Zine Review Policy

I’m always looking for new zines to review on this blog.  If you’d like your zine to be featured here, send an email to spillthezinesukATgmailDOTcom with the subject line “review request”, and the name of the author, the zine title, a short description, and the location of the author, like so:

Name of Author: Cath Elms

Zine Title: Here. In My Head. #4

Short Description: A feminist perzine featuring written pieces on friendship, jealousy, casual sexism, and things that make me happy.  40 pages, ¼ sized, £1.

City/county of Author: Swansea
Preferred gender pronoun (optional): she

I will then get back to you and let you know if you need to send me a copy, or if I already have a copy of your zine.  If I do not have a physical copy of your zine, you’ll need to send me one.  If you provide me with a SAE, I can return the zine when I'm done.  UK zines only please.

  

Zines we like at Spill the Zines:

Perzines

Feminist zines
Queer/sexuality zines

Political zines
Philosophical/contemplative zines
Environmental/activism zines

Cookery zines

Arts/crafts zines

Travel zines

Mental health/disability zines

Zines we dislike: Anything hateful, which includes (but is not limited to) homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and ableism.

If your zine fits in to the like category, send it over!  If it doesn’t fit in to either category, you can still request a review.  I might not be into other types of zine (e.g. lit zines) but I’ll try to review them as fairly as possible.  Please bear in mind that my reviews are sometimes critical.

Any questions, feel free to email - spillthezinesukATgmailDOTcom.  :)

Weekly News Round-Up!

We have a few lovely bits of news to share with you this week - sorry there isn't more to share at the moment!

1. Zine Event: EGAKU -zine/art fair for Japan
"I'm Peter part of the zine symposium crew and separate to this years event on the 2nd and 3rd of April me and some friends are organising EGAKU - a zine/print/art/etc fair at Jaguarshoes in Shoreditch to raise money for the thousands of people effected by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We are trying to get as much donated work as possible to sell at the event and raise as much money as possible. We have a lot of create creative people involved including NoBrow, Okido, Laura Carlin, Jean Jullien, Anorak Magazine and lots more flowing in. We are asking if any of you would donate any zines, prints, bags, books - anything. 100% of the money we make from this event will be donated to Japan. EGAKU means "draw" and "imagine " in Japanese. we hope that we can support Japanese people EGAKU ( imagine) peaceful future by EGAKU (draw)."

For more info on how to submit your work, you can contact Peter at deadtreesanddyeAThotmailDOTcom.

2. Submission Call: Library Love Zine!
Jane is putting together a compilation zine on the theme of library love, and is requesting submissions of any length about why you love libraries, childhood memories of libraries, how libraries have affected your life, or how great your library branch is. The aim of the zine is to present a broad range of reasons why libraries are amazing places and so valuable to everyone, and to stop ill-advised library cuts all over the UK, which now stand at around 600. Submissions must be sent in ASAP, as the 'zine is in progress already and Ian is aiming to publish it in time for the London Zine Symposium (April 17th). For more info or to submit something, you can contact Ian at librariesforsocietyATgmailDOTcom.

3. Submission Call: Girls Rock! UK zine
The London Girls Rock Camp to be held in summer 2011 is hoping to put together a zine ahead of the event. If you've attended, volunteered at or otherwise been involved in a Girls Rock Camp in the past, organiser Kate would love to have your contribution! If you can think of anything related to the theme of teaching and learning music with girls and women you'd like to write, please get in touch. You can visit the Facebook page of Girls Rock! UK for more general information on the project here.

4. Looking for British penpals?

A thread has popped up on We Make Zines dedicated to finding pen pals, started by a British zinester (who Cath writes to regularly, oddly enough!). Are you British and interested in finding a new penpal? Join the conversation here!

We're still figuring out how best to get (and keep) this blog up and running; and as news has been a wee bit slow recently we're going to start posting news round-ups fortnightly rather than weekly (until such a time as we have more news to report). Please continue to send us any news you have and spread the word amongst your zine friends!

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(originally written by Hannah, edited by Cath)

Weekly News Round-Up!

Sadly no zine-related news was emailed to us this week, and although I've done a bit of googling I couldn't find anything to post.

This is a case where no news isn't good news, so please email us your zine news in time for next week's post - zine releases, zine events - even distro updates!

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ETA: Oops! We forgot to say that Beth from Girls Get Busy zine has two lovely bits of news for us:

1. Beth is throwing a zine party on 29th March in The Alibi in London, where she will also be releasing her "chixtape" featuring girl punk bands! For more details and to RSVP, check out the Facebook event page.

2. Beth is now looking for contributors for issue #4 of Girls Get Busy. For more info, or to submit something, get in touch at girlsgetbusyzineATgmailDOTcom by the 25th March.

Sorry for the confusion; we're still a bit confused by gmail and its silly conversation format of displaying emails! We'll sort ourselves out in time for next week's mailing, promise. :)

Weekly News Round-Up!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first weekly zine news round-up! Thank you all for your kind words of support and lovely emails in the past few days, it’s very encouraging to see so much interest in the UK zine scene! As we’ve only just set up shop, we need you to get in touch with us to make sure we can be a useful and up-to-date zine resource for UK readers. Send along anything and everything zine-related, no matter how small, (UK news only, of course) and I’ll be happy to reply and promote!

So after that rambly introduction, onto the news!

Cath x

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1. Zine Releases

2. Upcoming Events

3. Submission Calls

4. Zine Reviews

5. AOB (Any Other Business)

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1. Zine Releases
- Drunken Werewolf magazine has just released its 16^th issue – you can order a copy from here: http://drunkenwerewolf.livejournal.com/173911.html
- Girls Get Busy #3 has just been released – buy your copy at http://girlsgetbusyzine.bigcartel.com!
- Here. In My Head #7 / Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell #14 was released last week – you can buy a copy at Vampire Sushi distro, or by getting in touch with Tukru or Cath directly.

2. Upcoming Events
- As part of the 'Editions Of You' exhibition celebrating DIY musicians and handmade releases, there will be a zine and handmade music fair at the O3 Gallery in Oxford on 9^th April. You can find out more about the exhibition here: http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/event/editions_of_you_at_the_o3_gallery_2011/. If you’re interested in having a stall at the fair you can get in touch with Ellis at ellisjonesATgmailDOTcom.
- Birmingham Zine Festival will be going ahead on 9^th July. If you’re interested in taking part, get in touch with Andrew at birminghamzinefestivalATgmailDOTcom!
- On 28^th May, some students from Nottingham Trent University will be putting on a zine fair at Hopkingson Gallery. For more info, or to find out how to get involved, take a look at the Raw Print Club on Facebook.

3. Submission Calls
- Zinester Eunice will be dedicating the next issue of her zine Crone to the over-50s, and would like people over the age of 50 to answer questions on the subject of being older than most
people who produce or write for zines. If you’re interested, you can get in touch with her at serennauATgmailDOTcom.

4. Zine Reviews
Hannah has posted some zine reviews on her blog this week – you can read them at http://notquiteayes.blogspot.com.
Let me also use this space for a little shameless self-promotion and direct you towards previous zine reviews Hannah and I have written on our own blogs! Hannah’s zine review archives can be found here, and mine can be found here. I’ll be writing the first Spill the Zines zine review post in a fortnight or so – if anyone wants their zine reviewed, take a look at our zine review policy page.

5. A.O.B.
- Amelia Wells has requested a shout-out for Bristol-based zinesters for a 24-hour zine/comic project – you can get in touch with her at miggydraconisAThotmailDOTcom!
- If you’re a Live Journal user, there’s a community dedicated specifically to the UK zine scene – you can join and contribute at http://community.livejournal.com/zinescene_uk/.

Welcome!

Welcome to our new blog!

Cath & I decided to set up a zine blog together as we love zines (of course); and both blog about zines separately and felt that there was a place for a blog focusing on the British zine community. We've been planning and plotting behind the scenes for a while now (Cath has been very patient with my busy schedule/lack of free time - thank you! <3) and hope to make this a helpful resource for all those in the British zine community, as well as those in the wider zine community who enjoy British zines.

The main focus of Spill The Zines will be weekly news round-ups detailing the publication of new zines, calls for submissions, zine events and public meet-ups, zine-related blog posts, the opening of a new distro/zine website, and anything else zine-related you can think of! We'll also be posting monthly zine reviews, and hopefully including other one-off and regular features in time.

We will be posting the news round-ups on Sundays, starting on Sunday 13th March, which gives you just over a week to get your news to us to be included in the first post! Please send your news to us at spillthezinesukATgmail.com, and help make our lives easier by following the submission guidelines.

We'd also like to expand our list of links, so please get in touch at this same email address if you have a zine-related blog, distro or other website and would like to exchange links with us.

Send us your news!

Have something you want us to include in our fortnightly zine news round-up?  Awesome! Just send us an email to spillthezinesuk @ gmail.com and we'll pop it in.

Things we like hearing about include:

• New issue announcements 
• Distro updates/new distros
• Calls for submissions 
• Zine reviews
• Interesting articles about zines
• Zines featured in mainstream media
• Zine events

We'd also like to receive news from you about other people's projects (i.e. "I heard about this upcoming zine event and thought you'd like to mention it on STZ...")!

This blog is now run by only one person, and there's only so much of the internet I can trawl through on a Sunday afternoon, so the more you can send me, the better my posts will be!

Please note, we only feature news about British zines - not due to any sort of silly patriotism, but simply as a way to give the blog a specific focus/thread!  The zine world is a large place, so we can only focus on a little part of it. :)

Let's Trade Links!

Do you write a zine blog or run a zine-related website?  Run a British distro?  Are you a British zinester with a zine-related blog or website?


Great! Let's trade links.

Email us at spillthezinesukATgmail.com with the subject title "Link Exchange" and your website in the main body of the email and we'll put your link in our nav bar on the right. In exchange, you'll put a link to Spill the Zines on your blog/website.