QZAP - The Queer Zine Archive Project

A poster for Zinedump, a new Toronto zine fair. The poster features a woman levitating above a star drawn on the earth in chalk. She is wearing a goat skull and holding a zine, which is emitting orange smoke. 3 small Toronto associated animals are gathered around in worship - A raccoon, a rat and a skunk. The information on the poster is as follows: November 9th, 12pm to 5pm Cecil Community Centre, 58 Cecil Street 12 - 1pm - Masks mandatory 1pm - 5pm - Masks encouraged 60+ vendors and programming More updates coming!

Poster for ZINEDUMP, a new Toronto zine fair! I'm one of the organizers for the event, and we are having our inaugural event on November 9th! We hope to see you there!
For updates, please check our website or follow our instagram at zinedump.fyi

Image is a psychedelic ameboid frame with purple, green and pink flowers and over a black and white image of two male sailors kissing each other.

We will be tabling at Beet Street in Milwaukee this Saturday from 1pm - 7pm-ish.

This street festival is organized and hosted by our friends at Cactus Club, and looks like it's going to be rad as fuck.

Details here:
www.visitmilwaukee.org/event/beet-s...

We're pretty sure @rachaelhouse.bsky.social donated it to the archive when she visited in 2014. 💗💜💙

Sticker depicting actor Divine holding a pistol. Text reads "Destroy Fascism - Eat Shit Nazi Scum" and has a rainbow flag and a black flag in the upper left with the words "Antihomophobe Action"

Woke up thinking about this sticker that we've got in the archive here:
archive.qzap.org/index.php/De...

Button from the 1970s from the Georgia Gay Liberation Front.

Cover of Gay Community News from September 22, 1973 with an article about the bombing of the Arch Cafe in Springfield, Massachusetts on September 11th.

Early Tuesday morning (Sept. 11) at 5AM, one of Springfield’s gay “hangouts”, the Arch Cafe was completely demolished by a bomb explosion. Owner Louis Lake had received an unusual number of obscene phone calls, as many as “12 to 15 daily prior to today’s mishap. Lake said, “You’ve got to expect a certain number of calls, mostly from straight people who object (to homosexuality.) Lake estimated damages at between eighty and ninety thousand dollars, and said that his insurance would “in no way” cover losses. State police bomb squads are said to be investigating the source of the explosion and witnesses reported the smell of flammable fuel permeating the rubble in one section of the bar. Firemen suspected bombing after they combed through the debris and found the gas main and meter servicing the building intact. A fire inspector, when asked if the blast was the work of an explosives ex-pert, said “if it wasn’t, it sure as hell was a good amateur”. Several residents of the neighboring Charles Hotel, mostly elderly people, were knocked from their beds by the blast. Authorities said that some of the occupants were shaken but there were no injuries. The bar was unoccupied at the time. GCN contacted Rep. James Boller (D., Springfield) at the State House. He remarked upon viewing the wreckage Wednesday morning, that the former Arch Cafe was “completely demolished”, and that both adjacent buildings had also experienced damage. When questioned on the perpetrator of this act and his possible exper-tise, he remarked that a pro “could not have done such a good job’. He labeled it a “fool-ish’ act done by some “wierd” person whose motivation “could have been anything, an argument or something” Boller added that they “knew what they were doing” , implying that the bomber was taking deliberate action against the gay com-munity.

NEVER FORGET!!!
On this day in 1973 the Arch Cafe in Springfield, MA was firebombed and destroyed.

Parody, Punk and ‘Terrorist Drag’: Inside the World of Vaginal Davis

A little conflicted this morning because fuck the nyt, and also hooray for Vaginal Davis!!!

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/a...

Screenshot of a comic tutorial for "assembling a quarter-letter folded zine (aka "hand pies", for Zine Bakery Homemade quarter-size zines)". Steps are: 1) Fold your paper so it's been creased in half both horizontally and vertically. 2) Fold the top half of the paper down over the bottom, such that just the back cover (left) and front cover (right) pages show. 3) Put 2 staples through the vertical center crease. 4) Use scissors to cut off the smallest possible strip of paper along the top (you're freeing those pages from being connected, while trying to lose as little of the zine design to the cut as possible). 5) Fold the back cover around to the back, so just the front cover shows.

If you want to make a smaller zine (< 1/2-sheet page size) but w/more page space than a minizine (1/8 sheet)—or just dislike not being able to get the minizine creases all perfect—1/4 size zines are another option. (HT @alienmelon.bsky.social wonderful Electric Zine Maker tool I learned this from!)

illustration of a brown and white horse standing on a hill of green grass with a blue gradient sky above. Text on the image says "I'm A Denver Zine Fest 2025 Exhibitor!!!"

It's Fall!!!!! (Almost) Anyway, we're excited to be mostly exciting the melting dome of summer, and are hitting up some events over the next couple of months.

First up, on Sept. 14 is the Denver Zine Fest!

For a full schedule, check out our post at QZAP:
gittings.qzap.org/gross-indece...

A blue riso printed drawing on peach paper of a flag with a scale pattern. There’s a skull in the centre of the flag inside a circle adorned with M,F & Trans symbols. Text reads- the bi flag is rather dull, I’d like to propose this one instead. STILL BISEXUAL

It’s Bi Visibility Month, and here’s a page from my 2019 zine, ‘still bisexual’.

78 Years Of Lesbian Magazines Keeping Our Queer Legacy Alive The desire to connect with other people like us has been the driving force of queer media since the first lesbian print magazine ever launched in 1947. Here are just 50 of the many publications that b...

This list of lesbian magazines from Riese at
@autostraddle.bsky.social
is lit!!! 🔥

We've got a handful of issues of some of these in our collection, and lots more to learn about.

www.autostraddle.com/lesbian-maga...

A colorful display of queer zines

"sorry this is late..." said every perzinester ever... so even though we missed the end of International Zine Month by a couple of days, we're still stoked to share this "What Kind of Queer Zine Are You" quiz that QZAP intern @bluespringwrites.bsky.social made:

gittings.qzap.org/quiz-what-ty...

There's a new Zine of the Gay post up at QZAP! This week Lauren is talking about Bar Dykes, written by Merril Mushroom and designed and published by Faythe Levine and Caroline Paquita in 2016, and more abstractly about butch/femme culture in the 1950s.

gittings.qzap.org/bar-dykes/

Zine Librarian’s Code of Ethics zine

9. The Barnard Zine Library Zine

10. xZINECOREx - Shared Zine Metadata

11. Shared Authority - Zine Union Catalog for Beginners

11. Shared Authority - Zine Union Catalog for Beginners

5. DIY Zine Libraries

6. From Staple to Spine - A Compendium of Books About Zines, 2022 Edition

7. Two-Fisted Library Stories No.6

8. A Pocket Guide to the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center

1. Bend/Mend/Discard - A Zine About the Brooklyn College Library Zine Collection

2. Blood Orange Infoshop - Demanding The Impossible Tomorrow Since Yesterday

3. A Handful of Librarians Dance in the Empty Caverns of Reactionary Skulls

4. Cite This Zine!

Here are just a few of the zines ABOUT libraries, info shop, collections, and overall zine librarianship that we’ve collected over the past couple of decades.

It’s ALSO a great day to make a donation to your favorite zine libraries! Either a copy of your zine, and/or a financial contribution to help the libraries continue to collect and make zines available to all readers would certainly be welcome.

(to donate to us at QZAP head over to qzap.org)

July 21 is International Zine Libraries Day!!

To celebrate this annual event, it is customary to bring donuts or other baked goods to your favorite zine librarians (just check in with them first about any dietary restrictions or requests!)

1/6

a bunch of stickers with a drawing of a long arm stapler that says “I only got into zines for the money”.

THEY HAVE ARRIVED. $4 each or wholesale is available as well, email bennymakescomics@gmail.com to order! They measure about 2x4 inches, vinyl, waterproof, printed by the fine folks at Stickerninja in Portland, OR

Image shows a sticker with a paper cutter. text reads “If this is the only guillotine you have, use it. Make Zines”

@miloblue.bsky.social is at #alaac25 this weekend doing stuff with the Zine Pavilion folks. They’ll be selling zines and QZAP swag tomorrow, so stop by if you’re at the conference.

Money for AIDS / Not for war / ACT UP Chicago

NO WAR!!!

This is from the ACT UP - Chicago sticker folio circa the early 1990s.

archive.qzap.org/index.php/De...

#nowarwithiran #nowar #aidsfundingnow #actup #actupchicago #chicago #stickers #cracknpeel

Pictured: Magazine cover with black and white image of feminine person looking downwards, holding her arms across her chest with her dress draped down her shoulders. Her dress and large earrings have been recolored with a pastel orange and yellow overlay, and a halo has been drawn over her head. A small caption on the bottom left side reads “Joey Arias channels Billie Holliday” in blue cursive. Above the model, the title “Thing” is printed in purple block letters underneath a tagline, “Inside: Black Fags Talk Dirty” in blue letters. Under the main title, “Winter 92/93” is printed on the left and “Number 8 - $3” on the right, both in yellow font.

Cover of Thing Magazine No. 8 (Winter 1992-93), featuring drag queen Joey Arias.

For more information about this item, please visit the DTA via the link in our story/bio. Image courtesy of @lltransarchive.

#TransHistory #TransHistoryIsBeautiful #PrideMonth2025

Butcher Queers #4 front cover. A man wearing only rugby helmet and briefs points a toy pistol at the viewer.

The Zine of the Gay is back!! After a brief hiatus for some torch passing, our intern Lauren is making their QZAP ZotG debut with Butcher Queers #4.

gittings.qzap.org/butcher-quee...

Queer Zine Archive Project Preserves LGBTQ+ DIY History What started as the combined zine collections of co-founders Milo Miller and Christopher Wilde has ballooned to over 4,500 archived items in their physical collection and about 600 in their digital da...

We're honored to be recognized by our local freekly, The Shepherd-Express, as their "heroes" of the month.

shepherdexpress.com/news/hero-of...

#freekly #freeweeklypaper #localpress #milwaukee

Remember there is so, so little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you. Next year, we march naked.

A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look at our lives and see what's best in them, see what is queer and what is straight and let that straight chaff fall away!

(We've given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few of the gifts from our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.) Let's make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of our sexual geography.

We must fight for ourselves (no else is going to do it) and if in that process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great.

Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we fuck, we win.