♥ ♥ It’s true! Telegram: A Collection of 27 Issues is being published by Mend My Dress Press! Read more about it here, and follow Mend My Dress Press on Facebook here! ♥ ♥

In Telegram: A Collection of 27 Issues, Maranda tells tales of daily adventures, friendship, gender identity, falling in love with bicycles, getting tattoos, moving out, going crazy, and their experiences with inpatient hospitalizations. They also write about their relationship with their twin sister, and learning how to take care of their mental health within and without conventional institutions, identifying as genderqueer, getting sober, living a creative and meaningful daily life, and finding reasons to keep on going.

This is the project that has kept me so ludicrously busy over the last few months, that has caused stress and anxiety as I read my past stories, remembered things I had forgotten, and decided which stories to include in the book, and which ones to let fade away. At the same time, it was such an encouraging and magical process, to be reminded of everything and everyone who have kept me alive, content, and sometimes even happy, along the way. I am so excited to finally be able to share this project with you! Colleen and Neelybat have been the dreamiest people to work on my book with, and I am so grateful to them for helping me make this happen!

“Telegram is the kind of zine that made me want to start writing zines in the first place. They write about their personal experiences with enough distance and care that they become not purging, but rather small maps that can help us to look at our own lives and the beauty of how we survive and become more fully the people we want to become.”
– Cindy Crabb, Doris zine, dorisdorisdoris.com

“When I read Telegram, I feel less fucked-up, like there’s another manic-depressive hamster running on a wheel beside me and making each other laugh to pass the time. Telegram makes me look at my life in a simple, non-overwhelming way, and makes me see the connections. Mental health is friendship and friendship is gender and gender is procrastination and procrastination is writing and writing is goal-setting and goal setting is mental health. When my zines grow up, I want them to be just like Telegram.”
– Dave Cave, Everybody Moon Jump zine, Everybody Moon Jump

Maranda is a zinester, writer, and daydreamer, and self-identified weirdo and genderqueer. Maranda began writing their zine, Telegram, as a way to connect with others when they were feeling shy and isolated in their hometown of Lindsay, Ontario. They wrote messages of encouragement alongside tales of depression and anxiety, and traded zines through snail mail. With each zine Maranda made, they learned to become more honest and open, began making friends by photocopying thoughts and feelings and confessions, and found that writing and sharing would be crucial to their survival. Maranda especially loves writing about mental health, self-care, and creativity, sending letters to friends and strangers, and sharing ridiculously personal stories. They currently reside in Guelph, Ontario.

Release date set for October 2012! Oh my gosh!

Anthologizingly Yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!