KC Zine Con marks its ninth annual DIY adventure with signature spirit June 22-23

Goofball Sk8boards Zine Con 2023 // Photo by Hayley Green

Alternative cultures have been distributing and exchanging ideas, art, and information through small, self-published pamphlets called “zines” for decades. The name, short for “magazine,” has only one rule: There are no rules. June 22 and 23, volunteer “zinesters” will be hosting their Ninth Annual Zine Con at Goofball Sk8boards—This year’s will be the biggest one yet. 

Zine Con offers an opportunity for independent writers, artists, activists, and anyone with something to say, sell, trade, to showcase their work to the world. Across the two-day event, a total of about 140 different zinesters will set up their tables to display their work. This year’s convention remains a free admission and will be held indoors to avoid the Midwest mugginess. 

“It’s exciting that there are that many zinesters who are interested. It seems like each year, the interest grows. That means the zine community is growing as well,” says Nash High, one of the volunteer organizers. “It would be like 140 total, with 77 different exhibitors each day. That’s pretty exciting,” says Jaydream Hogan, another organizer and founder of Zine Con. 

Whether or not you create, or even know exactly what they are, organizers of the event urge folks to come. “So even if you’re like, ‘I don’t know about this zine thing,’ just come anyways and take a look at stuff. Breathe in the scene. Take it all in,” says Dayna Meyer, another organizer of Zine Con. “Even if you aren’t tabling, if you make zines, bring some, and trade with people. Half the fun is trading zines with people like Pokémon cards.”

The Kansas City zine scene’s growth has brought people from various niches and sub-cultures together. With the freedom of no publishers or editors’ approval, High details how zines offer more unfiltered work than other mediums. “It’s gonna get smoothed out a bit in a way that can be kind of damaging to some of the messages that folks are actually trying to communicate,” High says. “Zines give you the chance to be really direct and impactful, and even abrasive and controversial.”

Independent publishing’s importance rings especially true for many marginalized groups who often don’t get the proper platform. This avenue of art allows them to display their lived experiences through storytelling. “That idea of primary sources—that it is coming directly from the person who is experiencing it. It’s not being filtered through, it’s just someone who is very directly showing you their heart or their experience,” Hogan says. 

Zines aren’t anything new to the art scene either. Zine’s history dates back to the early 1900s, shortly after the invention of the print press. “During the Harlem Renaissance, Black creators were creating art and music zines to get their words out into the world,” Meyer says. “Then, in the 1940s, Sci-Fi writers coined the term fanzine, as they began sharing fanfiction. That’s where the word zine came from. In the ’90s, Riot Girl—a feminist punk movement from Olympia, Washington—was heavily connected to a zine of the same name.”

Outside of the yearly convention, the organizers hold several events for those interested in zines to attend. Every month, Zine Con holds a workshop where creators can share tutorials or work on their zines together. They also host a zine club that meets every third Tuesday of the month at Goofball Sk8boards, where zinesters showcase their zines. 

“Anyone can make one, you don’t have to have any skills. You can write one out on a piece of paper and start using it,” says Nat Dolitsky, another event organizer. While artists around the metro await the highly-anticipated Zine Con in mid-June, the next Zine Workshop will be on May 30 at the Nelson Atkins Museum, where artists will get hands-on experience collaging different literature.

For anyone looking to get involved in zine culture within the KC metro, this event is a great way to get the ball rolling ahead of the Ninth Annual Zine Con coming June 22 and 23 at Goofball Sk8boards.