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!

Khartoum Place – an interview with Frisson

How did you get into making zines?
I got into making zines years ago as a way to promote live music shows. I hand-drew the zines on A4 pages, photocopied them (black and white), and folded or cut and stapled them into tiny booklets. Sometimes I also gave them out in little goodie bags at the shows. This time around I got into zine-making for different reasons. I started writing short stories late last year, and after a couple of months went by without anyone publishing them I decided to start publishing them myself! These days I’m still illustrating the zines, but I’m getting them made through Blurb rather than having to do all that photocopying and stapling. Since I released my first zine I have had a story or two published, but I still intend to release a zine every 2 – 3 months, and I’m currently working on the illustrations for my second one.

Can you give us a short bio about you?
I studied creative writing at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. I love cats and coffee.

We have read the zine Khartoum Place and loved it. In your words could you please explain to us why you decided to make it and publish it?
Thank you! I have discovered that I really enjoy weaving local, historical elements into my stories. Khartoum Place is a dark but loveable little square in Auckland’s CBD. The square’s mural, an admittedly slightly homely but very historically important memorial to women’s suffrage, is constantly under threat from people who think it’s ugly and want to remove it. The idea of an art historian trying to save the mural, her career and her love affair came to me in a flash while I was waiting for someone to turn up to a work meeting one day.

Once it was out there, did you get any unexpected reactions?
I posted it off to what seemed to me to be New Zealand’s major libraries. I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I’m thrilled that the Wellington and Christchurch Libraries have been in touch, but I’m a bit disappointed in Auckland Library. I keep sneaking in to see if I can find it their zine collection, but I haven’t seen it in there so far…

I also started a Facebook page and a website, and I’ve have some really nice comments coming through from those.

You say your zines are a New Years resolution, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
I’d been writing stories for a while and not getting them published, and the news had broken about Sport losing it’s funding, and I literally woke up on New Year’s Day and thought “I’m going to start a new journal!” So I sat down and mapped out my first issue, and it looked great! But then I thought, ‘wait a minute, this is a lot of work on top of a full time job, and I’m putting myself in a curatorial role and not actually doing what I enjoy, which is writing stories and drawing pictures’. So I decided to start a series of zines under the name Frisson.

What’s on your zine to-do list?
I intend to release a new issue every 2 – 3 months. But most importantly I’d like to connect with other zine makers, so I’m looking forward to checking out a Zine Fest or two.

What would you say to other zine makers?
I wasn’t sure how people would react to the fact that I got my zines made through Blurb rather than laboriously hand-crafting each one. That kind of carry-on was fine for me back when I was working part time in vintage stores and playing in bands. Now that I’m a wage slave getting up at 5.30am in the morning in order to find the time to write stories, I highly recommend outsourcing the production side (unless of course that’s your passion).

Do you have any music/zines/blogs recommendations?
Yes, I really like the New Zealand zine review. They’ve introduced me to all sorts of amazing things.

I’ve also found your blog really helpful. My next zine will have an ISBN number!

An Audience with Ayano Takeuchi

Hi Ayano, thank you for letting us interview you. I have noticed that your zine was selected for Space Invaders (current NGA gallery exhibition), that is really impressive Ayano, congratulations! First of all, we would like to learn a little bit about you, what you like doing? What do you like learning about?

Hi Carla, and thanks. I’ve always liked drawing as a child as it’s something that I still do a bit of in my spare time. I am quite curious and like to learn about c22anything from why mozzie bites itch to Victorian architecture but at the moment I’m interested in Henri Matisse and plan to go the Matisse exhibition in Brisbane at the Gallery of Modern Art. I also really want to see Milford Sound and want to trek in that area too.

Most zine makers start making zines after finding zines they really like or after attending zine festivals. Was this the case for you? How did you first learn about zines? When did you become a zine maker?

My friend made his own little zine and stocked it at Sticky Institute in Melbourne. That was when I was first introduced to zines. I felt a handmade love and individual voice to the works there and naturally wondered if anybody would like my work as well.
Continue reading “An Audience with Ayano Takeuchi”

An Audience with Sarah from 1/2

 Hi Sarah, how are you today? Thank you for giving us the opportunity to contact you and ask you questions about your work. I have found your zine ½ at the library and it caught my attention because of how mysterious the cover lcoverooks. I soon realised it is a really well made zine with a lot of content.

Hi Carla, thanks! I first came across zines when my housemate brought some home from Sticky Institute, a zine distro in Melbourne. I really liked them, so I started visiting Sticky a lot, and reading lots of zines, then I thought it would be fun to make my own.

Why do you think zines are important and why do people need to keep making them?

I love that zines are completely non-commercial; people just make them for the joy of it. The writing can be terrible and it doesn’t matter. So to me that’s important. Having this accessible medium where people can express whatever they want and there’s no censorship, no editor, no sponsorship or commercial stakeholders… it doesn’t need to attract advertising. A zine can never be colonised by advertising because then it would cease to be a zine. People need to keep making zines so that we can share stories and ideas that aren’t found elsewhere.

Continue reading “An Audience with Sarah from 1/2”