MirkWork

I’m a queer cartoonist, journalist, and teacher who has made hundreds of zines.

I grew up in the ‘90s, an era when many people were making amazing political and art zines. But I lived in a rather isolated small town and never saw any of them. In high school, I started photocopying little booklets of my drawings. I’d never heard the word “zine” or seen a zine, but I started making my own because I had things to say and wanted to share my work. My first year in college, the manager of the student-run coffee shop on campus showed me a stack of punk zines and helped me connect the comics I was photocopying on my own to the wide world of zines. Ever since then, I’ve made, sold, and traded zines to express my feelings, explore my identity, and engage with political movements. In 2019, I started a project called Year of Zines, where I made a mini-zine every day for a year! Since then, I've run a zine of the month club and given away zine-making templates that have been downloaded thousands of times from people all over the world. I love seeing how other people can adapt my work and build on it.

Zines have been a powerful force in my life. Zine-making is a way to collaborate with friends, participate in protests, and process my ever-changing identity. Zines are how I connect with the world and figure out my own little role in it.

Now, wherever I go, my tote bag includes a few zines to give away. I’ve led free zine workshops at a small-town Maine art collective, a Seattle dive bar, an Oregon prison, a California coffee shop, and at colleges and libraries around the world. I’ve seen, over and over, how zine-making can help people find community with each other. Zines create genuine, joyful, deeply resonant connections in a society where it’s common to feel isolated and alone.