Joe Bielecki: I think the first thing we need to define is what a zine is for anyone who doesn't know, or maybe someone who thinks they know and maybe the definition has changed since they were popular in the 80s or whenever they were less popular.
Sara Chittenden" Oh, for sure. And I think that's such a great question to start with. It's, everyone might give you a different answer, like you said. For me, with my experience with zine fest and also studying zines academically, I see a zine as any sort of self-published booklet. And that's even loose because it doesn't have to necessarily be in booklet form, but something you made yourself that's not published through a publishing company. Typically you're producing at home or a local printer or just ordering it from Staples. And it's something about the length of a magazine. So that could be four pages or 20 pages. Once you start getting it more into like professional binding or things that are like book length, that's when we start to get out of zine territory in my opinion. But otherwise the content can be anything, fiction, nonfiction, illustration, photography, fandom things. There really isn't any sort of stipulation on content.
JB: That makes sense and I accept your definition. So the Grand Rapids Zine Fest has been going for a couple of years and I'm seeing on the website here it's August 16 at Fountain Street Church.
SC: Yes, from noon to six.
JB: And it's free to the public, that correct?
SC: Yes, it's always free for anyone to attend.
JB: What kind of things can we expect to see at the Zine Fest this year?
SC: So the Zine Fest, it's grown over the years starting with just a couple dozen tablers and probably hundred attendees. Now you can expect around 50 different tablers, tablers meeting artists, as well as around, usually we get around 400 or 500 attendees. It's a mix of local and out of city and out of state folks. We also have an international applicant and someone who was accepted this year. Logistically, I put a cap so it's at least 50 % people from Michigan to ensure there's good like local artists representation. This year we have man, any genre you could think of. You know, this is we use a lottery style application system. So people are chosen randomly. So it's always sort of a grab bag of what we see, but there's also things that are sort of popular in culture right now that you'll likely see a lot of content about. Last year, randomly, a lot of the zines were about like cryptids. And that just happened to be a theme that sprung up. This year, you can expect zines about poetry, people doing comics. They might be fiction comics or autobiographical comics, zines about cooking and recipes, poetry, photography, things like mutual aid. The Grand Rapids Trans Foundation is tabling this year. And a lot of just really cool local, we might call like, quirky art, in addition to that too, people bring posters and pinback buttons, stickers. Some people bring things they've knitted, like little plushies. Usually there's a lot of like tabletop content if you're into like D&D. There's usually a lot of D&D adjacent things or people making zines that are also games you can play.
JB: And you mentioned that it's a lottery process. Can you explain a little bit more how you choose who gets to table?
SC: Yes. So it's changed over the years. I've been with the Fest since the first year. It started in 2013 and things have changed over the years. It used to be first come first serve where applications opened. And if you were able to sign up right away, you probably got a spot until all the spots were filled. Probably in the last five years or so, I've become the sole organizer. So it's just me, and I've moved to this lottery style so there's less urgency. So if you're at work or you just can't get to a computer and you're not able to apply right away, you still have a chance to get into the fest. So basically I keep applications open for a couple of weeks in the spring, applications close, I boot up a random number generator and every application is on this big spreadsheet I have and I start clicking that random number generator and accepting applications that come up. The only exceptions are for sponsors, which there's like usually one or two and then as well as the poster artist. So whoever is doing the art for the poster that year is guaranteed a spot at the fest.
JB: Who did the poster art this year?
SC: So this year it's someone named Lane Leo, also known as Cloud KBD. They use they them pronouns and they do a lot of very fun sort of nature inspired art. So our poster this year features sort of like a dandelion motif.
And those will be sold at the Fest as well from a local publisher called Issue Press, donates RisoGraph printed posters every year for us to sell.
JB: And what sponsors do you have this year?
SC: Yeah. So this year we have Issue Press. George, who runs Issue Press, donates our posters every year and they're beautifully printed. Also Fountain Street Church itself is a sponsor. We've found having them, I say we, it is me, using them for the past couple years and they've been great. Their venue is very accessible, it's air conditioned, and they're just a great partner. And then also the Center for Cartoon Studies, which is a center that you can take classes at. They even offer a degree in cartooning. And they're also sponsoring the Fest this year.
JB: Wonderful. One more time, where can people learn more about the Zine Fest?
SC: So our website is grzinefest.com. Also, if you just Google Grand Rapids Zine Fest, it should come right up. And I'm on most social media, I will say our Instagram is definitely the most active. And if you want to see what people are going to be bringing to Zine Fest, a lot of people will be posting about on Instagram, and I always repost those on the Instagram account. So usually it's fun to kind of get a little glimpse at what people will be bringing.
JB: Great. Thank you, Sarah.
SC: Awesome. Thank you so much.
