ABQ Zine Fest showcases ama-zine artists
October 3, 2022 - John Scott
This past Saturday, Oct. 1 marked the 11th annual ABQ Zine Fest, hosted at the Sanitary Tortilla Factory in downtown Albuquerque. Founded by Mayra Errin Jones, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in dramatic writing at the University of New Mexico, and co-produced by Liza Bley, the event served as a chance for local artists to showcase their handmade crafts amongst a crowd of artistic community members and newcomers alike.
The word “zine” comes from a shortening of “magazine,” and can constitute a multitude of different interdisciplinary conceptions. Typically, zines are small booklets of original work created and copied by an artist for distribution.
“Zines are self-published works,” Errin Jones said. “So, zines can be anything from a per-zine — a personal zine — could be a travel log, could be anything. And then a zine fest is a gathering of people who write zines and they can be traded, sold, shared.”
Errin Jones was inspired to start ABQ Zine Fest after attending a number of different zine fests across the country. Given her experience producing her own work as a theater artist, Errin Jones already had a sense of what she wanted to do for ABQ Zine Fest, with Albquerque providing a perfect location.
“Albuquerque has a strong past in self-published works and anarchist culture and things like that. So ABQ Zine Fest aims to continue that DIY spirit in a literary sense … Albuquerque is a great place to experiment and try new things. And Albuquerque did not have a zine fest before and had zinesters who were writing all over town and things like that. But there wasn't a central place to experience zine culture, the kind of things that happen at zine fest,” Errin Jones said.
