S8E9: Milo of QZAP (Queer Zine Archive Project)

Hello and welcome back to Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about zines! This episode, I'm joined by Milo, one of the co-founders of QZAP, the Queer Zine Archive Project. QZAP is a free digital archive of past and present queer zines. We talk about zine archiving, the importance of zines to queer storytelling, the zine community, and more!

Find QZAP here:

https://qzap.org/

https://www.instagram.com/queerzines/

Find more of my work here:

https://linktr.ee/LNGRMSTPLR

http://ko-fi.com/LNGRMSTPLR

http://tinyurl.com/letschatLAS

Thank you monthly ko-fi podcast supporters!!!! Stay tuned for next time - it's the final episode of season 8!

Logo by Miquela Davis: @ghostsb4breakfast

Intro/outro:

Who Likes to Party Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Beginning with their earliest means in 1992. Their work is a playful list on queer culture, media, and carnival. They've produced several teen series, which he does booth, 92 to 93. Meeting, 99 to 2008. Gender five, 2005 to 2011, Rumpy Pumpy, 2012 to President, and a number of standalone zines, including the cocaine of the Nanarchy Mao, most Amazonians, a Kirsty McCall Fancy, Boochlees, Dear Mama, High Finds a Go, Canada Canada Bonbon, and several others. Lost in 2003, UTAP initially began as a way of providing activists a way to access information published in queer beans through digitized copies in an online archive. What started as about 20 digitized documents from a collection of 300 has grown to almost oh has grown to have almost a hundred zones online and a physical collection of 4,500 plus materials. The collection is mostly zems but also single-page flyers, a MRL like pump patches, buttons, and stickers, and a small collection of multimedia formats, including records, audio, and video castles, and other queer-produced DIY media. Milo's working QSAP focuses on the importance of the stories and narratives that are told through queer deems and ways, and about subjects that are rarely discussed in other forms of queer media. Part of the impact of their work is that they and their co-founder and other collective members are explicitly in the communities that are creating the materials that they archive. Self-identified as a queer pumpkin maker, they recognize and uplift the notion that their archive is important not just for the preservation and accessibility of the ephemeral material it houses, but also as a place for community building and where folks can come to find themselves and fellow travelers. Currently, Milo lives in the River West neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they plot nonviolent revolution around a boomerang formica table with their nesting partner in crime, the Catholic co-parent, Kim Cole, and then Max and their pet rock, Nigel. Hello, Milo. Hi. Welcome to Long Arms Tabler.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Thanks. It's nice to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I'm excited to chat about QSAP because I think it's a really, really cool project and it's been around for over 20 years. So yeah, let's let's get into it. Yeah, for sure. What is a zine archive?

SPEAKER_03 2:57

So a zine archive is kind of what it says on the tin. It's either a physical or digital collection of zines, do-it-yourself publications, sometimes mixed in with chat books or uh small press mini comics. Um and you know, it's think of it as a small community library space um where folks can come and learn from what other folks have created. Uh I think that there are a lot of different ways that um the zines are archived and that zine librarianship happens in that um, you know, I think especially now in 2026, most of where we're seeing the labor around zine librarianship happening is in academic library spaces and public library spaces. But I think originally um, you know, zine archives specifically started in community spaces and you know, I would say anarchist community spaces, but other types of community spaces and arts spaces also. So um, you know, I think one of the longest running archives that I know of is ABC No Rio, based in New York City. Um they're a little bit in holding right now because uh a couple of years ago the organization that is ABC No Rio managed to eke millions of dollars out of the city of New York in order to have a new building built for them on the Lower East Side, and they're in the process of finishing that up um within the next year or so, and then all of the materials that have been part of their archive and their art spaces uh will be moved back into the space, but they've been around since the early 1980s. Um the Zine Archive Publishing Project was based in Seattle in the late 1990s, um, and that ended up again kind of disappearing for a while, but the majority of the zines within that collection have been um sort of taken on by the Seattle Public Library, and so now folks can access zines through SPL, um you know, but just by going into the main branch, and I think you'd have to I haven't looked at it in a hot minute, but um you might need to make an appointment to see some of the zines. Um, and I think a lot of materials are not necessarily on site because when they folded they had upwards of 10,000 plus zines, um which you know is a lot. I mean, we have over 5,000 in QSAP, and it's a lot. So, you know, especially thinking of what we started with, which was you know a couple of file boxes full, maybe, you know, something that was very easy to put in the backseat of your car and move around, kind of thing, or could be moved on a bicycle, and now it is way beyond that. Um for us at QZAP, uh we Chris Wilde, who is my partner in crime, and the other QSAP co-founder, we met in 2001 when we were living in the Bay Area. Um, we were doing organizing with uh Queer Ruption, which was this series of international radical punk and anarchist queer gatherings. Um and um when we were doing the organizing work, you know, we because we had both been zine makers for a while, and a lot of the other folks within the organizing collective had connections to either queer punk communities or zine-making communities, um, you know, we were we had started to date and we were kind of like, oh, hey, wait, didn't so and so write about this in such and such zine? I feel like, you know, something it sort of triggered something, and we're like, how do what do we do with all of this information? And so um two years later, we found ourselves living in Milwaukee, which is where I had grown up. Um we officially launched QZAP in the end of 2003. Um, we sort of worked on it over the summer and we sort of recognize our our birth date as November 3rd, which is the first day that it shows up in uh the Internet Archives um Wayback Machine Spider Crawl kind of thing. Um but coincidentally, 2003 is also right around the same time as when what has sort of loosely been dubbed the Zine Librarian Interest Group has formed. Um, and so since then there has been an ongoing Zine Librarian email list and which has eventually developed into a website. There have been tons of conferences, both in person and online, um, with lots and lots of different folks who are interested in zine librarianship and archiving getting together and sharing information of everything from programming to shelving to how to get your zine library or how to get your library to collect zines. Um and kind of from the get-go of that, we've been both Chris and I and other folks from QSAP have been involved as you know, saying, hey, this is these materials are important to us. They're worth preserving, they're worth making accessible to folks. Um so yeah, so that's kind of what you know what an archive is. And every archive kind of treats it differently. Um, you know, some archives will treat the materials as being very precious, uh, and they'll end up in either file boxes or sort of rare book spaces. Um we treat zines as things that want to be read and have traveled well, and um we want folks to be able to interact with them, you know, through multiple means. Um you know, I think I think when I think of zines, I think of of them as being very, very different from other types of textual material that may be seen as being precious. Um you know, like an artist book or um, you know, sort of a tome, something that is handmade and is beautiful and you know may cost the creator a lot of money to make and even more money for somebody to purchase it and collect it. Um usually gets treated with a certain amount of reverence. And I think about the zines that I've read and that I've picked up over 30 plus years, um, and the best ones are ones that I find in coffee shops or in some punk kid's bathroom on the back of their toilet kind of thing. And so, you know, it's not like they're not important, but they're important for different reasons than other librarians and archivists may think. At least that's sort of my take on it.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Um do you think that's because it's a more like accessible medium than say an artist's book or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03 11:32

I do think that they are more accessible. Um one of the things that I like to talk about a lot and that we really encourage with folks who come to QZAP or when we've taught workshops about making zines or thinking about the process is um anybody can make a zine, right? Which isn't to say that not any that anybody can't also make an artist's book, but I think there are very different skill sets involved and different visions behind it. Um what we've found at QZAP and sort of the narrative that I like to run with and uplift these days, is that for the queer zines in our collection, you know, specifically thinking about LGBTQ plus lives, um but also for all zines, is that if we believe that people are important, that our lives are valuable, um the fact that we've taken time to commit our lives to print in some form at some period in our life is also valuable. Right. And when I look at my collection of zines, um you know, I see all of the people who have taken time to tell their story and what those stories really, really mean. And they're on so many different topics. Um, you know, they really sort of show this vast amount of human experience and lived experience. Um and that's so amazing, and it's also done without a whole lot of barriers, right? Like one of the things that we ask of folks who are working with us is we ask people to make a couple of zines. Um, and when I say working with us, I'm thinking specifically of students that we've had interning with us or people who come to volunteer with our collective. Um, you know, part of what we're trying to do is we're trying to get people engaged in zine making, in addition to doing the cataloging and the metadata generation and the filing and you know, sort of the more processes pieces. Um, and the first project that we ask people to do is we ask people to make a little mini zine, an eight-pager, that teaches somebody something. That's the whole assignment right there. And I've run that for the last 15 plus years, you know, 20 years almost. Um, I run it with five-year-olds and I've run it with 85-year-olds. And absolutely everybody can do that because we all have knowledge that we have that we can share and that we can commit to putting onto a single piece of paper that we fold up and cut in half. And like there's something so cool about that to me. Um you know, and so uh so when I think about what we're doing at QSAP, that is kind of a big part of it. It's like, hey, this is amazing. Um and you know, that's how people find us, that's how pipe people find each other. Um, that's how we form communities and make things better. Um and that's it's really kind of dope.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

It really is. And I like that you have people kind of get engaged with zine making at the start of the process of working with y'all because like all of the other stuff is important, but it's I think it's also like you you kind of need a sense of of what a zine is and what it can be. In in my opinion, before you like get involved with the zine archive.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Yeah, that's really a lot of it, I think, is it when we first started doing that, um it stemmed from this idea that because of zines themselves, um, and because they're accessible, because they're relatively easy to make, and because there aren't a whole lot of rules around them, you know. Like I say that when folks make zines, there's kind of two rules to think about. One is to count your pages by fours, and the other is to respect your margin so that your shit doesn't get cut off onto the edge when you go to photocopy it. Um within that, those parameters kind of everything else goes, right? And you can bind them how you want, you can mark them up, you can paint on them, or you know, you put lipstick prints or use Hello Kitty stickers or whatever. Um, and nobody's gonna tell you that you're doing it wrong. Um, and if they are, then they're they don't know what they're talking about. Um, but unlike other types of materials that get collected and um you know preserved within archival spaces, within library spaces, uh, because you don't need to have any special knowledge, um, as folks come and work with the archive, especially if they're not already zine makers, the process of making a zine really helps them to understand kind of the the what and why of the weird. If you'll pardon that alliterative turn of phrase. Um so yeah, so that's been really, really interesting. Um, after we ask folks to make a mini zine, which we want them to do relatively quickly, it's like, you know, you know how to do something, let's just explain it out. Um, we then ask them to make a much bigger zine, something that's between 20 to 40 zine pages. Um, and really kind of any format, anything, with the idea that as they work with the materials in the collection, they'll be inspired to to try things and to sort of see what's out there. Um and the zines that I'm drawn to are not necessarily going to be the zines that you're drawn to. Um, you know, there's there's kind of an adage within uh I think within zine community, but specifically within zine librarian community, that is um every reader their zine, every zine their reader, you know, which is like, hey, if you know, if I pick up a zine and it doesn't speak to me, that's not the end of the world. I can put it down, I can give it to somebody else. Maybe I'll find something for somebody that I know who might be interested in whatever it is, and then a zine will come along that is the one that grabs me and that says, Oh, hey, pay attention to this. This is really cool. Um, or this is a story that engages me, or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

So it's yeah, it's like to each their own, but like zine specific, kinda.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

So kind of going off something you said earlier about queer storytelling. Um why do you think that zines are such an important medium for queer people to tell large stories? Like what what um what makes it such a good medium for that?

SPEAKER_03 19:56

So I think that there are a couple of things, but I think that um you know, sort of and this is obviously coming from my perspective, but sort of historically, um, when I think about the queer media that I have had access to in my lifetime since I figured out that I was queer and started to come out, um, and then you know, have been out for three plus decades at this point. Um you know, almost four decades. Um I think that a lot of the media that especially growing up in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, that I had access to, everybody looked a certain way. And, you know, the magazines that I read, the stuff that I had that was available to me really told a sort of narrow amount of stories. Um and I think part of it was my own exposure to it, where I grew up, the communities that I was part of, the circles I traveled in. Um and I think through all of them, um, and then you know, as the 2000s happened, that we, you know, the millennium turned, and we started to see more queer folks in cinema, we started to see more queer folks on television, but again, all of the stories were kind of really specific. Um they're romance stories, or they're coming out stories, or they're about something that is tragic, you know, and like historically, if we study gay media going Back into the beginning parts of the 20th century or earlier, you know, there were definitely all sorts of structures that were put in place where, you know, the tropes of barrier gays, or you can't publish a book about lesbians without them being terribly unhappy, or you know, we're all gonna get sick and die from uh some terrible disease, or whatever. Um you know, it was very much uh small part of what actually happens in our lives, and um, you know, that sort of small narrow window really excluded a lot of other stuff. Um you know, I think that there's there's some evidence that the first queer punk zines, you know, when folks always say, Oh, what's the earliest queer zine? It's like, well, that's kind of a hard question to actually answer because I don't know that we know for sure, but we know where what's early for our collection. Um, you know, we look at um the zine that came out of LA in the late 1970s called Homeboy Beautiful that was put out by um within the Chicano community in LA. Um, we look at some zines from Toronto, and this is kind of the real jumping-off point. Um, there's a zine called Dr. Smith, and that was pretty closely followed by um what is now a very well-known zine called JDs. Um, and the folks who put out JDs kind of made up in some ways that there was this really thriving queer punk community happening in Toronto in the mid-1980s, and then other queer punk folks got copies of these zines, and then queer core was born out of that, like as a movement, as a genre, as a way of being, because it was folks who are like, maybe we don't want to just go dance to disco or you know, we want to go to hardcore shows, we want to do other things, we're doing kind of artsy weirdness. Um, and you know, we take inspiration from folks who are not necessarily accessible or not necessarily um, you know, the most beautiful, the skinniest, the whitest, um, you know. And so for me, I think thinking about that, uh zines and especially queer zines are partially reaction to traditional media that's main purpose is to earn money for the continued creation of media, and maybe a secondary purpose is some information storytelling, um, and also some cautionary tale of if you're too abhorrent, then terrible, terrible things will happen to you, and comets will hit the earth and it'll destroy all of the dinosaurs, and it's all the homosexuals' fault, right? Um and so you know, I think that there's there's really that aspect of it. Um recently I was on a panel discussion and I got to bring up one of my favorite talking points, which is that you know, I think that for a lot of folks who make zines, it's something that is not necessarily performative. Um, and like please don't misunderstand, like I love hearing queer punk bands, I love going to see shows, um, I like watching film and television, and those all require a lot of presence out in the world. Um, most of the zine sters that I know are um they're kind of like me, they're pretty introverted, you know, and like I'm good at doing this, I'm good at talking about queer zines. I've been doing it for a long time for sure. Um, but at the end of the day, like I just want to write in my journal, or I wanna tell my stories, I want to hang out with my cats, um, I want to cook food for my people and then write it down and put out zines like an Anarchy Now, you know. Um, and there certainly are opportunities to put together a reading or to do some sort of performance with that. Um but a lot of times, you know, the stuff that we see and that we get to hold in our hands, like, yeah, you might meet somebody at a zine fest um and get to talk with them. And also, I think the vast majority of folks I know love doing zine fests, and also they're exhausted because nobody is that social ever. I see you nodding your head because you know exactly what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

And that's a really different energy from folks who get up on stage once or twice a week and rock out, you know. Um, and that's a really different energy from somebody who writes a script and then performs that script on a stage or in front of a camera with a whole crew. Um, you know, zines are also really individual, um, which I think is way different from the way that other media gets made. You know, I think about magazines, I think about newspapers when we had them. I think about the way that um, you know, especially with a contraction and consolidation of gay media over the last 10 to 15 years, and with everything going online or you know, even more online, you still have huge production crews um that have to take care of all of the fiddly bits of making media. Um, you know, it could be running presses, it could be doing editorial work, it could be you know, people who are specifically photographers or videographers or audio editors or script doctors, um, you know, zine sters, it's me and my cat and you know, my computer and whatever cool shit that I find out in the world when I'm walking through my neighborhood or whatever. Um and I think that that's that's pretty unique to take all of that and have one or you know, maybe it's a couple of people who are friends who are working on a project together. Um, maybe it's two besties who are doing a split zine where one half of the zine goes one way and the other half of the zine, you flip it over and it goes the other way. Um but that sort of singularity of voice and production and distribution, like that's it's amazing and so liberating, I think. Um you know, I don't have to worry about anybody telling me I can't say sex. You know, nobody's gonna blank out the E on that, right? Nobody's gonna get mad if I talk about penises and vulvas, and I'm not gonna have to hide it when I'm talking about people being safe and taking care of each other. Um you know. So yeah. Um I think I lost track of the original question there.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

I mean, it was about queer storytelling. I think you did a great job. Um I do want to follow up on a kind of like individual uh compared to like massive. Like we're all connected on our own community. You know, like it's about and help uh people stay connected, um, which I think is really cool about zines.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I mean, I think that the vast majority of people in my life are people who make zines. Um, you know, my the people who I love the most, the people who I interact with the most have some connection to that. Um I go back and forth a little bit and I've I've actually been trying to think about this a little bit critically, and I don't know that it's necessarily different from the way that other people have avocations. Um I think of folks who are very much in certain fandoms or you know, like comic space. Um I think of folks who like here in Milwaukee, we have a botanical garden that is three geodesic domes, and one of the domes is a tropical dome, one of them is an arid or desert type dome, and the third one changes out every couple of months with a different exhibit. And in the late winter, right after Christmas, every year there is a model train show in that dome, and I think about all the folks who like model train is their kind of jam, right? Um, and I'm like, I'm sure that there's a community of folks who like they all go to the same places to get their model train equipment, you know, the different cars, and you know, there's a whole knowledge base there that is not my knowledge base. But I'm like, I think that they probably have a community and they probably share information, and there are probably ways that they're all connected to each other. Um, I don't know if it's the same as, oh, I met all of these folks at the zine fest, and now I'm traveling to their city to go to a zine fest in their city, and they're gonna let me sleep on their sofa and hang out with their dogs, and then they're gonna take me out to their local place to get a beer or a soda or whatever. But um, but maybe it is, you know. Um I think one of the other parts of this is that zines themselves represent a communication medium of subcultures, right? Um and so when you find yourself within a subculture, you begin to connect with that culture, um, and you take on sort of the the social mores of that culture. One of the things that I think is really true, um, especially from a you know, but say zines began to show up around the time that punks started to foment in the 1970s. Um, you know, certainly there were other communication mediums prior to that, but if we start from there, um, you know, I think that one of the things that comes out of that that's traveled across, you know, four generations now, is that um we want to take care of each other and we want to communicate with each other and we want to to do better, you know, we want to want to make the world better than it what it was. Um and part of that is being in a community. And what does a community look like? It looks like people showing up in the same spaces, it looks like people sharing information, you know, sharing meals and housing, and you know, sort of again going back to the things that I think are super, super cool about um the queer zines in our collection is you know, when we treat people as human beings, which we kind of all are, um, but specifically as individuals, and we honor and respect and uplift that, um, you know, that's that's kind of how we keep moving forward. Um and I think that that's it's a little bit different than the way that we think about mass media, because you know, there's a disconnect from the folks who are writers and editors and art directors at a conde nast publication and Cyndi Krabb, right? Like, yes, they're they're all made up of the same components, we're all human beings, and this is certainly not to disrespect all of the amazing folks who do labor in mainstream media, although the rich people can who are the owners can kind of fuck off and die most of the time. Um but uh but I think the way that we consume it, the way that we we read publications like that, or that we tune in to um, you know, to uh I'm trying to think of what's the um gay hockey show that just happened that fell out of my brain.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Heated rivalry.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Heated rivalry, right? Like we're disconnected from all of the components that make heated rivalry, um, as opposed to somebody who, you know, my friend Liz, who I ran into yesterday, who is a queer zine maker in my community and also is a huge gay hockey fan, right? And it writes zines about gay hockey fandom. You know, there's we just it doesn't fit together kind of in the same way for us individually, I think. Um and maybe part of that is also in the way that zines move through the world. Um, you know, they're not sent out in mass. Um, you know, if you even find them in in a bookstore in a space that sells them, there might be two or three copies of something, but it's not like you know, and I guess this is me sort of telling on myself as a Gen Xer, um, but you know, the stacks of magazines that we used to get when I worked at the bookstore, um, where we put them out, and then every two weeks or every month we'd have to take down the ones that didn't sell, and we'd have to tear the covers off and throw them away. And like, you know, zines, if I see you and I get to know you, I'm like, oh hey, and I pull a zine out of my backpack and I give it to you, and you know, or you'd see me at a zine fest and you buy my zine, and then you come back the next year and you say, Oh, hey, last year I picked up a copy of this zine, and you see that I've got something else out this year, and you know, um, it it's a different relationship between the people who make the zines and the people who read the zines. Um, and often the folks who may have gotten a zine or may have seen one out in the world or picked one up individually, they realize, oh, somebody just made this on a photocopy or with their computer, or you know, they wrote a bunch of stuff or they did some illustration and then they made multiple copies of it. Me too. And then they start making zines and then they become part of the community.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Um yeah, I think it's such a cool way that we're like, um, like what is it? I was like, oh like fire, I like all of that. Yeah, you know, I don't know. And I you know, like you have to go and like people who have also know like really like strangers for whatever reason. Um absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

Um Yeah, well, and that's and I think that's one of the things that I also love. Like I've been you know, when I talk to folks about zines in my collection and what draws me to them, what are my favorite zines? And it's like I I such a hard question to answer. Um you know, because I like different zines for lots of different reasons. Um but I I really like zines that are basically skill shares. You know, I like I like learning and I I think that using zines as methods of teaching how to do something. Um I think maybe because I'm more of a reader than I am a a TV watcher or a film watcher, like it's harder for me to learn from video. Um but like I find myself drawn to that. Um I really find myself really drawn to the kind of zines that were around a lot more in the 1990s when I was in my teens and early 20s, um, that sort of got me into zines in the first place. Um and so I jokingly when I talk about Rumpy Pumpy, which uh I've been putting out for a number of years now, um I jokingly call it my uh 90s style queer punk pop cult per zine, because it's kind of got all of those elements in it. It's like it's got a little bit of pop culture stuff, it's got some music reviews, it's got this sort of you know, my own graphic style to it, it's got some personal stuff, um, and then sort of how I feel about a lot of things, um, and also what's going on in my everyday. So, you know, there's one issue where um I made a for sort of a made-up playlist, or you know, what I thought of as sort of a mixtape of all of the songs that got stuck in my head for a month when I was biking to work. So, like whatever my morning commute like earworm was, that became a list that was in the zine. Um, you know, I got to do something really fun where um I was able to reach out to folks and uh say, hey, if you came out in the 80s and 90s, what were your queer signifiers when you were around other folks to know that it was safe to talk about being queer in a sort of pre millennium? You know, not and of course this is still an issue, I think, but um I'm a little bit older now, so I have a different set of concerns than than that. Um, but really getting folks to kind of contribute to that, um, and A piece out of it. Um so you know I like zines like that. Um I like cook zines because I like food and I like to cook and eat. Um I like people's personal zines, but sometimes I'm a little bit more cautious about them. Um because it does feel like you know, somebody's opening up their diary, and I'm always like, I know that you put it out there and you want me to read it, and also I don't want to get up in your business too much, or I don't wanna um I just want to be thoughtful and considerate with what you're sharing, I guess. Um you know, and but so many, so many different things.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Um and the archive um you have just kind of all kinds of means, right?

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Yeah, yeah, we have um yeah, it's a it's a real mix of stuff. Um the way that we sort of built our collection policy was well what it what fits within the collection at QSAP. And so we basically divided it in two ways. The first is that if the content is queer, um and so that's people writing about their sexuality or their gender or their lack thereof, um people talking about HIV and STIs and um you know, sort of sexual health in ways that particularly focus on LGBT populations, um, you know, that sort of like the things that matter to queer folks, um, but in a content situation. And then the flip side of that, or the other piece of that, is that we also have a lot of zines by folks who are queer that might not actually have queer content, or the content might be kind of adjacent to that. Um my favorite example of this is a zine that we picked up. Um we got it at a Madison Zine Fest in like 2005 or 2006, so relatively early on as we were really starting to expand our collection. Um, but it was put out by a lesbian couple who lived in Minnesota, and the zine is called Interview with a zombie, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It is somebody in an interview like you and I are talking right now, but with a zombie, and so literally every page is the zombie saying brains, and I love it so much, it's so good. Um the other one, which uh one of our student interns is just finishing up a zine of the gay blog post about this week, um, and hopefully we'll have it up on our website in the next week or two, is um somebody made a zine called Raptor Fancy, and it's like cat fancy, except it's with scary murderous dinosaurs, um, and specifically dinosaur Jesus. It's really, really fascinating, and you know, but it's uh the content itself isn't specifically, oh, this is what it is to be a gay dinosaur, it's just dinosaurs, and specifically dinosaur Jesus. Um, you know, but the fact that it was made by a queer person who donated it to our collection, uh, you know, so so that's kind of the other piece for us, um, in terms of thinking about our how we collect zines at QZAP, um, and what falls within our collection scope. And different zine libraries and different archives have, you know, every archive has its own collection scope. Um so some collect all zines, some are very focused on political zines or personal zines. Um you know, some of it has to do with who initiated the collection or the archive.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Um I think I came across a copy of Raptor Fancy like fairly recently. I think I did like still have it. Um that you mentioned that one.

SPEAKER_03 48:55

Yeah, I really like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Um how you collect donate or for QZAP? Um, how can people don't um either need some things we need that are queer beans or beans from like a larger collection?

SPEAKER_03 49:18

I'm so glad you asked. What a great question. Uh so if you go to our website i qzep.org or gettings.qzepp.org, um under the about us drop-down menu, we have a zine collection form. Um and it basically is sort of an intake form that includes our mailing address. Um, and you know, a little bit of it's a place for people to put in a little bit of metadata about the zine that they're donating. Um, so when I say metadata, we're talking about the information that helps to describe the zine itself. So the title of the zine, where it was created, when it was created, if that's known, who created it. Um, and then as you sort of work your way down, there's a big open box for people to add keywords that we can then use to help with our cataloging and then to make it easier for people to find the zine when we eventually digitize it and put it online. Um, and at the very bottom, it's the you know, we sort of have two questions. One is we ask, are you the person who created the zine? And then can we have permission to put it online? Um, and so those are kind of the two things. Um and what that allows us to do is it'll allows us to have space for if you come across a queer zine where you are and you want to donate it to QSAP, even if it's not one that you made, you can still donate it. Um, you just you know, then we just know, oh, somebody found this and thought that it should be preserved. Um, but you're not necessarily the person who made it. Uh and then in terms of larger collections, we just ask that folks reach out to us. Um, and this is certainly something that we've had some experience with. Um, the way that we sort of joke about it, but it's it's funny because it's true kind of thing, is that especially I think for folks who are kind of of my generation, you know, having come out and grown up in the 1990s, and you know, folks who are maybe a little bit younger than us and also a little bit older than us, they may have collected zines in their youth. Um and then they all ended up kind of getting put into a box, and maybe they moved around house to house, maybe they ended up back in somebody's parents' house when they end went off to a job or to university or to do something else. Um, and then 10 or 20 years later, mom's like, Hey, I found a box of your old shit from high school, you need to get it out of the house. Um, and so folks will contact us and say, Hey, I have this collection of zines. Um, do you want it? And depending, you know, if the zines fall into our collection policy, either the folks who made them are queer or the content is queer, um, or broadly queer adjacent, will accept a whole collection of stuff and we'll work with the person who's donating to figure out how they want the collection named. And um, if there's stuff that they know will not fit in, they can either remove it or they can just send it all on if they don't want to really deal with it. And then when we get stuff that doesn't fit within our collection policy, um, we end up setting it aside and we will then go through the process of identifying another library or archive space that will take it. Um so scenes that either they're become part of the QSAP collection or they end up at a different library at some point. Um but yeah, it's all it's all on the website basically, is the the roundabout way of saying that. But um, but we have a form for that, so uh folks can get in touch with us that way. Um and we're also on social media. Um, you know, we have a we have a blue sky account. Um I think Chris is still running a Facebook page or account or group or something. I don't know how Facebook works anymore.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

Um I don't either.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

Yeah. And um, and we have a an Instagram um, although messaging us on Instagram is kind of a terrible way of getting in touch with us because I don't read the messages there very often.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

So cool. And I'll put a link on your website and um your pleasure in the show notes or um the last big question I have for you is like, what do you think the most vital like what do you personally think the most vital thing about is?

SPEAKER_03 54:30

Um so in twenty eighteen we were working with a researcher um at the library school at UW Milwaukee, which is the university that's closest to us. And um and she was very much a baby boomer um probably in her early 1960s in the her early 60s. Um and she was trying to do research about the language that women who love women used in zines to describe themselves and their lives, using a subset of zines from QZAP. And so we were trying to, she didn't really understand zines and she didn't quite understand what our archive was doing. And so I was in a meeting with her and with one of her students who was also interning with us at the time, and we were I can't remember what the exact context of the conversation was, but literally we were sitting there and I could see the light bulb going on over her head, and she said, Oh, QSAP is a place where people come to find themselves, and like I've been carrying that around for a long time because it's such a really, really good description of what we want our archive to be, is you know, it's a place for people to learn about stuff that they don't know, to explore all of these cool, queer lives in all of these different contexts, um, but also to find themselves, and when you find yourself within a zine, especially not your own zine, it makes you feel less alone, and you know, to have created something that is basically a digital destination for people to get together and be less alone and to connect with all of these other stories. Like that was it was not our intention to do that when we first started QZAP, but the fact that that's what it has become, and that's what this other person who really knows nothing about zines or about punk community or culture, but who is an older queer? Um, for them to point that out to us in such a succinct way, like I just love that. And you know, I think that that's that's the power not just of archives but of zines in general, is that you know, when we share our stories, we get to be less alone in the world, and you know, through those connections, we get to create amazing things.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Um that's really sweet. I love that. Um do you have anything else that you want to talk about? Um, QZAP or zine related?

SPEAKER_03 58:10

Um I don't think so. I feel like on some level I should point out that we are not a nonprofit. Um that you know, because of our sort of particular politics, uh you know, we're we're mostly self-funded and community funded um through donations. But I'm really I hate that aspect of it, and so it's really hard for me to talk about. And also I'm gonna mention it because we're kind of at a point where we need to do a little bit of fundraising because we've come across a problem that is a problem and it's a challenge, but it's kind of a good one in that we've run out of space within our filing cabinets, and so we need to raise money to get bigger filing cabinets. So I'm gonna just kind of put that out there and leave that as it is. Um, we've done some grant writing for that, we've but we're also, you know, um, that's a thing. Um I also think that it's um, you know, I'm not I feel like I'm making educated guesses about who your audience is. Um, but one of the things that I think is really, really important, um, and it's kind of built into QZAP's DNA specifically um because of who Chris and I are and who other folks who work with our collective over the last 20 years are. Um but uh we built all of our websites using open source software and we have platformed ourselves. And one of the things that's amazing about Zines to me is that we don't need to ask anybody's permission to create. Um and so you know, thinking about how other folks interact with media, especially online stuff, and where things get posted, who you know, like I think it's really important to think about who's making money off of our work and who has power over us to say what we are allowed to talk about and what we are not allowed to talk about. Um and that the tools are all out there and that the information is out there, and sometimes it seems technologically daunting, but a lot of times it kind of isn't. You know, in the when you first figure out how to lay out your pages so that they photocopy right, like you're gonna get it a little bit goofy the first time you do, and then somebody will show you, oh no, you need to flip it on this edge in order to get it to come out this way so that you can bind it the way that you want to bind it. Um that for technology too. Um, and yeah. Um so I again I you know we could probably talk for another hour or two about bigger media systems and how zines fit into that or don't fit into that and why that's a really good thing. Um, but uh but thinking about how again how we do storytelling and how we present ourselves and our lives as queer people, um, especially in times where it's dangerous to be queer, you know. It's it's scary to be non-binary in America right now. Um, it is frightening that we can't have conversations about our own health care and what keeps us safe and what makes our communities better without fear of reprisals, um, especially in online spaces. Uh, and it's scary when media companies contract and contract and contract, and so stories end up getting dropped and moved to the wayside or getting ditched all together. Um, and that's when our voices become even more important, whatever it is that we're talking about, you know. Um, and we all have a lot of power that I think is untapped um within a space of publishing and communicating, but also economically, you know, we have power and a voice to say it doesn't have to be like this, um, you know, and there are lots and lots of ways of making a better world through geography. Uh um and you know, I think that sometimes we need to be reminded that it's okay to take risks and to challenge things. And just because something has been done this way, or the folks who have say over the dominant platform say you can or can't say this, or you're gonna be disappeared into a memory hole. Um you know, well then we can take our we can take our marbles and go home. Um, we can put them someplace else. And you know, I think that uh that's um it's important to give voice to that. Um both out loud in a podcast, uh, you know, in a conversation, and certainly in the w what we add or include in the publications that we make. Um, you know, and we're not alone in doing this, right? So yeah. Um, I just want to kind of put that out there for other folks who are tuning in and listening to this. That it's you know, you've got more power than you may think sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

Um and yeah, it's I'm also saying it for myself to remember because 2026 is 2026ing all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:52

Yeah. And yeah, I think all of that is really really important to think about. Like we as queer people, like we do have we there's power in our words or you know, in our in our actions, and like we're we're not alone and we can tell our stories and forge and continue building community and stuff around that.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Yeah. And I think, you know, additionally or adjacently or inclusively to that is that you know, I've been saying a lot this year, if we're not for each other, then why? Right? And so within our zine communities, we have all sorts of opportunities to uplift and take care of each other. Sometimes that's donating to our mutual aid fund, sometimes that's hooking a sibling up with a coffee scam. Sometimes that's saying, Hey, can I? Buy an extra couple of copies of your zine and I'm gonna send it out to people who might need to see this who aren't necessarily in spaces where there are a lot of zines. Um sometimes it's you know putting stickers on bus shelters and you know, doing a lot of promotion tour stuff. Um but you know, if we're working for each other towards something bigger, you know, that's how we make it so that the bastards won't will never ever win.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

I like that. Um well that's all the questions I had. Um I will absolutely put links to your website and your socials in the show notes um and remind people to send you funds for some new um filing cabinets because that's it's really I mean it's really important work that you're doing and you need supplies for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:09

And filing cabinets are like they're a big ticket item. It's not you know, it's not like we need another box of sharpies kind of thing. Um it's like this is this is our big identified, like whoa, we don't have enough room to actually get a at some of the materials kind of thing. So um yeah, cool. Um I guess my other question is as a queer zine ster, do I don't know if we have any of your zines in our archive, but there's certainly there's a home for them here. So uh if you want to trade zines, would be happy, happy, happy to send you some of ours.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

And uh yeah, absolutely. I would love to do that. Um, I was actually while we were talking, I have so I do a King of the Hill fanzine series, and I have an issue that's all queer contributors, and I was like, I think that'd be really cool to send to y'all, and also I have a bunch of like Persines, but like queer King of the Hill content um is I think really fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

Yeah, I mean that's awesome. We've got somebody's Buffy fanzine in our collection.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:23

Um, I wrote one about fanzines like Christy Nicole.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:29

Um yeah, I would love to see that. So um cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:39

Um thank you, Milo. Um, this has been a delight, and I feel like I've learned so much about QSAP, and I hope that everyone listening has as well. Um thank you, listeners, for listening um and supporting the podcast. Um, if you are interested in supporting the podcast on Kofi, it's um a dollar a month. And if you have been enjoying the podcast or if you found a new to you zine stir that you've really been clicking with, um please consider supporting the podcast. There's a link in the show notes. Um, we've got one more episode this season, and then we're on to season nine. Um, if you're interested in talking to me about your zines or zine fest or archive or anything zine related, um there's a form in my link tree. Or if you think you know someone who might be interested in chatting with me, send them my way. Um yeah, excited to finish out season eight, really excited for season nine. Um, lots of exciting stuff on the horizon. But for now, again, uh Milo, thank you for being on the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:59

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:01

Keep on listening and have a great day.