The project: In the interest of flexing our literary muscles, as well as continuing to explore diverse mediums, we decided to dive into the world of self publishing and zine-making. A zine is a homemade magazine, usually published on a photocopier. Its circulation is often small and its content and design are limited to the whim and imagination of its creators. (We liked that part.) Our project led participants through the publishing of a zine from scratch: from creating original literary and visual content, to preparing it for print and binding it together.

The theme: Given their own history of self-publishing, namely in the form of chapbooks containing their revolutionary poetry and prose, we used the voice of the beat generation as a starting point for our work. Some questions that we were interested in examining were what makes you howl, how do you describe your generation, and what groups do you feel do not have a strong enough voice in America today.

The goal: We sought out to produce a wholly original publication packed with content from each of our participants by the close of the weekend. Each participant would wear two hats: first as an artist/journalist, developing at least one visual and one literary piece to be included in the zine, and second as editor, shaping and creating the look of the finished product. Not knowing how many copies we'd be able to assemble once our creation hit the presses, we simply shot to provide each of the participants with copies to bring back to their communities and share.