This weekend I visited the London Zine Symposium with some zinester pals – great zines were bought, wallets were emptied, expensive London food was consumed, many free papery things were hoarded in our bags.  I also tried my first ever Krispy Kreme doughnut – what a treat!

There were lots of stalls and interesting people en route to the venue; a far cry from the (fairly) homogenized population of Swansea that I’m used to!  Inside, we met with a few cool people there, including Lizzy from Marching Stars, Sophie Koonin, Hodge and the women from Bad Reputation, Tukru and her Vampire Sushi distro, and Emma Jane Falconer.  I bought one of Hodge’s gorgeous “An Alphabet of Feminism” posters, which I was chuffed about.

There was a zine library stall, where I donated a few issues of my zine, and a table for free zines and flyers, where I shoved piles of Spill the Zines flyers and issues of my free minizine Twt.

Other highlights of the symposium included: meeting a few lovely zinesters who I’ve either written to, or follow on Twitter (all of whom were lovely), drawing monsters and third-eyes for ourselves at the Interactive Monster Unit, eating yummy food by the catering company “Anarchist Teapot“, browsing through some incredibly well-drawn comic zines, and the gorgeous sunny weather.

Meeting strangers who knew of me through my zines was very scary.  I had a few people come up to me and start chatting, which has never really happened before, but I don’t think I made too much of an idiot of myself in front of anyone… I call that a success!

Later that day, we visited the iconic record store Rough Trade.  After picking up loads of the free zines and newspapers available inside, and browsing their awesome stock of vinyls and CDs, we got our picture taken in its infamous photo booth (I wish I’d pulled more silly faces).

We then went for a coffee and watched the world go by under the veranda.  Such a good day. <3

Other zine news:
1. I’ve just done an interview about British zines and feminism for a PhD researcher in Warwick, which was a little scary, but turned out to be quite fun. Looking forward to reading the finished thesis.
2. My zine is being stocked at US distro and craft store, Fluxxii! Take a look here.
3. Spill the Zines has been syndicated on http://syndicatedzinereviews.blogspot.com!  Hannah and I are now listed as their two of their “staff reviewers”, which I think is rather exciting.  Take a look at their archives here.


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