A Celebration of Physical Media at Scribes & Vibes Zine & Lit Fest

Guests peruse zines in the Zeitgeist Atrium. Photo by Nathan Doeringsfeld.

Last Saturday, poets, writers, artists and local creatives of all kinds gathered at Zeitgeist Atrium for the Scribes & Vibes Zine & Lit Fest.

Each creative got a table space of their own where they shared and peddled their work, with zines being the main medium of the day. The concept of a zine can be transformed to suit different endeavors or missions but at its core, a zine is a paper booklet used to distribute information or art. The artists at the zine fest exhibited the variety of forms and topics that zines can inhabit.  

Zines can be a political statement, which is what Claire Branski has created in their political awareness zine. 

“It’s making social movements legible for people who are really coming into political consciousness and are feeling really scared or confused or really angry,” Branski said.

The mission of their zine is to give advice that they would have appreciated getting ten years ago, when Branski “came into political consciousness” themself.

The way Branksi describes zines is a “grassroots education that the artist gets to define for themselves.” 

“It's a cool way to share information and ideas from person to person,” they continued.

Ro Feitl, a UMD student, was tabling for UMD’s The Roaring Muse, of which they are the editor-in-chief. 

“The Roaring Muse is the arts magazine that is published by the Literary Guild,” Feitl said. “I love seeing everyone's submissions and stuff, and I love getting to go through and put together the issues.”

There were poetry readings throughout the day, one poet being Anastasia Bamford, who also had a table with multiple self-published zines of poetry and photography. To Bamford, a zine means “taking the means of production out of the hands of the great publishing companies, so that you can produce what you really want to instead of what's considered there.” 


Anastasia Bamford reads poetry for for the Zine Fest crowd. Photo by Nathan Doeringsfeld.

“You're doing it yourself, for yourself,” Bamford said.

Zainab Thompson, a grad student at UMD, had a collection of hand-drawn zines, where they draw inspiration from comedy, horror, and the kids that they work with. 

“I worked in mental health and I focused on a pediatric unit so some of these are collaborations with kiddos,” they said. “This is the first one I made,” Thompson said, gesturing to a zine. “And this kid comes up and he's like ‘What are you doing?’ and I’m like ‘I’m making a book, what do you think should happen next?’ and he says ‘ants’ and I’m like ‘Okay.’” 

Thompson turned the page to reveal a giant ant taking up the spread.

Zainab Thompson and their collection of zines. Photo by Nathan Doeringsfeld

A few typewriters in the back drew attention, where Pete Pascente encouraged guests to type on them. Pascente held a table for Studio Cafe, a creative-driven cafe in downtown Duluth which has art supplies available for all guests, artisan office hours on Wednesdays and an open door policy with live music.

“The mission is largely to make arts and creative activities more accessible,” Pascente said. The typewriters are present at the cafe and Studio Cafe keeps a binder of written work that guests have created. 

“It's really fun to kind of flip through- you could see all the things that people have written,” Pascente said. 

There were more creatives downstairs, where Rae Schuety was tabling with many multicolored mini zines and one larger magazine zine. Before making zines, Schuety posted beauty content on Instagram, but began to “hate” the nature of the form. She turned to physical media and now sends out a monthly zine. 

Schuety with her zine "ReviewsByRae." Photo by Nathan Doeringsfeld

“I love mail,” Schuety said. “I love getting mail, so I kind of wanted to share that with others. Right now I send out one zine a month to people, and then at the very end of the year, I send out a big zine, kind of recapping the entire year.” 

For Schuety, zines means sharing her mind with other people, “whether or not they want to hear it.” 

“You know, this is what I like to do and whether or not anyone listens, that's up to them, but it makes me happy to do,” Schuety said.