The 10th Annual Richmond Zine Fest will draw hundreds of zinesters this weekend. The event allows local and national zine-makers, indie publishers, and distributors to gather to buy, sell, trade their small, independent press publications.
The 10th Annual Richmond Zine Fest will draw hundreds of zinesters this weekend. The event allows local and national zine-makers, indie publishers, and distributors to gather to buy, sell, trade their small, independent press publications.
Celina Williams, Co-Coordinator of Zine Fest, had a huge part in landing the new venue. Williams has been a part of Zine Fest since its inception. She was involved during her undergrad years at VCU and continued to stay with the festival and help it grow to what it is today.
“We went from struggling to find one permanent spot that was a perfect fit for Zine Fest,” said Williams. “For years it just felt like Diversity would be the best home for it, but it was a struggle to raise the money all the time to be there.”
Despite efforts to raise funds, it’s grown tremendously since it started. According to Williams, the first zine fest in Richmond saw 14 people and this year’s Zine Fest will have 120 people tabling at the event.
As a librarian at Ginter Park Librarian, Williams decided to approach Richmond Public Library on a whim last year after they had remodeled a large auditorium space in the basement of the library. According to Williams, Richmond Public Library is a perfect match because it benefits them both.
“They were like, ‘Yes, yes! Please come here and you can do it for free because it’s very mutually beneficial,’” said Williams. “We get people through their doors and in a library stats are important and for us not having to pay rent has given us a lot more freedom.”
In being able to have a free space, Zine Fest is very excited to have a new program this year to make the festival more inclusive, by providing print stipends to POC + LGBTQ.
“It’s been like a dream that we’ve always had to create something that’s like encouraging for POC and LGBTQ and people who are struggling to get by and wanted to make a zine,” said Williams. “We were able to offer stipends to several people who had zine ideas and just needed some money to help with the printing costs, and it was a really awesome thing that I was happy we could offer because zine making and a lot of zine fests are very white-dominated spaces.”
This year Richmond Zine Fest provided 18 print stipends to local and national zine projects proposed by POC and LGBTQ zine-makers, many of which will be tabling at this year’s fest.
Richmond Zine Fest has a made it a priority to find a way to open the festival to more than just cisgendered white men and are really happy to start the process in having outreach, to make it easier for POC zinesters to enter this space.
“We’ve been looking at ways to improve that over the last year,” said Williams. “I’m most excited to see that and hopefully there will be more positive change in that direction. We’ve recieved a lot of positive feedback and hopefully more zine fests will look into doing something like that.”
Fellow Co-Coordinator Brian Baynes said that while Richmond may not be as large as other zine fests in the country, it is one of the oldest festivals focused solely on zines.
“There are some other bigger festivals because they’re in bigger cities, but they’re only on year five or six,” he said. “This being our tenth festival is a really big accomplishments.”
Another exciting new change to this year’s zine fest, according to Baynes, is that it will be a two-day event. Friday will be dedicated to programming, which will include six workshops focusing on topics like Comic Arts, DIY Community Archiving, Black Lives/Zines Matter, and more. Saturday will be dedicated to tabling, where people can sell or trade their zines.
“We’ve found that squeezing tabling and programming in one day can be really overwhelming,” said Baynes. “I know when I table, I try not to leave it and then I end up missing a really awesome workshop, so now I think it will be a lot less chaos going on and easier to do as much as possible.”
Another major highlight of this year is the launch of Richmond Independent Zine Library (RIZL) at Gallery5 on Thursday Sept 29th. The RIZL intends to be a zine reading room, library, and exhibition space to highlight zine creators, communities, and eras in zine-making, such as queer zines, fanzines, and the Riot Grrrl movement. Keep an eye out on RVA Mag for a separate story on that.
With so many things going on, next weekend’s Richmond Zinefest has a lot to offer to anyone interested in all things zines and DIY. The 10th Annual Richmond Zine Fest kicks off this Friday, Sept. 30 at the Richmond Public Library through Oct. 1. Tabling from 11am – 4pm. After party at Gallery5 is from 7pm – 12am.
Check out the schedule below:
14 people but had 70 applicants this year.
