This is the new collection of 54 poems is the sermon most pointed declaration of the poetry
can of worms I was talking about earlier.) at a wake for the environment. within, Whitt says “Dross remains / after
The illustrations stand out above the That’s not to say Adagio for the Horizon what we desire / is taken away.” Humanity’s
story. FREDC uses every inch of the page to posits a dead Earth, or one beyond repair skewed priorities ignore that beauty, the
forward the action. The detail in his pointil- — rather, it frankly evaluates the world seeming art, in the “dross” that remains.
lism and linework reminds me of a contem- after many years of pollution, mass extinc- Many of the poems in the other four
porary Georges Seurat mixed with a little tions, and losses of habitat for many of its sections have dedications to artists or ani-
Picasso. I almost want to rip out pages to species, including, of course, our own. mals Whitt hopes to reevaluate. There is a

BOOK REVIEWS
tribute to master stonewall artist Dan felt cute in this pic,” Chernoff posits a key for “finding me,” a reference to the final
Snow. Then there is a poem on the extinct tenet for the book: “th temporary tempts poem in the book, “Stories.”
bird the great Auk, ironically hunted out of poetry.” Indeed, Delet This positively drips Well, if there’s one thing I learned
the world by the museum industry, along with this year’s internet, and the book will from minoring in Philosophy (really set
with references to wildlife photography. surely drift towards unintelligibility as its myself up for success in life, eh?), it’s that
All of this homage and juxtaposition parade of meme-allusions and gossip lose you should question generalized rules.
aims at exploring the beauty of the Earth their freshness. But this is a feature, not a Not every poem is autobiographical
without the tendency to extinguish what bug. Delet This is an exercise in a certain — surely not “Company Picnic,” which
has been observed. (Clayton Tomlinson) type of provisional self-deprecation. Not the back cover points to as “a company
of the personal kind, where unconfident man’s complete undoing at his summer
shtick substitutes for humour – rather, party” but which seems to me a little more
Delet This constantly undoes itself, sub- ambiguous. But it’s hard not to read one
verts its own momentum, and keeps us on like “All the parties I’ve ever been to” —
edge. “it isnt a passage or a typo,” Chernoff which features names found in the
writes, “but a glitch: / slippy, slide, n glide Acknowledgements and lines that read as
/ from glitsh to glisser / n back again”. lived experience — as at least somewhat
The poems in Delet This don’t based in reality.
amount to much — none stands out more “Based in reality” would be a better
than the other, none is particularly mem- descriptor. “All the parties …” is emotional
orable on its own. But Chernoff is a very and deals with what appears to be an out
Delet This talented writer, whose smart-aleck style of control drinking habit, but a poem like
MLA Chernoff, 60 pgs, Hybrid Heaven, suggests that substance is overrated any- “YouTube Commercial,” of much lighter
hybridheaven.co, $12 how. (Andrew Woodrow-Butcher) subject matter, also deals with a moment
I expect most people have experience
New Montreal press Hybrid Heaven’s Delet with. Who doesn’t skip those damn ads?
This is a quick, funny read that fits the pub- Safe Words Though perhaps “Skip. / But I buy it” is
lisher’s mandate to produce “work that Michelle Brown, 80 pgs, Palimpsest Press, the poem’s most relatable line.
speaks of the now.” palimpsestpress.ca, $18.95 The way Safe Words handles these real-
In a debut collection, MLA Chernoff life moments, whether light-hearted or
finds a tone that is simultaneously obnox- If there’s one thing I learned from major- difficult and even when it exposes the dark-
ious and charming. Replete with emoji, ing in English, it’s to not assume poetry is ness of otherwise mundane situations, is
text-message orthography, and purposely autobiographical. I did my best to follow what I love most about it. It made me won-
upsetting fonts, Delet This is the kind of that rule with Safe Words, but then I got der just how personal some of these poems
anti-poetry many attempt, but few do well. to the acknowledgements, where Michelle were. It made me re-read and rewarded
In the piece “might delet soon but Brown thanks her friends Kayla and Jessie every time I came back. (Pat Reddick)
INDEX
100 Days in Uranium City … 55 Forward … 59 Shoes Fanzine … 33
279 … 36 Friendly … 46 Souvenir #1 … 47
a, A Novel … 50 Hamilton Sub Register … 31 Souvenir # 2 … 34
Adagio for the Horizon … 61 Hey! You! … 37 Squelette … 60
Alice Unbound … 50 How I Didn’t Write Any of My Books … 46 Squid-Gee … 41
Almost Summer … 56 How to Grow Your Own Plants from Statues … 42
Anna, Like Thunder … 50 Veggie Scraps …31 The Strong Badger Chronicle #3 … 46
Are You My Home? … 29 Iambic Marrow … 31 Suite of Three Broadsheets … 43
Bodega … 49 Industry Standard … 39 tattered sails (after un coup de des) … 47
Boston Review … 29 Infinite Gradation … 52 This Was Then This Is Now … 45
By the Forces of Gravity … 57 Just Encased #1… 39 Through Different Eyes … 53
Carnet de Voyage … 58 L Con … 49 The Traveller Livre II … 61
Dead Clown Blues … 51 National Teen Set Outsider #35 … 32 A Vancouver Alphabet … 45
Delet This … 62 On Being a Fucking Slut … 33 The Vent 2.0 … 35
Even Monsters are Growing … 38 Q2Q … 53 We All Need to Eat … 54
Fake Bands … 46 The Ship’d Sailed … 40 Woman World … 61
Get Off … 30 Shift From Tha 902 … 49
Ghost Stories … 69 Shit Is Real … 60

FICTION
CLOSER by Jason Arias
LIONEL WONDERED person sitting next to him accidentally facility or not, he would walk into the
when exactly he had started positioning grazed his, he would remain frozen in the lobby and sit down. He liked listening to
himself closer to people, to strangers, on exact position, hoping it would happen the turning of pages, the hushed conver-
purpose. On the city bus he would feel again — the hairs on his hand or leg or sations. When he did have an appoint-
letdown if there was an open double seat arm (whichever had been grazed) left ment, he liked the dentist’s chair. He liked
waiting for him, because he’d have to take standing at attention. He felt the proxim- the hygienist’s shoulder or arm or breast
it, out of social expectation, and then he ity of each individual hair — the electric- grazing his head. Not that the breast was
wouldn’t be sitting next to anyone. He ity there. He found himself paying closer any better than the shoulder or the arm.
started riding the bus only during rush attention to the space between him and It really wasn’t. It wasn’t a sickness. He
hour. Even if he had no place to be. Just to everyone. wasn’t sick. If anything, he was only
be forced to sit closely. When Lionel wasn’t riding buses or lonely. And there was nothing morally
This was why Lionel started viewing in crowded theatres (or at home alone wrong with loneliness. He considered
Illustration by Chelsea Watt
films again in the theaters. He and Ethel with the ceramic angel collection that putting an ad out for a roommate, but
would go when they were younger, but Ethel had loved so much, the kissing wasn’t convinced he should. He didn’t
then she stopped wanting to go out, and angels especially) he found small cafes or know if he’d like that. There might be
then she grew sick and sicker. shared table sushi restaurants or waiting undesired dialogue involved. Even if there
He picked opening nights to see new rooms in county-run facilities to occupy. wasn’t, he might imagine that there
films. And if the foot or leg or hand of a Whether he had an appointment at the should be, and he was certain he wouldn’t

FICTION
know what to say. Lionel was much more in one of the urinals directly on either scoot over to the next urinal — what his
of a conversational voyeur. He liked to side of him. father would have called “switching lanes”
listen, not participate. The only person he Lionel told himself that the giant — just in case somebody did come in from
still enjoyed conversing with was Ethel, bookstore wasn’t very busy, that he’d be the bookstore. But he was already going,
at the cemetery on Holgate. And there, okay. But what if someone did come in? and it didn’t seem worth it or necessary to
Ethel was always the voyeur. She couldn’t He couldn’t just wrap it up all quick and pinch off and reposition now. Plus, he was
help but be. nifty like the prostate of his younger years. pretty sure nobody really cared what old
It wasn’t until Lionel found himself And wouldn’t that person suspect him of people did. Nobody had cared what Ethel
using the middle of three urinals in the being a “close pisser,” of being guilty of did toward the end. That she stopped
bathroom of a downtown bookstore, that purposely positioning himself at the ful- smiling or making any sense. Only him.
he wondered if he’d purposely put himself crum urinal? What if they thought he was Lionel was still staring at the wall in
in this compromising position. And why? the kind of person that wanted to turn his front of him, still thinking about switch-
When Lionel had first entered the head and speak directly into their ear, or ing lanes, when the bathroom door
restroom all the urinals had been unoc- glance down to see what they were “work- behind him opened and closed, and a
cupied, the entire bathroom had been ing with,” or comment on the quality of bearded man—wearing a black T-shirt
unoccupied, and he’d told himself that he the stream they were producing? and green scarf—walked in. Lionel
just happened to walk to the middle urinal When Lionel was a child, his father turned his head momentarily, gave a little
— that his actions were absent-minded. had been a voracious bathroom commen- nod, and immediately questioned this
But Lionel had known and practiced, cor- tator and Lionel had hated him for it. action. He didn’t want to stand out.
rect urinal etiquette for his entire life, “Look at you! You’re pissing a rope, There were secret codes he didn’t want
even after his proximity affliction. He son!” his father would proudly proclaim to transmit. Maybe he shouldn’t have
deeply understood that you should try to to a restroom full of patrons at Fanny’s done that. He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t
put as much porcelain and hanging metal Chicken Shack, or the ball game, or what- passé about urinal pissing.
half-walls between piss streams as possi- ever public bathroom they happened to be The bearded man paused for a sec-
ble. An, for some reason, he hadn’t done in together. And it was true — Lionel had ond, then walked to the urinal to Lionel’s
that this time. pissed ropes back then, but he’d always right. The man smelled like mild sweat
Sitting next to someone on the bus known it was strange for his father to and sweet tobacco — like the thin cigars
or in the theatre was one thing, it was comment on it. He’d try to hold it until the neighbourhood kids smoked. He had
innocent, but pissing next to them was they got home, but he was never able to. a wallet-chain jangling from his back
certainly another. His father would tell him that that was pocket that connected to a belt loop at
If someone walked in, with him pee- the curse of having a man’s urethra cou- the front of his jeans. He kind of
ing in the middle urinal, and wanted to pled with the bladder of a Girl Scout. bounced when he unzipped, and it
pee as well (without having to aim into a A Girl Scout, he’d said that. sounded like a high school janitor laden
toilet) that person would be forced to piss Lionel wondered if he shouldn’t just heavy with keys echoing down the

FICTION
hallways. The man put his right hand on start now, if it was too late for him to And Lionel’s father was strange by most
his hip and his left hand on the wall, cre- change everything. standards, and dead by years now. And
ating a fleshy barrier between himself Then there was the quality of the suddenly, he wasn’t looking under the
and Lionel with his upper arm. Lionel bearded man’s stream. It sounded thick. bearded man’s arm, but at the bearded
wondered if this was a defense mecha- Hearty. Masculine. If Lionel had been a man’s chest and face and beard, his eyes
nism — some kind of genius deterrent to urinal talker he would have had to com- continuing upward. He stopped as the
prevent conversations in moments like ment on it. If this man had been his son man’s thick eyebrows arched over his
this. It was a smart move. he’d be damned proud of him. Plus, the piercing, blue eyes.
The man wore brown work boots sliver of water he glimpsed at the base of But this wasn’t a man. It was a boy
with the boot toes purposely worn away. the man’s urinal wasn’t the least bit yel- with a man’s height and width, and facial
There was dulling metal beneath the low. He probably made a good point to hair, and lead pipes for arms, and tattooed
brown suede. Lionel guessed the man’s stay hydrated. Probably ate foods that veins. He couldn’t have been more than
feet were probably shoulder width apart. were good for his prostate, and plenty of 30, tops. A child, really.
Lionel looked down at the black and greens. It seemed as if this man could He had hoop earrings in both of his
white checkered tiles below his running piss, would piss, forever. There was no earlobes. Not big hoops, but small hoops.
shoes. They were comfortable, but way that he got up multiple times a night What did that mean, exactly?
stained. Maybe too comfortable. He’d to urinate. No way there were piss sprin- Lionel couldn’t remember.
need a new pair. kles left in his underwear after he’d Two small hoops? It was code for
He looked confident, this man that tucked himself back in. something that Lionel didn’t understand.
stood with his shoulders leaned back and It wasn’t until the man had stopped Then just as quickly as he’d taken this
his hips pushed slightly forward. The first pissing, and shook off, and zipped up, and all in, Lionel shook his head back towards
word that came to Lionel’s mind was, turned to face Lionel, that Lionel realized the wall in front of him, his uncircum-
Regal. It was a strange word to use to what close attention he’d been giving this cised penis still in his right hand, and this
describe urinal technique, but it seemed guy — realized he’d been peeking between bearded stranger standing next to him.
fitting here. More than fitting. the man’s arm and the metal divider for The man continued to stare at him.
Regal. too long. Breathing on him. Lionel knew how guilty
Solid. Not that he was looking at anything his turning away looked. An innocent
Regal. in particular — he couldn’t have seen that man doesn’t turn away like that, not while
Proper. if he’d wanted to — he was just evaluating using the middle urinal.
Lionel was positive that this was the flow pressures from more than just an Lionel wanted nothing more than
way kings of the past had pissed—in an auditory standpoint, just appreciating this to put his shriveled penis back in his
open, yet un-sloppy, stance. He wished man’s urethral vitality. And that stance pants. But he couldn’t, because first, he
he’d pissed that way more often as a was powerful. But only Lionel’s father had to shake. And a proper shaking was
young man. He wondered if he could would understand that kind of reasoning. an endeavour at his age. He didn’t want

FICTION
the man-boy to think he was finishing knob squealing shut. A paper towel dis- deserved it. He closed his eyes around it
himself off or something. How many pensed, was torn, and was crumpled. The and waited for whatever was coming next.
shakes were considered masturbation water turned on again. The metal lid of Eventually the door to the bathroom
nowadays? What constituted a shake the garbage can slapped hard enough to slammed into the rubber grommet on the
over a jiggle over a felony offense? What keep it swinging on its hinge. tile wall and squealed shut again.
kind of message was he sending by look- Lionel jumped and screamed (a poly- Bathrooms are always tiled. Urinals
ing, or not looking, at this man right tonal high pitch scream, rising and falling are always porcelain. Grommets are
now? Was it better to say something or quickly, becoming a whimpering, sputter- always rubber.
remain silent? Didn’t a senator play ing out) as he felt the splat and ooze of a It was a long time before Lionel
footsy with someone in the stall next to wet and crumpled something hit and slop stopped shaking. A longer time before he
him once? How many earrings did that down the back of his head. Felt it slide off. opened his eyes. But no matter how long
man have? Were they big or small? Heard it splat on the linoleum. he stood there, before zipping up, he knew
Whatever became of that? Instantly, he felt stupid, knew that he there would be piss sprinkles in his under-
Lionel refused to turn from the wall. hadn’t been hurt, only scared. Not scared, wear after tucking in.
His pride wouldn’t allow it. He willed but humiliated by this bearded dragon- And that’s when he started to cry. bp
himself to pass through the wall and into man-boy throwing a wetted paper towel
wherever. at him. Still, just to make sure he wasn’t
This wasn’t anything like the other hurt, Lionel reached his fingers back to
positions he’d recently put himself in. where the balding was taking over. His
This was uncharted and unwanted terri- hand felt wetness too cold to be blood.
tory. He wished there was some way to go This was his penance for using the middle
back in time and choose the cemetery urinal, for seeking seats next to people on
over the bookstore. He felt beads of sweat buses, for wanting a hand to accidentally
sprout all over his body. The man-boy graze his in the theatre, for going to the
next to him shook his head and blew one grave and telling Ethel all about it.
last, long, hot breath through his nostrils Lionel stood there now, at the book-
like some dragon on that HBO TV show store bathroom’s middle urinal. Not turn-
everybody couldn’t get enough of. The ing. Wishing the towel had stuck to his
dragon-man-boy hunched his shoulders head so he could focus on the point of Jason Arias lives and works in Portland,
then turned and slowly walked to the pressure and not the spot of shame. OR. His debut short story collection is
sink; his wallet-chain jangling at his side “What the fuck’s wrong with you, old scheduled to be published by the end of
like a tiny broken shackle. Lionel heard man?” the dragon-man-boy said. “What 2018 through Black Bomb Books. To read
the water running behind him, the gush- the fuck?” (or listen to) more stories by Jason visit
ing stream being broken by hands, the Lionel nodded to himself. He jasonariasauthor.com.

FICTION
THE MORNING AFTER By Charlotte Van Ryn
SHE POPS A JUICY Fruit After a while, the Juicy Fruit loses is of the stallion, running free, with
to combat the taste of smoke and the sting its flavour, so she spits it out onto the nothing but the wind pushing through
of old booze settling into her unbrushed curb. She swings her arms as she walks. the long grass in the background. The
teeth. She chews and the tangy juice of She wants a cup of coffee. fourth is the stallion in a stall, biting at
spit threatens to fall from the sides of her The coffee shop has a series of the wooden door. The last is of the stal-
mouth as she smiles. The sun has only just paintings on the wall. In the first, a black lion on the ground, ropes tied around its
started to rise, the sky still blue and purple stallion is being chased by a pick up truck legs, binding them together, cowboys all
just like the two little bruises that have full of cowboys standing up in the back, around. She gets her coffee, puts lots of
formed below her belly button, the lassos out. The second is of the same cream and sugar into it.
imprint of Jake’s knobby hip bones as he stallion with a harness on its head, rear- She knows she is bleeding into the
got on top last night with his eyes closed. ing up, the rope tied to a fence. Another crotch of Jake’s prim prom tuxedo as she

FICTION
walks. Yesterday her mother had done be better. They started talking over their Fuck that hard dick, you like that? he’d
her makeup, put hot curlers into her chicken breast and salad. Turns out said, even though he was the one doing
hair. Her father had put on a nice shirt Nicky was a rock climber, was going to the fucking. You like that? Your pussy is
and bought a hundred dollar bottle of Yellowstone with his club on a five-day so wet. His voice was muffled, dug into
champagne for her and Jake. He looked climb. He talked about his club, people the pillow. His chin rested on her shoul-
into Jake’s eyes and smiled as their from all over the city, mostly in their 20s der. She looked up at the ceiling. Earlier
glasses clinked. Here’s to your special day. and very cool folks. that day she had taken all the glow-in-
Then they all got into Daddy’s car and Fuck, she thought, as Jake poured the-dark stars down from the ceiling of
drove to the hotel. half a flask of vodka into his orange her bedroom. The pussy is soft the sun
She knows there is no going back soda. is hot the dick is hard the water is wet
from womanhood now, and for that she Nicky smiled as he talked about the the rocks are hard the air is dry, the sex
is glad. She knows that if she doesn’t sunsets on the flank of Mount had not felt good at all.
make it back home before six am, her Washington. She digs into her backpack and pulls
dad will wake up and find out and he Her mother had given her 50 bucks out the champagne and pops it. The cork
won’t be able to look at her. But she’s of “just in case” cash. Just in case she skyrockets into the middle of the pond,
not going home. Jake’s tux fits her per- might need to halt the conception of a dunks into the water, bobs up and down.
fectly. She sips her coffee out on the child. Just in case she might want to eat She reads the directions for the pills —
sidewalk and decides her plans for the some cookie dough from the tube. She two now, two later. She takes the dosage
day. She’s going to find a pond and dip buys double chocolate chunk and asks into her palm, raises the bottle and the
her feet in it, be hot and cold at the the teller to cut the top for her, she does pills up over her head. She catches sight
same time. not need a bag. of her reflection in the water and knows
She finishes her coffee and steps She can only eat half the tube, she looks good. Cheers, she says, to the
into a pharmacy, goes to the back, buys chucks the rest out. She’s skipping a bit morning after. bp
a package of Plan B. as she walks, is lighter now that her
All the girls had bought their cherry has popped. The black jacket of
dresses, the boys only rented their tux- the suit still smells like him. But she
edos. Jake’s was a rental, it was due back knows her odour is stronger than his, so
today, but he is going to have to chase she starts to run. Sweat pours down her
her down if he wants it back. She puts face, her day-old makeup runs into her
the pills into her backpack and heads eyes and stings. It tastes bad.
toward the park. Jake convinced his father to put his
Her dress would’ve been blue, but credit card down for the hotel room for
Kate’s dress was blue. Then she picked the after party. When she’d woken up that
out a white one in the store, but her morning she looked at his little naked
mother said no no no, white is for your butt peeping from under the covers. She
wedding day. Her shoes were black and took his tux and loafers into the bath-
her dress was red, tight. room and put them on, leaving him
The class of 2016 sat down for a nothing but her red dress and high heels.
meal. She sat at a round table beside She poked her head into the mini bar,
Jake out of obligation. She watched him, saw the mini bottle of champagne he’d
head shaved close to the scalp, and told her not to take the night before,
remembered when he’d arrived at her because his dad wouldn’t pay for it. Now Charlotte Van Ryn is a fiction writer
school in grade six. She remembered she can hear it slosh back and fourth in who attended the University of King’s
how he’d gotten a boner in gym class her backpack. She arrives at the pond, College in Halifax. In 2016, she won the
and how he’d told everybody that his finds a nice flat rock to sit down on. Blodwyn Memorial Prize for short
brother was in the Christian rock band There are stripes of sweat where the fiction, and holds a Letter of Distinction
Switchfoot. He’d run around, jumping straps of her backpack were resting on from writer David Adams Richards after
off the stumps of the trees in the play- her shoulders. She takes the jacket off a mentorship through the Humber
ground they’d cut down in the summer and dips it into the cool water, puts it School of Writers. Charlotte’s short story
singing “Dare You to Move.” back on with a sigh of relief. She rolls the “Midol” was long listed in Broken Pencil
On her other side at the table sat pant legs up and puts her feet in. Magazine’s Indie Writers’ Deathmatch
Nicky Malvern. In grade four Nicky Her legs make ripples that travel all competition in 2018. She is the co-host
didn’t want to be called Nicky any more, through the pond. Nobody else is of a popular reading series, the Listening
he told the teachers and the whole class, around. She swishes her legs back and Party, in Toronto, where she currently
he was Nick now, even Nicholas would fourth and wiggles her submerged toes. lives and works.

SECTION HEADER
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ZINE PHILOSOPHY
Community Zines as a Response to Exclusion

by the Downtown Eastside Women’s Art Collective
THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE capture the diversity of cre-

Women’s Art Collective (DEWAC) is a volun- atives making art in
teer-run, arts-based organization that serves Va n c o u v e r ’s D o w n t o w n
trans and cis women, two-spirit, and non-bi- Eastside. Each successful sub-
nary folks in Vancouver’s Eastside. By organiz- mission is awarded $25, and
ing biweekly workshops at the Carnegie the artists receive free copies
Community Centre, our goal is to connect and of the zine for their own use.
inspire individuals in a non-hierarchical and Zine making has thus
non-judgmental space, and to build a stronger become an integral part of our
community through art. work. Since starting our zine,
We started DEWAC five years ago in we have learned to appreciate
response to service gaps we saw in the commu- the medium as a multi-faceted tool. Zines provide a low-cost, acces-
nity. Although there are several wonderful cre- sible outlet for people to express their unique opinions, stories, and
ative spaces for folks living and working in the lived experiences. Moreover, we have seen the way in which self-pub-
Downtown Eastside, few are womxn-centred, lishing can bolster the self-esteem of artists, and empower individ-
or offer publishing opportunities. The Carnegie uals to continue to create.
Community Centre, in particular, is dispropor- We always saw zine making as being inherently political. Our
tionately male-dominated and, because of this, first exposure to zines and zine culture was within feminist circles
we felt it was necessary to establish a low-bar- and DIY spaces. Here, self-publishing was inextricably tied to the
rier haven that focuses on the creative needs of activism of those who shared similar perspectives to us, and it was
women and non-binary folks. Beyond providing used to push a specific political agenda. In Vancouver, zine making
an artistic outlet for community members, we continues to be a hugely influential outlet for artists, writers, and
also wanted to give people the opportunity to advocates, with spaces like Spartacus Books and Lucky’s Comics
showcase their work and build connections supporting the work of local zine makers, and community events
with other artists. It is our hope that by culti- designed to celebrate self-publishing.
vating these artistic networks, DEWAC may Community zine making and collaborative publishing, in par-
open up future opportunities and collabora- ticular, are special processes, because they give individuals equal
tions for our members. opportunities to share their own voice. In our experience, zines can
In recent years, we expanded our project be made without having to buy expensive materials, technical acu-
to include an annual zine. The Downtown men, or rent out scarce gallery space. In this way, zine making crosses
Eastiside Women’s Art Collective (DEWAC) socioeconomic lines— and allows individuals, regardless of class,
Zine showcases and circulates the visual and education or privilege, to make connections, build community, and
written works produced by DEWAC artists and share their work with relative ease. Zine making also provides a
Eastside community members. The work fea- financial opportunity for artists, without too great of an upfront cost.
tured is a wide range of dynamic pieces, that Our zine project focuses on the question of how to transcend
established art spaces so that everyone has equal opportunity to
participate. We want to illuminate the high quality of artwork
being produced by women and non-binary artists in the
Downtown Eastside. Financial constraints and a lack of oppor-
tunity can make it difficult for some DEWAC members to share
their work with a wider audience, so our goal is to foster space
for this to happen.
Moving forward, our hope is to continue to create oppor-
tunities for femme and non-binary artists to share their work
through self-publishing. In our view, DEWAC has illuminated
the importance of community spaces for creatives, and support-
ing artistic networks. If you have questions about DEWAC,
would like to buy a copy of our latest zine, or get involved, please
contact us at [email protected]. bp

Artwork by Emma Bickell, Independent Illustration Student
Imagination and creativity matter.
Our programs in creative arts and animation combine thinking and creating,
and challenge you to refine your talent. With a strong focus on honing your
craft, you’ll graduate ready to take on the industry.
• 3D Animation • Game Art & Animation • Independent Songwriting &

• Acting for Camera & Voice • Graphic Design Performance
• Animation • Independent Illustration • Interactive Media Design
• Art Fundamentals • Independent Music • Photography
• Documentary Filmmaking Production • Visual Effects for Film &
Institute Television
LEARN MORE
senecacollege.ca/create

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Global Zine Report: Dispatches From Zines in Every Hemisphere!

Plus: Urinal Fiction, Communist Zine Archives and More!

THE MAGAZINE OF ZINE CULTURE AND THE INDEPENDENT ARTS

Broken Pencil ISSUE 81

FALL 2018 1 BROKEN PENCIL

Editor: Jonathan Valelly ([email protected]) CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTING TO BROKEN PENCIL

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EVERY DAY I WAKE UP

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Coffee People Zine Museum of Symmetry

Zines and coffee: a classic, undeniable

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Burgomasterpiece Theatre by Cullen and Burgomaster

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of the hardcore and punk community,” Wawancara says. “What

INDONESIA to be able to make our own is actually so important.”

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Find La Maleta Fanzinera on

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CHINA to document them by interviewing the people

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comparatively huge number of enquiries ... from

AUSTRALIA is a zine and what is an artist book,” Davidson

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Whess Harman is a mixed

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FROM Are You My Home? BY Rachel Jackson

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I picked up lots of awesome zines at the

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involuntary servitude, except as a pun- a surprisingly vibrant zine publishing

FROM The VENT 2.0 EDITED BY Piankhi Squabblez

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On Black Jewelz, B.G. (Demetrius

FROM 279 BY Alecia Gatlin

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FROM Hey! You! BY Blake Lewis

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