zine - QZAP - The Queer Zine Archive Project

I Knew a Boy who Bled

January 30, 2026January 30, 2026Erica

Trigger Warning for mentions of suicide attempts

Some Boys Bleed is a zine written by Samb about his experience with dysphoria and how he eventually overcame it. The zine seeks to help other trans people who may be experiencing similar feelings of distress that he once did.

The first two pages of text give a striking description of the dysphoria that Samb had been feeling while performing for classical music, feeling that these performances were something that was inseparable from his identity. He described how his gender identity and singing countered each other, being forced to carry the burden of dysphoria while acting out gender roles that no longer fit him.

What was once something he felt he could walk away from was now rearing its ugly head towards him. Suddenly, he feels stiff and his voice falters as he walks into the studio. It gets to a point where he has to leave it because he was using his performance to hide from his problems. As he writes:

“I have used having a singing voice as an excuse to not explore what transitioning might look like for me”

Leaving with the full support of his teacher, he had time to reflect. Soon, he realized that the reason he’d been stricken with years of mental health issues and suicide attempts was because of his dysphoria. By going out and acting as someone he knew he never was had hurt him. He found immediate support from his mom, noting that sometimes it’s the people who know the least that offer the most comforting support. He finishes off by asserting that he will go through with his transition for himself. The silent recognition that comes with it is all he needs.

The zine included several block print illustrations, all drawn by Samb.

The first shows a trans man binding his chest, all in red and engulfed in scratch-like flames. The illustration feels like a visual representation of the physical pain that can come with binding one’s chest, and the mental anguish that comes with dysphoria.

The next features several pairs of underwear, likely a way for Samb to parse his identity. The one following features two trans people passionately making out, with not a care for anything else but each other. After that is a much simpler illustration featuring a person in front of a gender-neutral bathroom as onlookers appear to judge them for their decision.

The final illustration is the most striking one to me. It depicts a trans man, like the one form the first illustration. Here he is posing in underwear with top surgery scars on his chest. The illustration oozes with confidence, as if it’s screaming “This is me, and I love myself for that.”

The zine also includes a section titled Some Ways to be an Ally, a list of ways the reader can help their trans peers out. It includes topics such as practicing names and pronouns, not commenting on if someone passes or not, reading books or websites that focus on trans topics and talking about them with cis people, but one of them stood out to me in particular:

“Medical information is none of your business. Some trans folks take hormones, get surgery, (change names), some don’t – and it’s not a hierarchy of being “more trans”

To me, this may be the single most important part of the entire section, let alone the entire zine. If cis people get break conventional gender norms without being questioned, then trans people should also get this freedom. Hormone therapy and surgery is not the “goal” that trans people should be expected to reach, but rather an option for those who know it will help them feel fulfilled. No amount of ‘transness’ is owed to anyone at all.

I think back to my time in middle school. In the wake of gay marriage being legalized and queer topics being discussed on a wider scale, I felt like I was caught in the middle of crossfire. I’ve had thoughts like these pass through my mind before. Romance by logic shouldn’t always be between a man and woman, and things being tied to gender was weird. But for all the positive conversation that was going on around these things, there was also a load of negative content being shared online. Much of it was towards trans people, and I was being exposed to both at the same time. I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about it.

And then one day one, during a group counseling session, one of my friends would approach me, and come out as trans. In that moment I realized that trans people were real, and not just something that existed on my phone. Since he was too young at the time to get any form of hormone therapy, I naïvely told him that exercise could produce extra testosterone, (although true, it is not a replacement for HRT) as, in my mind, it would help him on his journey through transitioning. Even then, I never questioned his mannerisms or looks, since to me all I needed to know is that he was what he asserted himself to be – a trans guy.

He even supported me as much as I did to him when I came out as bisexual, supplementing the support I didn’t get from my mother at the time (though thankfully she would turn this around). He made me a lacquer-coated wooden charm with the colors of the pride flag. It has become one of my most cherished possessions.

Time passed, and eventually we saw each other less until he and his family moved down to Florida. Since then, I have learned more about myself, like how my gender and sexuality feel mold-able, like putty. I haven’t heard or seen him since, but I’ll always remember the mutual support we shared for each other.

Erica (she/they) is a QZAP intern working virtually for the blog. She is in her fourth year of school and second year at SUNY Purchase, studying New Media. They are queer in gender and sexuality. She enjoys photography, playing video games and working on her website.

Farm News by First Root Farm

July 18, 2023July 19, 2023Kit Gorton

When it comes to queerness and farming in the U.S., they are frequently seen as not only opposites but oppositional to each other. This zine shows that farming doesn’t have to be the work of the strong, solo, man’s man homesteader, and can instead be incredibly communal, fun, creative, and most importantly, queer.

Farm News from First Root Farm (also called the First Root zine, First Root Farm Zine, CSA Zine and other variations) began with the farm back in 2010 and ended with it in 2017. The farm itself was a 4.5 acre vegetable and flower farm located in Minute Man National Historical Park in Massachusetts. The mini-zines were produced weekly to be given out with food shares to farm community members. Currently we have eight issues from the first year in our digital archive. They were created by the two farmers Ariel Berman (he/him) and Laura Sackton (she/her), who approached prolific zine creator Alana Kumbier (they/she) (of Because the Boss Belongs to Us and Making History) to help them with the parts of zinemaking they were unsure about. We were lucky enough to be able to get into contact with all of them and interview them about the zine, the community around First Root Farm in the early years, and farming and queerness!

“I had a lot of knowledge of zines and felt not cool enough to do a zine,” Ariel told us. “Alana… has this incredible knowledge around zines and I think almost definitely was the person who showed us how to, like , put the zine together, literally, and how to photocopy it and all those things.”

“In a lot of ways, the First Root Farm zine was such like, an amazing and ideal, for me at least, circumstance for making a zine” Alana told us. This was mostly in part to the short, consistent structure of the zine and its audience of community members.

The contents of the zine partially consist of interactive elements, like word searches, coloring pages, crossword puzzles, but also little art guides (like How to Make a Radish Mouse in #1.5) and other fun, lighthearted activities. The other important portion of the zine were the recipes based on what was in the foodshare that week, and other, as the title would suggest, Farm News.

“There were very few changes in structure. It was… repetitive every week. It was the same size, the same number of pages, usually very predictable kinds of things like farm news, recipes, games, cover. And it was something that because we had that sort of repetition over each week all of us could make pages and contribute, you know, there wasn’t like a difficulty in thinking about how about “what am I,” you know, “how am I gonna fit this in?”” Alana said.

This structure and content was decided based on the zine’s audience, which was the community that grew around the farm. First Root used a community supported agriculture (or CSA) model, and the focus on community in their practice was based on the backgrounds of Laura and Ariel in queer and Jewish communities respectively. Laura describes her experience farming as “exceedingly queer”, farming within a “community of friends and or mentors, mostly queer women who were running farms or working on farms in Eastern Mass[achusetts].” Ariel told us about his understanding of Jewish kibbutz culture, and as he described to us, “kibbutzim in Israel are basically farm communes that are like, supposed to be very egalitarian, supposed to be like everyone raises their kids together. Basically, like the ideal of your– what I would consider my like queer farm utopian commune community situation”. They also described to us how they would stay awake at night in farm school together, where they became friends, discussing how to make their farm as community-centric and accessible as they could in their wildest farm dreams.

As you’re reading the zine you can feel how it has been steeped in community, especially considering that the cover of #1.4 is just a thank you note to all of First Root’s community members. They would come to the farm for their food shares or on volunteer days, and, as Ariel told us, “There are still people and it’s been what, thirteen years since we started or since our first season who like will be like, “oh my gosh, I loved coming out. It was my favorite thing. It was my favorite place to be with other people. I still hang out with people who I hung out with there and met for the first time there.” People who will say like “I’m so sad that First Root is gone because it was my favorite CSA.””

This community did not just consist of adults, as there would frequently be children (or as Ariel called them, queer spawn) interacting with the zine or coming for volunteer days. It is this range of ages that led to the earnestness and fun of the zine’s content.

“It’s also so unusual to have a zine project where there’s a community that you’re writing to and writing with, and also to have an all ages community.” Alana said. “But I have… to be thinking about writing for kids as well as adults. And that helped me be more creative and think about… what goes in a zine and who’s in a zine audience.” The puzzles and coloring pages were made to capture the minds of the children within the community, and the recipes were to help those in the community who may have never cooked with or seen a certain vegetable before find uses for the food in the share.

“We wanted to make it accessible and interesting and fun, but also… the people who are coming to be part of that community… and paid ahead of time for all these vegetables was like, “what do I do with a hakurei turnip? Like what even is this?” Ariel said. “And we’re like, “we’ll tell you. But you also won’t have to remember what we’re saying when you come and pick up. Here is the zine that has the recipe in it also.””

Overall the beauty of the First Root Farm zine lies in the hearts of its creators and readers. While speaking with Ariel, Laura, and Alana, we were transported to the farm in its first couple of seasons as they reminisced, feeling the warmth of the sun and the people through the happy memories they shared. This earnestness is clear in reading the zine as you get to feel the joy of life at First Root Farms. Though it changed over time as the farm grew and Ariel and Alana got too busy for life there, the zine stayed.

“The farm changed so, so much from the first year or two to last year…” Laura told us. “It was me and Ariel and then it was me with two co-farmers and a crew of four people and I think what’s really, really cool is that the zine was non-negotiable, like the zine was just like the heart of so much…”

There’s like cultural shifts that happened in the farm, but the zine… kept that heart of like we’re kind of weird, we’re very queer we’re doing this fun thing that like has nothing to do with money, takes time out of our day… it’s just this thing we were doing out of love.

And in this zine you can really feel the love.

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses in archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

Hearts of Dankness

July 1, 2023July 1, 2023Kit Gorton

Hello everyone! As Pride month has come to a close, we are happy to announce that despite the amount of posts slowing down scheduling-wise, we are continuing with our Zine of the Gay for the rest of the summer! We look forward to sharing even more of our zines with you!

This one’s for all of you Star Wars queers. Today’s Zine of the Gay is Hearts of Dankness , volume one of a series called My Side-Project by a college student from Canada who goes simply by Blair. It’s a relatively short zine, consisting of some dialogues and drawings by the creator. Though we don’t have any other zines from the series, Blair says that she wants to include themes for every zine, and this one is Star Wars. She writes,

this time out i’ve written about star wars. particularly, conversations about star wars. i like to write dialogue. so did hemingway. but then he never wrote about star wars.

The first dialogue of the zine is called “The Boba Fett Debate” and is between two brothers, Tom and Mike. Starting with the question of “What do you think Boba Fett looks like under that helmet of his, anyway?” we get a fun example of what a night could be spent doing as a young boy, getting into little arguments with your siblings about the facial features of a fantasy man who never shows his face. After insulting each other, actually getting somewhere when it comes to describing Boba Fett’s features, and a visit from their mom (who has no idea which one Boba Fett is), they continue debating and then go to bed. The story really is the essence of boyhood in the late nineties, exemplified in its last couple of sentences: “They decided to go to bed that night after three hours of continuous debate, interrupted only to insult each other. They needed their rest. They had a big day tomorrow, as they were scheduled to re-cast the forthcoming X-Men movie for a fifth time with their friend Johnny at the arcade at two o’ clock, followed by the greatest damn G.I.Joe action-figure battle this world has e’er seen.” The creator includes a drawing of Tom later in the zine as well, with him labeled as “the handsome one”, and considering he’s both “the handsome one” and “the philosophical one” we’d say he’s got a bright future ahead.

The next dialogue, “Of Pricks and Wookies” follows a new boy Tim and an interaction of his with two school bullies, Steve Ridgley and Larry Jones. This dialogue takes on a more comical turn, with Larry being the typical partially stupid bully and Steve being for some reason incredibly eloquent. Our favorite Steve line in this is when Larry brings up C3PO and R2D2 and calls them lovers, and Steve agrees, saying, “Indeed, most certainly. They were involved in a relationship that was most intimate.” Larry builds upon this and says, “Ya, and I bet they did it with each other too!” When Tim starts to “get smart” with Larry and Steve, which includes explaining Chewbacca is that way because that’s what Wookies look like, Steve says “His manner doth perturb me. Perhaps we should inf1ict pain upon him.” before giving Tim the beating of his life.

Overall this artist has a really fun and playful style in both their writing, and the visual art they include, which mixes drawings and collages. The zine seems to bask in its young fanboy energy and reflect true to life experiences of boys obsessed with Star Wars.

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

Black Lesbians in the 70s and Before

June 19, 2023June 21, 2023QZAP

Happy Juneteenth everyone! For those who don’t know, Juneteenth is a new federal holiday here in the United States, but has been celebrated by African-Americans since 1866. It commemorates the enforced end of slavery in Texas after the Civil War, as Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (issued in 1863, during the height of the war) was limited to states under Union control. Texas, being so far from the rest of the Union and the war, did not have access to the Emancipation and white people in power actively kept the Emancipation Proclamation from enslaved people and African-Americans in general. The holiday takes place on the anniversary of the Union troops arriving in Galveston, Texas and informing everyone that the enslaved people were now free. Since then, this day has been celebrated by African-Americans across the country and became a federal holiday in 2021. If you would like to learn more about Juneteenth from the perspective of African-American scholarship, we recommend looking to the National Museum of African American History & Culture’s online Juneteenth exhibit. To celebrate over here at QZAP, today’s Zine of the Gay is Black Lesbians in the 70s and Before – An At Home Tour At The Lesbian Herstory Archives.

Originally made for the Lesbians in the 70s conference held by the CUNY Graduate Center in 2010, this zine is a curated look at the black-focused records in the Lesbian Herstory Archives by prominent archivist, librarian, zinester, and lesbian Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. It’s filled to the brim with newspaper clippings, scans of books and magazines, the records of activist groups, pieces of archival finding aids, academic papers, conference proceedings, calls for writing to academic and creative publications, event flyers, quotes, and notes from Shawn(ta). The zine being made up of collages and notes from Shawn(ta) makes reading it feel like you’re the one in the archive doing research, creating piles of papers and notes around you while you work.

The records include stories of protests against the arrest of black lesbians defending themselves from assault, statements made in the creation of alternative spaces for black lesbians, definitions of Butches, and most importantly the experiences of black lesbians, many focused on the difficulty of having multiple minority identities. A particularly powerful quote from the zine reads:

We will continue to demand our right to exist as productive, free, equal, black, gay beautiful women… There is a place for us in this society, and we will proudly take it at all costs. Even if it means breaking off from our so-called liberal white sisters and brothers, so-called liberal gay sisters and brothers, so-called liberal black sisters and brothers. Get-it-together, because we are.

-Elandria V. Henderson, 1971

After the records from the archive, the zine gives us records of the archive, including collecting policies, directions on how to create your own special collection, copyright laws, and donor agreement forms. After this section is a fun list readers can write in of “Stuff I’m Gonna Donate to the Archives.” The zine ends with Shawn(ta)’s contact information and a note to readers that they should schedule a consultation and create their own special collections. She says, “We’ll have tea/coffee… it’ll be fun!”

We highly recommend reading this playful yet powerful zine as a part of your Juneteenth celebrations this year, or to connect with this important, often overlooked, history any time of year.

Tag: zine

I Knew a Boy who Bled

Farm News by First Root Farm

Hearts of Dankness

Black Lesbians in the 70s and Before

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