Highlights of London Zine Symposium.

So this Sunday just gone, I ventured up to London Zine Symposium with the lovely Catherine and Ingrid (their zines will be getting a shout out later!), and I had an absolute whale of a time! It was my first time at a zine event, and it was a wonderful experience. We all left feeling very inspired regarding our own personal prospects and we all managed to pick up some awesome stuff, my favourite bits of which will be listed here.

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I'm Drawing A Blank - Issue #1
Ever since Miss Tukru announced plans to release a comic zine, I've been pretty psyched to see it, and yay, I have! Tukru's drawings are absolutely adorable, and the range of stuff she covers in this issue is pretty broad. Highly recommended if you're a fan of her fantastic other zine, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell. She also co-runs a distro with partner Carl, Vampire Sushi Distro. I picked up a lot of zines from her table at LZS and I can confirm she is lovely in real life (I hate that phrase).
I particularly liked her brief discussion about the fetishization of wearing glasses. I hear you, lady!

I picked this up from the lovely chaps at the Zineswap stall (who can be found on Twitter), who had a box on their stall full of zines, and anyone walking past could put one of their zines in for one of those in the box. I had printed a few copies of mine earlier in the week so I traded for this one.
Fresh Meat is an awesome zine about roller derby, and even though I don't play myself (I have been toying with the idea though!), I found this such an interesting read. It's worth a read for the player names alone!

I picked up these treats as well as some other bits from the wonderful Emma Falconer, writer of Fanzine Ynfytyn and other assorted zines. Fanzine Ynfytyn was one of the first zines I read and I loved it instantly - Emma writes about stuff like rubbish teachers and awesome bands with such humour and Britishness, absolutely irrestible stuff.
Another zinester who it was lovely to meet on Sunday! Her Etsy full of wonderful goods can be found here.

We picked this up from this really awesome lovely guy's stall, but for the life of me, I can't remember his name! I'll look through the programme and try and find it to edit later! This Miss Marple zine is basically lots of photocopied quotes from Miss Marple stories on different subjects. He happily told me that we should all listen to the wise words of Miss Marple, and after reading this, I am inclined to agree. Let's just forget about the upcoming Disney version with Jennifer Garner....

This was a free zine put on the flyer table at the event, called Library Love. I'm probably slightly biased as I submitted a contribution to this zine, but loving your local library is crazy important, as the other contributors agree. I really enjoyed reading everyone else's contributions to this, and anything that raises awareness of the disgusting library finance cuts is a winner in my book.

Fat Quarter - Issue #3
This magazine is AWESOME. It's like the women's magazine that you've always wanted to read. The latest issue does not disappoint with a great interview with Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses and an article on male drag, really interesting stuff. It's available to buy here.

And as for the friends I went with, their zines are obviously awesome. :Pictures below belong to the respective authors as my camera ran out of batteries.

Ingrid writes the fantastic Mythologising Me zine, and her second issue came out very recently. Issue #2 discusses the job she lost and the job she has now and drinking, amongst other things. I particularly loved her article on her veganism, which made for a really interesting read.

No picture available for this one! Will get one and edit ASAP, sorry Cath!
Cath writes the wonderful Here In My Head (available on her website or at Marching Stars Distro, who I have absolutely mad love for, bought so much stuff from the stall on Sunday, definitely recommend spending your hard earned cash there!), and her 8th issue has just been published. It's a split issue with the aforementioned Tukru, and two of my favourite zinesters working together was an absolute dream come true for me! Cath writes intelligently and sensitively about her feminism, her shyness and her musical career amongst other things, and it's a fascinating read.

Hopefully I can make zine reviews a more regular feature :) what did you all enjoy most about London Zine Symposium? Any zines I should've picked up?

Oops, have been really rubbsh at updating recently. As what always seems to happen, life got in the way which stopped me from doing pretty much everything except working!

I was very excited this morning to log into Google Reader and see a review I wrote for the wonderful The Girls Are blog, a blog that covers female musicians. Being a rampant feminist, I, of course, was really interested in this, and have been reading the blog for several months, so volunteered to do a bit of writing for them on the side. The blog is absolutely awesome, and I'm not just saying that because I write for them.

The gig I covered was the wonderful Paper Aeroplanes and my review can be found right here - let me know what you think!

More regular posts to come, I promise :)