Name: Hannah Neurotica

Zine(s) you write:
Ax Wound: Gender & The Horror Genre, Toxic Shock Girldom, Technicolor Polkadot, and many various one shot zines. The Sex and Horror issue of Ax Wound is coming out very soon! I am also working on a personal zine called Cupcake Shark Attack! and in the process of relaunching Zinecore Radio.

Share a fun fact about yourself: 
I can't say the word Apricot without pronouncing it Aprocrot.

What is your favorite quote?
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Do you collect anything?
I am trying to live a life with less "stuff" but I am still prone to collecting things. Usually it's magazines/books/zines and art making supplies. I am always on the look out for possible images to cut out and save for future projects. Sometimes I find them in magazine, a food package with a cool design, there are so many places you can find images/patterns/words for your collages/zines if you really look around.

My problem is I find an image and think "oh man, this is so awesome! I need to use this photo for something really special." Then, I tend to not use these images because I always quesiton if its the "right" project for it or if I should save it for later. Oh, and pens! I know pens can be an extension of art supplies but I truly can never get enough of a good pen. I have a ridiculous amount -- more then any one human being should have under one roof. And of course, Hello Kitty everything.

What is your favorite childhood book?
Doctor De Soto by William Steig

What are you afraid of?
The vastness of the universe and capacity for natural disaster at any moment. Fish too. I have a severe phobia of fish.

Name: Eryca
Zine(s) you write: My Little Friend, Dear High School Boy

Share a fun fact about yourself.
I sort of vaguely remember this, but in early 90's there was a big earth quake in LA, I was like, 3 or 4 at the time, apparently I got out of bed in the morning, forgot what had happened the night before and saw my parents cleaning up broken dishes, pictures, etc, and said "why did you guys make such a mess" 

What is your favorite quote?
It's a Jenny Holzer Truism "You are a victim of the rules you live by" 

Do you collect anything?
Oh just like everything. It started before I can even remember. I guess my parents started a decorative spoon collection for me? and told people to buy me decorative spoons from different states and countries. I only bought one or two myself, I think when I was about 7 or 8 and I visited family in New York and Florida, but I have a decorative spoon collection, somewhere in storage, with like 50+ spoons! What is their purpose? I don't know, it's not like you can eat with them. 

But I think that spawed a collector in me. I collect zines, books, fabric, yarn, stationary, set lists, witty tshirts, vintage children's books, vintage women's magazines, I'm sure there are more things I collect, that was just off the top of my head. 


What is your favorite childhood book?
Oh! tough question! Probably Eloise. Also, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Also, Judy Blume's lesser known picture book The Pain and The Great One, about a brother and sister who didn't get along. 

What are you afraid of?
The next 10 years of my life. Also, Bears.

Name: Sage
Zine(s) you write: Tattooed Memoirs, Marked For Life, Hard Knox & editor of FAT-TASTIC!

Share a fun fact about yourself. 
When I was 18-years-old I was filmed for the TBS documentary,Tattoos: Women of the Ink. It was weird to see myself on television.

What is your favorite quote?
“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley

Do you collect anything? 
Books, zines, & vintage typewriters. I also have some knick knacks with owls, crows, & coffee themed stuff.

What is your favorite childhood book?
My coloring books.
 
What are you afraid of?
Death, snakes, poisonous spiders, terminal illness, and my kids being disappointed in me.

Name: Melanie L.
Zine(s) you write: Let's see zines I have done include: Slippin' Bananas' Newsletter/ SBN (1994-1995), Rebel in Magenta (1996- 2004), What Comes Around Goes Around (2000- 2002), I Want My Baby [the miscarriage zine] (2004), Hanna's Pink Pajamas (24 hour zine, 2007) & Dirty July (2006- present; issue #2 came out in July!!!!!). I have also made a few one off zines with friends that probably never circulated too!! They are all mainly perzines with the exception of the first zines I have ever done, mainly being "review" zines. Dirty July #2 is the only zine I currently have available. 

Share a fun fact about yourself. 
I work at an amusement park. I suppose that is fun!! I've been there 15 years now. I don't actually work in the park though, so I don't run a ride or work a stand or anything cool like that, but I do work for the housing department and I get to meet people from all over the world!! That part, I love!! I actually still keep in touch with one guy I worked with in 2000 from Slovakia!! 

What is your favorite quote? 
"It can't rain all the time" My #1 stand by quote!! 

Do you collect anything? 
I have an obsession with buying stickers, paper, office supplies. I also collect zines & records (for my own enjoyment, not for value)!!! I used to collect spoons (thanks to my mom!!!) but I haven't bought any new ones in a long long time. 


What is your favorite childhood book? 
The first book that comes to mind is The 12 Days of Christmas!! Maybe I'm in the Christmas spirit!! haha I sure did love that book though. I now share it with my kids! 

What are you afraid of? 
I am afraid of failure. This is something I need to over-come. I haven't done a lot of the things I have wanted to do because of this fear.

Name: Marya Errin Jones
Zine(s) you write:
-Mocha Chocolata Momma Zine—a zine about black women in popular culture, real or imagined. Part history part perzine!
-Voice Inside – a mini zine about my thoughts over the course of a day. . .
-Electric Voyager – a travel zine
-Major Rainy Sneer’s Blue Collar Pornography – the name says it all . . .

Share a fun fact about yourself.
I play the button accordion. I don't profess to be any good, but I am willing to wrestle with the thing. My accordion’s name is Jimmy. I bought Jimmy while hanging out with friends in Sweden, several years ago. I bought him from a guy also named Jimmy (pronounced YEMMIE) who simply had too many accordions. The human Jimmy called the accordion, “The Devil’s Instrument.” If you’ve ever tried to play one, you’d come to that very conclusion.

What is your favorite quote?
"Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy." #1 from Jack Kerouac's Thirty Essentials of Spontaneous Prose. 

Do you collect anything?
Although I haven't done it in a while, I collect rocks, from various places. I have a small collection of stones from a beach off the coast of Scotland, in the Hebrides. Turns out that the monks on that island used stones to mark their years of service by collecting a stone for each year they served. I picked up 21 stones. I also have a habit of not just finding rocks, but actual stone TOOLS-- I have found a rock carved into a whistle that was probably an ax head before it was retired, I've found women's milling stones for making flour, sharpening stones left in the shallow end of creeks, and I've found a large, blunt killing instrument with finger notches carved into it for getting a firm grip before knocking something in the head. I can barely get my hand around it, so I imagine it to be a man's tool. I've found these things just lying on the ground, or just under the surface of a layer of dirt. My nickname in elementary school was, "Eagle Eye"!

What is your favorite childhood book?
Are Your There God, It's Me, Margaret-- written by Judy Blume, the year I was born. It hit upon so many milestones for me-- faith, my first bra, liking boys, the day my period started . . . I remember that classic, Yearling cover of the girl in the print dress in the foreground, her house in the background.

What are you afraid of?
I am pretty afraid of losing my passport. Once I WASHED my passport in a front loader. They’re LOCKED when they’re running, you know. The paper is remarkable, very sturdy. It came out in one piece. Now passports have that GPS tracker shit in them. It looks like I have a John Waters mustache in my current picture, because of the new security features in the paper. Whatever. A passport is your gateway to the WORLD. Get one and stitch it to the inside of your best panties. Always be ready to GO.

Name: sam green-eggs
Zine(s) you write: chickeney & chronic

Share a fun fact about yourself.
in high school i wanted to be a physicist when i grew up.

What is your favorite quote?
i don't have one

Do you collect anything?
over the years i have collected frogs, bells, stamps, and coins. i don't feel like i have official collections anymore, but there are certain things i have a lot of like old cameras and other photo equipment, handmade pottery, zines, pretty & unusual chicken egg shells, and tons of art supplies.

What is your favorite childhood book?
i was awfully fond of "the three robbers" when i was young, and looking back i still think its message is pretty awesome. 

What are you afraid of?
being on a bridge in an earthquake

Name: Meredith Wallace
Zine(s) you write: Life, Death, Love & "All of the Above" 

Share a fun fact about yourself.
My first pet was a guinea pig named Crystal Light Amethyst Alka Seltzer Plus. I watched a lot of TV as a kid. 

What is your favorite quote? 
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.” -- Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"

Do you collect anything?
Oh man, I collect TONS of things. Obviously, I collect zines. It's getting to the point now where I'm practically a zine hoarder! I'm a huge fan of collecting vintage, especially from the 1930's - 1960's, and so I have large collections of vintage photography and clothing. I also used to collect prescriptive literature for women from 1850 - 1950. I have a bunch of charm/personality books, style guides, and even medical books specifically geared towards all that ails women and their crazy ovaries. It's fascinating to be able to see how the concept of acceptable femininity has changed over the years. 

What is your favorite childhood book?
I was a total introvert and LOVED reading as a kid. No surprise there! I had tons and tons of favorite books, so it's hard to narrow it down, but one that stands out is Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit. I had my mom's old copy from when she was a kid, and it might have been the first old book I fell in love with.

What are you afraid of?
I grew up as a very, very anxious kid. I've gotten over most of my fears, but I'd still say that developing close bonds with people is still something that scares me. Social situations were always the biggest issue for me, but I've gotten pretty adept at navigating your everyday interactions. Some people probably mistakenly think I'm some outgoing extrovert! But I'm still a loner, and it's hard for me to develop intimate friendships and relationships without some degree of anxiety. I still crave that kind of understanding though. I think ultimately that's why I got so into zines -- it's a way for me to express myself without tripping over my words, or worrying about whether or not I'm entertaining enough. Having that outlet probably is what has kept me at the very least semi-sane all these years!

Name: Loran
Zine(s) you write: I change the title of my zine almost every issue. My latest is entitled I Keep Interrupting Myself and the one I’m currently writing is going to be called The Occasional Journal of Pointless Meanderings, which is a title I like enough that I may keep for a few issues.
 
Share a fun fact about yourself.
When I discover a new restaurant that I like, I will systematically order each item on the menu, until I’ve eaten everything they serve, before deciding what my “usual” is going to be.
 
What is your favorite quote?
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
Do you collect anything?
I love collecting, but exactly what I collect changes fairly regularly (with the sole exception of sales tax tokens). I like to collect something and learn about it, and when I have acquired a decent collection, I get rid of it and start collecting something new that I don’t know anything about. It’s the act of collecting that I enjoy more than the collection itself, plus this just makes it easier to move when I relocate. Perhaps one day if I own a house my future collections will find a permanent home.
 
What is your favorite childhood book?
It was about dinosaurs, but I don’t remember the name of it. I read it so much that I had the book memorized, and I would wander around the house reciting it out loud to myself. It was that book that caused me to decide at an early age that my favorite dinosaur was the Ankylosaurus, possibly because it was short and fat and low to the ground, like our English bulldog.
 
What are you afraid of?
Dying alone. That and old people who think that you want to hear all of their medical procedures described in great detail.
 

Name: Kara Comegys
Zine(s) you write: Bake and Destroy Everyone Around You, Smash the Pastryarchy, and Clumsy. I also collaborated on Fast Food Vegan.

Share a fun fact about yourself. 
When I was seven I crashed my bike and got asphalt stuck in my four front teeth. The trauma killed the roots and someday they will turn green and fall out. That's fun, right?

What is your favorite quote? 
"Life is awesome, but also it never really gets better." Anthony Poynter

Do you collect anything? 
Religious pamphlets and propaganda, like Jack Chick tracts. People leave them all over the place! My favorites are the "Hell Locator" business card and a pamphlet called, "The Gospel According to Karate".

What is your favorite childhood book? 
Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle. I liked it so much that I gave it to my teacher, and she liked it and read it to the class. The class HATED it and hated me for what I had subjected them to.

What are you afraid of? 
Change.

Name: Jen!
Zine(s) you write: She's Not a Morning Person (http://jenvenegas.com/zine)

Share a fun fact about yourself. 
I am obsessed with horror movies. I saw Gremlins when I was 4 years old and now have to almost compulsively watch every horror movie that comes out, even if I know it will be terrible.

What is your favorite quote? "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" - Ernest Hemingway

Do you collect anything? 
I have spent my life collecting different things at different times. At one point, I collected frogs, then owls. I don't know if I really collect anything right now but I know I have a ton of stationery and cat-related things. ;)

What is your favorite childhood book? 
My favorite childhood book was this random horror anthology called Haunted Heartland. It was scary
stories based on Middle America.

What are you afraid of? 
I am deathly afraid of aliens, specifically gray aliens. I had really bad night terrors when I was a kid about
them that I have never been able to shake off!