nostalgia & new stuff
Dear You—
I’m having hella nostalgia this weekend. It’s KC Zine Con (main page here, direct link to my table here) & of course it’s all virtual this year. I browsed through the virtual tables, and bought a few zines (and bookmarked a few others), even (virtually) reconnected with one of my oldest zine pals. There was a Zoom meet-up for tablers last night, but I didn’t attend. I’m an extrovert, so this CoViD thing has been rough for me, but I’ve discovered that I don’t like Zoom chats. They aren’t the kind of socializing that energizes me. They’re exhausting and kind of boring and sad. I never liked talking on the phone that much, but at this point I’d rather have a phone conversation than a Zoom chat.
Anyway. The nostalgia. Visions of zine fests past dancing in my head and all that. Bowling Green & Chicago & Milwaukee & Madison & Kenosha & San Francisco & Long Beach. Zine fest crushes & drunken bowling & hugging old pals & meeting long-time heroes &... I’m missing all the good times & I’m even missing the zine fests where I hardly sold anything & just sat behind my table feeling awkward. Cuz at least I was out in the world, among people.
In other sad/nostalgia-inducing news, I heard that The Uptown in Oakland closed their doors permanently as of yesterday. The night my partner and I met, we saw the Hubba Hubba Revue there & then danced together post-show, out on the back patio; we frequented The Uptown for the two years we lived in Oakland together. I’ll be metaphorically pouring one out for The Uptown tonight.
But the main point of this letter is to let you know what’s going on with me/my zines, etc. In my Etsy shop, I’ve restocked a few of my zines from the past couple years, so if you missed out on Reckless Chants 24.5 or 25, or the Heart-Shaped Box/She Walks On Me mini-zine, now’s your chance to snag those. I've also got a discount going on for all Bone & Ink Press titles in the shop from now through September 30, so now's a good time to snatch up some of those. And...drumroll please...I have a brand-new zine out!
no man born (with a living soul) b/w as much as you can (you should) features two of my recent poems. They are both "fanzine poems" (a poetic form I've been developing), and both reference Joe Strummer/The Clash (amongst other things). On what would have been Joe Strummer's 68th birthday, I started putting them together into a zine. Even better: the zine comes in a sleeve like a 7" record, and every copy comes with a download code for the spoken word versions of the poems.
You can buy the print version here. If you just want the audio + a .pdf copy of the zine, that's up on Bandcamp.
I'm also open to trades, and I have 10 copies set aside for people who make a donation of $8 or more to either Save Our Stages/NIVA (either the organization itself or one of your favorite venues that is currently accepting donations) or the Milwaukee Freedom Fund. (For trades or donations, email me first to make sure I still have copies available. Then, if you're doing the donation, just send me a screenshot of your receipt along with your address.)
That's it, for now. Stay safe. Stay rad.
as much as you can (you should),
Jessie Lynn McMains