Whew. What an amazing whirlwind of a weekend! Helping 12 teens copy and sell their zines (and buttons and original music and comics) while also slinging my own zines was quite a task. Definitely couldn’t have done it without my co-adult-facilitator and my kid’s Aunt.

There was so much love in the room all weekend and so much joy. I’m pretty sure most of us bought and traded as many zines as we sold, ha. I’m so glad that we got to participate. Now that they know what to expect, I’m sure they will have even more ideas for next year.

The veteran zine-makers were so gracious and encouraging. I think the most magical times were when browsing parents intuitively left their kiddos with us to make zines (on the stage behind us) while they browsed. Truly a wonderful weekend. I’m both exhausted and energized.

This weekend is the Philly Zine Fest. I will be slinging my own zines and volumes 1-2 of Peppermint Alley Press AND in addition, this will be the debut zine fest for the Philly Teen Zine Collective. They have been busily making zines for months, both on their own and in our group.

Pauline and I have been making zines with the classes that we facilitate for a long time and of course we’ve been taking kids to Zine Fests for longer than that. But after reading First Rule of Punk by Celia Perez, the zine idea really took off. I’m hoping they have a lot of fun this weekend and we are so grateful to the Philly Zine Fest for hosting our group!