The Zine Machine is at Arapaki!

Image of the Zine Machine at Arapaki Library

Image of the Zine Machine at Arapaki Library

The Lucky Drop Zine Machine is back, this time you can find it at our Arapaki Manners Street branch! This little zine machine will be at Arapaki for the next eight months, before heading on to the next destination in its grand tour of our library branches.


Photo of Zine Machine

The Lucky Drop is a vending machine, run by the local zine organisation Wellington Zinefest, which sells zines made by local Wellington zine-makers. The zines are priced between $1 – $5, and are sold in A6 and A7 sizes. If you are interested in having your zines stocked in the machine, please contact Wellington Zinefest on their site: https://www.wellingtonzinefest.com/luckydrop

Every time the Lucky Drop changes location, it gets a shiny new look! This time it has been painted by Jewelia Howard (@glaciars), who has several of her zines for sale in the machine. Jewelia is an artist and creator based in Wellington. Her work is mainly focused on painting, drawing and digital creation, though she also enjoys experimenting with new mediums and trying different things. Jewelia is active in the New Zealand zine community and a member of the board of Wellington Zinefest. Her work mainly focuses on themes of nature, magic and folklore, with the occasional pop culture thrown in.”

Art by Jewelia Howard Painted on zine machine


As well as the Lucky Drop Zine Machine, Arapaki is also home to the largest zine lending collection in the Wellington City Library network. Our Newtown  and He Matapihi Molesworth Library branches also have zine lending collections. Our zines are free to borrow for three weeks, and can be renewed for another three weeks.

So what are you waiting for? Visit Arapaki today to read a zine or buy a zine! The Lucky Drop is the place to get your zine fix if you want to take them home forever!

 

We want your zines!

Are you a zinemaker? Or perhaps you got creative during lockdown and made a quaranzine? Here at Wellington City Libraries we have lending zine collections at three of our branches: Newtown, Arapaki on Manners, and He Matapihi Molesworth Library. We are happy to take donations of zines for these collections, especially if you made a quaranzine during lockdown. A combination of “quarantine” and “zine”, quaranzines are creative expressions of people’s thoughts and feelings experienced during lockdown.

If you do want to donate a zine, then please drop your donation into any of our branch libraries. It will then get sent to be processed with our zine stickers and added into our catalogue, before joining the zine collection at one of our three libraries.

Zines come to Arapaki Manners Library

Our CBD branch, Arapaki Manners Library on 12 Manners Street, now has a zine collection! Zines are self-published and independently produced print publications. Zine (pronounced “zeen”) comes from the words “magazine” and “fanzine”. Zines come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be handwritten, or computer-printed, and are made by people of all ages. Zines come bound in different ways: some have bindings like books and even ISBN numbers, whereas others will be stitched or stapled together.

The zines are free to borrow, and are issued for three weeks, just like books! Most of the zines in Arapaki’s collection are brand new, and were acquired at the Wellington Zinefest held in November of last year. Nearly all the zines are written by local New Zealand authors and produced in New Zealand.

Our zines are loosely categorised into 6 topics identified by coloured dots on the covers: Comics are orange; Literature, such as poems and stories are green; Personal zines, about the author and their life, are blue; Art zines featuring drawings, photography, etc, are yellow; DIY zines about how to make or do things are black; and lastly, zines about politics, history, and everything else are white.

We also have zine collections at our Newtown and He Matapihi Molesworth branches. So check them all out and get borrowing today!