STICC coming up this week

This Wednesday is already the last one of the month! Which means it is time for my monthly online event – Soft Touch Intimate Craft Crossover. This month, the theme is zine making.

Without fully knowing that is what I was doing, my friends and I made our first zine in 1991 with a typewriter and clipped images from old national geographic magazines pasted onto good-one side reclaimed old order of service pages we had got from my moms church secretary job. Once I found my way towards more radical, underground spaces, my exposure to this type of self-publishing was fast. I was performing with my regional slam team in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in 2005 and had learned from the independent artists I had begun to roll with that having a chapbook of work to trade or sell was standard. This was in a time in my life where I didn’t have my own computer, and producing something like that was best done in a shared resource space. I happened to be in Vancouver and was pointed in the direction of the now, long-closed Purple Thistle Center. Using their computers and printer to get my first little chapbook in hand put me in direct line of exposure to all manner of anarcho, leftist, queer, radical, self published works.

When I moved to Halifax briefly later that year, the Anchor Archive (Halifax Zine Library) was an undeniable center of my social world. I volunteered a few times doing shifts that would involve hanging out and holding space, reading and making zines and meeting other folks who had found their way into the radical and empowering practice of small scale DIY self publishing and underground information and thought exchange. This space and ideas I came across in the scrawled out manifestos and artsy collage composites I would leaf through at the Anchor Archive had an undeniable life changing impact for me. I had barely learned that trans masculinity existed after coming across Loren Cameron’s Body Alchemy at Venus Envy, and while it sparked something, the politically charged rants and info-dumps hand crafted by folks who were describing themselves as genderqueer and genderfuck felt much closer to home.

I used the format to try and communicate the ways that I had transformed my identity and perspectives to my family back home. I compiled xeroxed clippings of meaningful articles and excerpts from books like That’s Revolting, Transgender Warriors, Blue Collar Goodbyes, Brave New World and the Grapes of Wrath as well as quotes from Simone De Beauvoir, Frederick Douglass, and Eli Clare all pasted onto graphically rich magazine pages. I had almost completely forgotten about this project until nearly 20 years later when i was recovering from surgery in my parents house and found it.

Over those 20 years I have made many more zines, on my own and as a contributor to group projects of both one-off nature and series like “When Language Runs Dry” and the “Radical Faeries Digest”.

During the height of social media, I found myself making less of this sort of thing, but I am called to return to this format as I have witnessed the enshittification of the platforms that at one time promised ease in sharing ideas and information- but can no longer live up to that. When the platforms are rife with censorship and tied directly to the rise of fascist overreach, sharing truths that could in someway unsettle the power of the oligarchs can fall somewhere between futile and dangerous. Self publishing is what excited me about the internet, it felt democratized and a way to reach across geography without xerox or postage costs. And now, on the internet of 2025, any where we find a free platform, it’s probably because we (and our intellectual property, personal information, and consumer data) are the product.

So come join me on Wednesday- we will each work on our own zines from where ever we are, while discussing the craft and ways that it can tie directly to our individual and collective erotic liberation. I’ve passed on setting this month up as a ticketed event, and rather will send a meeting link to folks who send me an email or DM expressing interest.

To be ready you may wish to think of ideas, gather supplies like collaging gear, scissors, glue, paper, etc. Participation is consent based, everything is an invitation. Be in touch with any questions you may have.