A way into queer publishing that starts with curiosity, not a collector’s budget.

An uneven fold. A joke that assumes you’ll get it. A page someone clearly needed to make, whether or not anyone had asked for it.

That’s a good spirit in which to approach queer zines: small, self-published works made from queer lives, interests and perspectives. They can hold writing, drawings, photographs or combinations of all three. You don’t need to know the right bands, own a rare first edition or arrive with a theory of publishing. Start by finding something you want to read.

What is a queer zine?

Think of a zine as a publication whose maker gets to decide what belongs inside. A personal essay can sit beside a comic; a serious argument can share space with a very unserious drawing.

In a GLBT Historical Society interview about queer zines, scholar Margaret Galvan describes a form that embraces DIY production rather than requiring the schedules and distribution of professional publishing. She also emphasizes the communities around the pages, including publications that reviewed and listed other zines.

The useful question is less “Does this look like a proper magazine?” and more “Who made this, and who did they hope would find it?”

A recommendation could become a connection

One revealing example is Larry-Bob Roberts’s Holy Titclamps. Galvan explains that its reviews of other queer zines eventually became a separate publication, Queer Zine Explosion. While researching Roberts’s collection, she found personal letters tucked inside publications sent for review. The recommendation network left a paper trail of actual relationships. Read Galvan’s account.

There’s something worth borrowing from that approach to discovery. Follow a recommendation because somebody cared enough to make it. See where their taste meets yours, and where it very much doesn’t. A publication doesn’t have to speak for every queer person to make one reader feel addressed.

Where to read queer zines online

You can begin with a browser and an unhurried half hour. These are two different routes into the material.

For zines themselves: QZAP

The Queer Zine Archive Project, launched in November 2003, preserves queer zines and makes them accessible online. Its collection offers a starting point for exploring the publications rather than only reading about them.

Try a place, a year or an interest as your first search: Toronto, 1996 or queercore are examples the archive itself suggests. Its search help explains how linked information on a record can lead to related material, such as other zines made in the same city. Some metadata links may be incomplete, so try the search box if a trail stops.

Choose one issue before opening twelve more tabs. Read the maker’s introduction, then whatever catches your eye. Make a note of another title mentioned inside. Let that be your next stop.

For the wider picture: Empowerment in Print

The GLBT Historical Society’s Empowerment in Print online exhibition explores Northern California LGBTQ periodicals from the 1940s through the 2000s. It includes newspapers, newsletters and magazines as well as zines, so it’s useful for seeing how different kinds of publishing sit alongside one another.

Look for Anything That Moves, a bisexual publication, and Fat Girl, a zine centered on fat lesbian lives. Their inclusion makes the range tangible: queer print culture contains many audiences, concerns and ways of describing oneself. The original museum exhibition ran in 2018; this is its online presentation, available to explore from home.

Read the details around the story

Here’s a small exercise for your first issue. Notice three things: who the maker addresses, what they recommend, and how the page is arranged.

Does the opening welcome a stranger, or assume you’re already part of the conversation? Does a review make you curious about an unfamiliar artist? Does handwriting change the way you hear a sentence? These questions give you more to work with than deciding whether the cover would look good on your wall.

Keep the date in view, too. An old address or event listing belongs to the issue’s moment; it isn’t a current invitation. Read the maker’s language in context rather than treating one publication as a guide to everyone’s identity today.

For another route into queer image-making, explore our introduction to photographer Vincent Keith. Bring the same curiosity about who is looking, who is pictured and what draws you in.

Leave room for your own page

If reading makes you want to try making something, keep the first idea small. A page about a song you keep returning to. A drawing of an outfit that changed how you felt. A short list of places where you’ve felt welcome.

Use your own words and images, give it a title, and decide who you want to share it with. You can think about copies later. First, make something you’d be pleased to put into a friend’s hands.

What would you put on the first page of your own zine?

Featured illustration generated with AI for WOOFIN. The booklets are conceptual, not reproductions of historical publications.