Advocates hope new Twin Cities zine fest kindles interest in queer, trans art
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Growing up as a young transgender person in Milwaukee, Aiden Bettine felt himself constantly searching for community. While looking for representation, he stumbled upon his first classic zine.
Zines — small, self-published magazines — have been in circulation for nearly 100 years, ranging on topics from activism, horror movies, punk music and more. Bettine was absorbed by them, and that led to his future career as an archivist and historian.
“The queer community has always been producing resources and information and sharing through print with each other,” he said about zines. “It is a critical, continued piece of queer history. We print to build community and find each other. Mainstream media wasn’t doing that, and maybe still is not doing that very well.”
Bettine now serves as curator of the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota and cofounder of Late Night Copies, a Minneapolis-based micro press.
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While sifting through the Tretter Collection, Bettine said one thing was clear: The archive held lots of queer zines that had likely gone unseen for years.
In an effort to do more public programming and welcome people into the space, he decided to launch the first Midwest Queer & Trans Zine Fest. It will debut Oct 21 and 22, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis.
But it won’t just be zines in possession of the collection on display, Bettine opened submissions up to all artists in the Midwest. From Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota, more than 70 vendors will be present.
It was important to Bettine that the space wasn’t just Minneapolis creators. He wanted to extend the invitation to creators in the Midwest that often feel overlooked.
Some familiar Minneapolis names such as Dykes 2 Watch Out 4, a group who focuses on pleasure and gay and sexual liberation and Archie Bongiovanni, a comic artist and illustrator and creator of “A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them pronouns” will be present.
New names to the area will too, like Shark & Toad, an art partnership between Kate Doolittle and Nix Slater-Scott in Iowa City, Iowa, who highlight the transgender experience and social justice in their zines and Fox Graham of Chicago, a cartoonist illustrator who explores interpersonal relationship in LGBTQ+ characters.
“Minneapolis has a wonderful community and many queer makers, but it was a priority to ask how we make it as geographically diverse as possible,” Bettine said. “Although all zine fests have queer and trans vendors, not all zine fests are queer. There is something really special when you have a zine fest that prioritizes queer and trans makers.”
While the Twin Cities is home to many queer artists, Bettine said he does notice a gap when it comes to stores that sell zines locally. There are some available at Moon Palace Books and Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis, but he feels like a dedicated zine store is overdue.
For artists like allison anne, the fest will serve as another way to spread their work, but also touch on important issues that affect the LGBTQ+ community.
anne, a founding member of the Twin Cities Collage Collective, has four zines debuting at the fest: FRUITING BODY // CUT-LINE, SOFT SUTURES #2, PANDEMIC PLANNING WITH GEMINI HOUSE and a reprinting of GRAVEYARD OF PROPHECY OR TWO.
FRUITING BODY // CUT-LINE is about anne’s recent experience having a hysterectomy in their late 30s and endometriosis. It was challenging for them to find representation online written by LGBTQ+ people.
“I found folks with a more binary alignment talking about it from the perspective of women’s health, which is super important, but not as relevant for me. I thought maybe I should write something about my experiences from a nonbinary perspective,” they said. “I have been trying to get help with endometriosis for a very long time, and it has definitely played into my relationship with gender. Women’s health is very important to me, I just happen to not be a woman.”
Like Bettine, anne entered zine culture in adolescence. In the 1990s they made e-zines on the World Wide Web since physical printing was expensive.
Being a multidisciplinary artist, many mediums interest anne but with zines, they can combine their passion of collage, writing and graphic design. For the last three years, they have offered a collage zine monthly subscription with readers across the world.
“I really just wanted to find a place where I could express myself and feel like I belonged,” anne said.
To learn more about the artists at the fest, explore the Instagram page here. Masks are required at the event, as well as up-to-date vaccination status for all attendees or proof of a negative COVID test within 72 hours.
