Last weekend, zinesters from across the country came to Minneapolis for the second annual Midwest Queer and Trans Zine Fest, as well as the first ever Queer and Trans Zine Conference, held at Elmer L. Andersen Library. 

The fest and conference were co-hosted by Astringent (ASTR) Press, Late Night Copies Press, and the Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. The conference was free, open to the public, and attracted zine makers and aficionados from as far as Colorado and Seattle. 

The conference opened with a keynote session by Milo Miller and Chris Wilde, co-founders of the Queer Zine Archives Project. Miller and Wilde started QZAP in November 2003 to preserve queer zines for future researchers, historians, and anyone interested in DIY publishing and underground queer communities. Their online database has hundreds of zines, stretching back to 1974. 

Zach Frazier, of Kansas City, Missouri, spoke in the afternoon session about Astringent Press and the Midwest Zine Archive, two projects they created to publish and collect narratives that would otherwise go unseen. 

The conference ended with a panel discussion about publishing with libraries and archives, featuring Low, the creator of Yolow Zines and author of “Making Zines at the Library”; Cedar Meik, a Milwaukee-based printmaker, textile artist, and zinester; and Jae Yates, oral historian at the Tretter Collection and co-creator of “Trans Scripts.” 

The zine fest, which spanned Oct. 19 and 20, featured 77 zinesters from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota – including SLOP, the Chicago-based trio behind “Dike Stynk,” the Minneapolis quarterly newsletter “Better Homes & Dykes,” and many more.