Image via ZFH. Poster by Jade Young.
Saturday, November 17, 2018 from 12-6PM marks the return of Zine Fest Houston (ZFH). For the third time in a row, this year’s festival will be held at Lawndale Art Center, a partnership that began in 2016 when one of the festival’s organizers, Sarah Welch, was an artist resident at the non-profit art space. The move allowed ZFH to expand substantially — the event’s previous home was throughout the halls of The Printing Museum, and while quite appropriately placed, the event was cramped and there were accessibility issues.
In addition to being a low-cost event for exhibitors and zinesters to sell their wares, Zine Fest Houston also organizes a stellar lineup of programs that are related (or loosely related) to the event’s yearly theme — which this year is wrestling. The event will feature a film screening about African-American women in wrestling, a panel about podcasting, a talk about Latinx zines and their makers, along with workshops geared for kids and adults alike. At 4:05PM on Saturday, in Lawndale’s sculpture garden, you can even catch a grudge match from Houston’s own Doomsday Wrestling.
The 2018 festival is also the inaugural year for ZFH’s shane patrick boyle Memorial Grant for Emerging Zinesters, a grant named in honor of the late ZFH founder Shane Patrick Boyle. This year’s award went to recent UTSA graduate Kai Ramey, who is, along with Daryl Doggé and Amari Douglin, a co-founder of the NWA Zine, a publication made, via the zine’s website, “for and by queer people of color.”
Zine Fest Houston 2013 at The Printing Museum. Image via The Great God Pan is Dead
If you’re in North Texas and can’t make it to Houston for ZFH: Fort Worth Zinefest recently announced that its 2019 event will run on March 9 from 2-9PM at Shipping & Receiving Bar. The event is also currently accepting applications from interested exhibitors.
See a full list of ZFH’s 2018 programming below, or by going here.
ZFH’s 2018 PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE*
PROJECT SPACE
12:30-2:00 PM Screening of “Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring” by Chris Bournea (82 minutes)
2:00-3:00 PM Mockingbird Network Recording
3:00-4:00 PM Comedy and Agony: A History of Wrestling and Humor with Tex Lonestar of Doomsday Wrestling
4:00-5:00 PM Latinx Zinesters in Texas: A Reading & Discussion Featuring Reyes Ramirez, Claudia Delfina Cardona and Yeiry Guevara, Moderated by S Rodriguez
5:00-6:00 PM Jennifer Mathieu: From Riot Grrrl to YA Author: How Zines
Changed My Life and Birthed a Book!
CLASSROOM SPACE
1:00-3:00 PM Youth Zine-making Workshop
3:00-4:30 PM Détournement: Content Re-routing in Comics with Christopher Sperandio
OUTDOOR FRONT LAWN
4:05-4:20 PM Doomsday Wrestling Grudge Match
*All programming will take place on the 3rd Floor at Lawndale Art Center.
