About

The Chicago Zine Fest is an independent event creating an outlet for small press and independent publishers to showcase their work. Our goal is to make DIY zine-making accessible, highlight the talents of self-published artists, and give independent artists a chance to interact, and swap skills through tabling, lectures, and workshops.

The Chicago Zine Fest will be comprised of a night of zine festivities, followed by a day of exhibiting!

Friday - Zine Reading at Quimby's Bookstore, 7pm

              Zine-related Art Opening and meet and greet at Johalla Projects*, 7-10:30pm

              Showing of the Gadabout Film Festival at Johalla Projects*, 10:30pm

Saturday - A day of zine exhibiting at the Conaway Student Center, Columbia College, 10am - 5pm

*Please be aware that the Johalla Projects is not wheelchair accessible. It's a DIY apartment gallery located up a flight of stairs. We greatly apologize for this oversight and hope you will be excited to participate in the various other events planned for the weekend! All other events/locations are accessible.

All events are free to the public! To find out about exhibiting at the Chicago Zine Fest, please visit the Exhibitors page. To find out how you can help, please visit the Volunteers or Sponsors and Donors page.

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More Details!

Zine Reading at Quimby's Bookstore, 7pm

The zine reading at Quimby's will feature these exciting readers!

- Jeffrey Brown

- John Porcellino

- Anne Elizabeth Moore

- Amber Forrester

- Monica Anderson

- Michelle Aiello

- Anthony Marvullo

- Sarala Bee

Each reader will have approximately ten minutes to read from original work. Please see the Exhibitors page to find out more about each of our featured readers! Following the democratic spirit of the fest, readers were chosen by pulling names from a hat (with the exception of a few readers we personally invited to read for the fest)! We are really excited about all the names we chose, and really bummed about all the names that didn't get chosen!

Zine-related Art Opening and meet and greet at Johalla Projects, 7-10:30pm

The art show and reading will occur simultaneously and just around the corner from one another. We felt this gave people options for the type of night they wished to have, and also lets them walk between events at their leisure. The art opening will be open later than the reading, so attendees will be able to watch all of the reading and then walk to the opening afterwards.

We're really excited about the broad range of artwork we have received. The artshow will be hung salon style, if necessary, and artwork will be priced for sales.

Artists we have submissions from so far include:

- John Porcellino
- Chelsea Dirck
- Chloe Kenning
- Eric Bartholomew
- Ryan Dodger
- Sara Drake
- James Payne
- Brooks Golden
- Lilli Carre
- Greg Means
- Ruby Thorkelson
- Bri Z.
- Mary Sea
- Jenna Brager
- Anne Elizabeth Moore
 

The art show will also feature a 'wall of zines' in which we collected submissions of a zine page from exhibiting artists in order to fill a wall with a random sampling of zine pages. This is an exciting and collaborative way to show the true aesthetic of the zine! Please submit your zine page by emailing a 300dpi scan of any page you'll be exhibiting, or mailing it or dropping it off at Quimby's Bookstore!

Showing of the Gadabout Film Festival at Johalla Projects, 10:30pm

We're very excited to welcome the Gadabout Film Festival in showing a selection of curated shorts.

From their website:

"The Gadabout is a nationally touring film festival that screens a program of 20+ international short films. Independent in every sense, these films share the same willingness to challenge the conventions set for filmmaking. The Gadabout is a distribution avenue for truly indie filmmakers that distrust Hollywood and the commercial film festival circuit. We are NOT a competition, rather a celebration of what is possible in independent film and video. Above all, the Gadabout is super cool. We tour in a van, and show amazing films to our new friends we get to meet while traveling ... This is filmmaking as art, entertainment, and fun. "

We think this will be a great day to wind down the night of activities with new friends and acuaintances! Ending the night by 11pm allows zinesters to continue on with plans in the neighborhood, or get some rest for the following day of activities.