Melissa's stories came highly recommended and they did not disappoint at all. This is a collection of her older work repackaged as a book wtih illustrations from Sara Thustra. The stories explore the darker side of existence; homelessness, drug abuse, extreme poverty, losing friends, and child abuse. The stories don't always have happy endings but that is life and Melissa does a great job of saying "some people live this way and it is their reality!" The stories are really emotional and touching at times and she does a great job of getting in character. I was thoroughly impressed with not only the way that the writes the stories but also the way that she reads them. This is one of the best zines that I've read in recent memory.

A beginning analysis of the role white workers have had historically in America. Specificially, how have white workers helped to maintain white supremicist capitalist? White by David Gilbert, a 'white' radical prisoner from the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army.

In response to numerous remarks we've all heard from "patriots", Mother Jones produced a pamphlet about the radical history of the United States. Published in the early 80s, this pamphlet offers a good primer to those new to radicalism. Great for those looking to get more in touch with the radical roots of their own country or to offer a little more fuel to their future arguments. The story begins in 1620 with William Lloyd Garrison, moving along to the Philadelphia anti-slavery society, Susan B Anthony, wars against native americans, Emma Goldman, WEB DuBois, Charlie Chaplin, Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Kate Millett, Cesar Chavez, and much more. Our country may not be as conservative as one is led to believe!

Mostly unpublished works from such fine writers and comic artists as Joe Biel (Perfect Mix Tape Segue), Shosh Cohen (The Gulper), Krissy Durden (Figure 8, Paper Crush), Nicole Georges (Invincible Summer), Rebecca Gilbert (Verboslammed, Napcore), Shawn Granton (10' Rule), Kate Haas (Miranda), Korinna Irwin (Rock Star with Words), Kate Lopresti (Constant Rider), Clutch McBastard (Clutch), Aaron Renier (Spiral Bound), Tim Root (Crappy Comics), Mark Russell (Penny Dreadful), Jack Saturn (We Ain't Got No Car), Kirstin Tonningsen (Zigzaggery), and Alex Wrekksaurus (Brainscan, Stolen Sharpie Revolution), and loads more! A fine example of the shining creative community that embodies "puddletown".

Easy, cheap, and DIY ways to make alcohol at home! Making your own can also be fun and rewarding. Few things are as satisfying as opening a bottle of beer that you made yourself; it's a lot cheaper to make your own than to buy it. Best of all, if you make it yourself, you know what goes into it. Why pay alcohol taxes?

New 3rd Edition! Kyle Bravo has assembled his HOW2 zines into a comprehensive book along with dozens of other instructional articles that tell you how to do...just about everything. Topics include getting active, direct action, gardening, making a woodstove, solar box cooker, egg replacer, how to make wine, homebrewing, liberated lifestyles, squats, homeschooling, fixing a toilet, audio phone patch, how to make envelopes, shoe repair, silk screening, making rubber stamps, how to juggle, magic tricks, making puppets, how to patch your clothes, putting utensils on your keychain, how to sing, bird feeders, how to play guitar, putting out records, billboard improvement, how to fix your bike, basic car maintenance, building a bike cart, how to take pride in your body, how to sexually stimulate your partner, diy birth control, how to handle an overdose, self defense, knowing your rights, how to live a more fulfilling life, unschooling, starting a fire with friction, making glue from pine sap, making rope, wild food, natural remedies, fire logs from newspapers, rubbing alcohol campstove, composting, diy toothpaste, getting rid of fruit flies, greywater systems, composting toliets, making hanging and floating tents, saving money at the post office, making posters and stencils, packing for tours, places to dumpster dive, making a tape wallet, building a cart-bike, cleaning stamps, blockprinting, fixing a harmonica, diy flowerpots, avoiding dangerous household chemicals, preventing ear infections, how women can pee standing up, menstrual massages, and a few pieces for inspiration. I'm sure you can see by now why this is essential. ISBN 0-9726967-9-2

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The mother of all zines, this is a huge collection of writings by mothers about birth! Over 30 contributors, all who make their own zines about mothering including Bee Lavender/Hip Mama, Rhonda Baker (Zuzu and the Baby Catcher), Ayun Holliday (East Village Inky), Noemi Martinez (Hermana, Resist!), Rosa Maria (Placenta), Ariel Gore, and many many more!

The mother of all zines, this is a huge collection of writings by mothers about "cutting the cord", separating from their children literally, socially, or metaphorically! 26 contributors, all who make their own zines about mothering including Ariel Gore (Hip Mama), Ayun Halliday (East Village Inky), Stacey Greenberg (Fertile Ground), China Martens (The Future Generation), Kate Haas (Miranda), and Rhonda Baker (Zuzu and the Baby Catcher).

The mother of all zines, this huge collection of writing by mommies reflects on "coming home"! Tons of contributors as usual, all who make their own zines about mothering. Tomas of Rad Dad even snuck in this time!

“I hated school. I hated work. I hated boredom. I had no interests. I had a happy childhood. There was school, growing up, questions about the future. I was 21. I had no dream.” begins the book with no title, no author, no description of the contents, and no blurbs.

Comparisons to "Evasion" are inevitable as is the general hobo lifestyle, situationism, and approach here.

Written by an alienated twentysomething who is perceptive, honest, true to himself, self-conscious and consistent enough to constitute what amounts to a literary style.

“Drunken episodes continued, music played on; there was hysterical laughter, stupid games, crashing shins on coffee tables, spilling beer on ashy couches, collapsing at bar entrances, staring out at car windows driven by drunks and fools. I gazed with half-shut eyes at a slowly rising sun—on to the next town, the next fix. Ruination unending."

“I stumbled through streets in the night, away from the intoxicated noise. Buildings swayed in the dark. I fell against a lamppost and tried to breathe.”

There's plenty of montage here and it's not all depressing either. “We rode slow in the sun and looked at the great houses with nobody around—three- and four-car garages, wide smooth driveways, country-style mailboxes, shrubs and trees in beds of wood-chips, expensive basketball hoops with no kids around—everything quiet in the country with the sun and the breeze blowing over the wide strips of asphalt. Large houses sat on hills like statues hacked out of boulders and preserved by gods.

We giggled like little kids. Sybil rode the bike like a grasshopper on a horse. She pedaled hard up the hills, making the big wheels turn. I wanted to explode with happiness . . .”

The unnamed narrator goes to college, drops out, hangs outs and reads, moves on, gets loaded at parties, despairs over women, hitchhikes, sleeps under bridges, walks along trashy roadsides and explores duplicated suburban towns, runs out of money, spends a few days at home, despairs over his parents’ sincere efforts to get him to get ahold of himself, goes to Europe, finds life there just as dead-end as here, returns, increases his chemical intake, and finds himself snared deeper and deeper by a whirlpool of drug dependency and hopelessness.

By the end he can’t believe how hopeless and low he’s gotten, how much he drinks, how the kids he went to college with have grabbed hold of some kind of life while he’s still wallowing in nothingness. He renders up his self-horror with such energy and aesthetic care that it makes up for his rubbing our faces in the deep American muck.

"Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State - and Church - begotten weed, marriage?"

"a comic book about boyfriends" This is a compilation of comics by Robyn Chapman from 2004-2005 filled with comics about love and sex from high school romance involving a boyfriend with parents who owned a coffee stand to the sparks of college dorm romance. A cute read that leaves me wanting more.

Finn is a mischevious kid and these are all stories about living in the crazy town of Lamont, CA. They cover the basics of fights, gangs, and chases but also cover the old man who lets all the kids in town swim in his pool (turning the water brown), being the only skateboarder in town, all of his friends becoming cowboys, and riding his bike 25 miles to meet up on a date. The stories really touched my heart and there's a strong feeling of oral tradition to them. To make this zine even more impressive, Finn currently lives in the very tiny town of Pahrump, NV (home of Art Bell)!

I know what you might be thinking...a zine about meat? We say sure, why not! One of the things we love about zine culture is that if you find a topic fascinating, you can turn that preoccupation it into a zine. Instead of a quick meat=bad argument, this zine is a look at different meats from around the world and their cultural significance. It also covers slaughterhouses, cannibalism, and in vitro meat, or meat grown in a lab. This is a captivating primer on the wide world of meat.

What does it mean to be a minority in a European dominated society? What if that European society dominated the original aboriginal peoples? No, we are not talking about the US here, but instead New Zealand! Hannah shares her feelings of being a first-generation Aotearoan, observations on internalized (self) racism, oppression, colonization, migration, and other things. It sometimes feels hopeless, but Hannah manages to end the zine on a positive, uplifting note. Learn about cultural imperialism and self discovery.

A reprint of two essays by the tough as nails anarchist Emma Goldman. Minorities vs. the Majorities tackles the state itself and the patterns that play out between the haves on top, and have nots square on the bottom. State sponsored individualism is an oxymoron, and Emma Goldman intends to prove it. In the second essay, Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, Emma equates patriotism and its implied fierce loyalty with a blanket acceptance of violent government policy, from war spending to extolling the virtues of military history in schools.

Portable living, portable dwelling, ruminations on the philosphical and intellectual effects and counter effects of organzing and inhabiting space; being carried away and toward other spaces. Yeah. Access to inner mobility as well.

Good stuff. Seriously. Included are more than the typical intellectual quotes and commentary, but something to inspire oneself to challenge and resist opposing forces (ya know, the status quo of predictable shapes and spheres of confinement). How to have sex with five people at once!

Merry Death has compiled another emotionally stunning collection of women's stories dealing with clinical abortion, childbirth, forced sterilization, RU486, herbal abortion, illegal abortion, contraceptives, and more. It's difficult subject matter that will no doubt evoke an emotional response. All of the articles in this text-heavy compilation are tied together by themes of guilt, empowerment, frustration with the doctors, and coming to terms with difficult decisions.

Ryan writes a personal style, well-known narrative zine about his life as an anarchist. This issue talks about his experiences seeing poverty on the street and having trouble reading the newspaper, reflections on news and current events, an interview with writer Bruce Holland Rogers, an article and interview about ManiFest, an annual event that commemorates the death of their son through music and community gathering, plus works of fiction, book and zine reviews, and notes on dealing with prisons and prisoners. The huge and exciting special feature this issue though is a big focus on discussion of DIY and independence with punk record labels. This topic prompted a special double issue of Maximum Rock and Roll about the same topics, but it started here folks! A great feature that sheds lights and makes you think about these very important issues of corporate commodification and the grey area of working in business in the punk realm. "Just a punk kid with a pen."

An exploration of the mixtape habits of bands like Veruca Salt, the Thermals, the Gossip, the Muffs, the Frumpies, the New Bloods and more. It's a series of interviews, about mixtapes, with bands who you might put on your own mixtape! Comes with a template for your very own mixtape stencil! It makes you want to make a tape for someone special ASAP!

Just as "Chicago Stories" goes out of print, we are treated to another new short book from Aaron Cometbus. It pulls together a few selections previously publishing in other zines, magazines, and newspapers to create a story about his time in New York City, taking a walk for his 30th birthday, the switch of an old friend to a new lover, coffee reviews in Pensacola, a clever book review of Peops by Fly, a library love story, and more. I predict this book will be out of print by the end of the year if you don't already have enough reasons to snatch it up!

A collaborative comic between Herbie Meyer and his well loved father, Christoph! Find out the fate of the popsicle who gets forgotten on the counter and starts to feel the heat wave. A cute story for children and adults - by a creative 5 year old! Much fun had by all of us here reading the story! There are also plenty of adult jokes to keep the paging turning!

This zine is full of Isy's neat comics. In the main story, she and her cohorts protest the G8 summit in Germany! Isy cooks giant vats of food, translates from German into English during meetings, drinks a few celebratory beers, and generally participates in demonstrations 10,000 people strong. Another comic features Isy's trip to a horticulture fair where she feels out of place at first, but still wins a ribbon for her vegan chocolate cherry cake. Isy also attends Climate Camp 07 and tells us a little about pancakes and beech trees. Many of her friends write in with lists of things they hate. Includes lists from Ryan Mishap, Anto of Loserdom zine, Steve of Rum Lad, and a bunch of other folks as well. This zine, although about protesting some pretty awful stuff and full of hate-lists, is still super posi!

New edition! A thorough introduction and motivational tool for women wanting to make film or video. Contents include cameraless filmmaking, super 8 basics, animation, make your own (how to produce a no-budget short film while being unemployed), activist camera/ film in community, basics of video & exercises for the beginner, girls & filmmaking, screenwriting, what is a short film?, what is a long film?, DIY drive-In, organize your own film festival, submitting to film festivals, and a list of resources for filmmakers. An indepensible resource for novices and pros alike. Now a paperback book!

Do you remember that one time that you got a professional job and it alienated your friends? Maybe you were doubting your DIY punk existence or just needed to raise money for that surgery or to go traveling, but your friends just didn't understand. But at least you were fortuitous enough to write up a good zine about the whole affair with cute illustrations to carry the story along! You packed dumpstered flowers into the milkcrate on the back of your bike and rode around town with your new date that you baked a cake for before the dance party. You are sure everything will work out. Life moves on, people grow up, and sometimes the divides are harder to see and understand than when you were a teenager. Sometimes life gets more complex.