Maranda Elizabeth

This is a follow up to Part One.

Strangely enough, this past Sunday was probably my best experience of Canzine yet. I had a good day, I did not freak out, I talked to all sorts of wonderful folks, and I sold a lotta zines. I am, however, still critical of Broken Pencil and Canzine. As I’ve mentioned, every year I say I’m going to quit, and every year, I go back. I am not entirely opposed to tabling again next year. The thing is, I think that if if rad folks and zinesters and suchnot and whatforth quit going, we will only remain un/der-represented, and what good does that do? I think it would be more useful and constructive for us to continue showing up, continue our criticisms and conversations, support one another in the processes, and figure out ways to change things. I’d like to see more affordable zines, queer zines, feminist zines, perzines…

I do have some suggestions. One, I think Canzine needs to be an accessible event every year. I think Canzine needs to be held in a space with access for folks with physical disabilities, and I also think they need to put some gaps in their rows of tables so we don’t all become trapped. Many of us have been telling the folks at Broken Pencil for years now that we want the space to be accessible. Toronto is a big city. These spaces exist. Tabling at Canzine is difficult because the tables are always way too close together, meaning I’ve got some dude bumping into me from behind every time he scrapes his chair across the floor to get up, and I have to crawl under the tables to get out. This year, some dude actually lifted my chair while I was sitting on it to get out. It was disgusting. Ramps and elevators are obvious, but we also need wider aisles and more space for tablers to do their thing in relative comfort. Canzine gave a little lip service to accessibility this year, advertising the event as accessible, then backing out and letting us know it wasn’t after all. In an email to vendors, they claimed that accessibility is a priority. But Canzine has not been an accessible event in the six years that I’ve been tabling, so I call bullshit.

I also think Canzine tablers must be required to have the majority of stuff on their table actually be zines. When you advertise your event as a zine fair, you are you going to attract zinesters, and some of us just plain don’t care about your cupcakes and your screenprinted t-shirts. They are always overpriced anyway. Um, a lot of us are broke, and when you charge a lot of money for your “art”, you have chosen to make your creations inaccessible to many of us. The lack of zines at Canzine is disappointing. It sucks to write your heart out as a means of survival, then get stuck at these events filled with bougie hipster pretension. Speaking of, the food at Canzine this year was embarrassing. Five nachos delicately arranged on a tiny plate? Tiny hamburgers with toothpicks in them? What the fuck? We had to leave the event to get food we could actually afford, food that would fill us up. Serve cheap food with veggie and vegan options, and maybe we’ll hang around. I want cheap(er) tables, cheap(er) cover, and relevant workshops. Accessibility also means affordability. By selling expensive items and charging so much for food, the organizers of Canzine need to think about who they are excluding.

And on a related note, I would totally love to have an apology from Broken Pencil for choosing to fuck up my pronouns after I explained the situation, and then acting like it wasn’t a big deal. It was. And I don’t want a “Sorry you were hurt” faux-apology; I want a “Sorry we fucked up” apology.

Broken Pencil and Canzine hold too much power in Canadian zine communities, which is why it is difficult to just give up and walk away. I feel like every time I mention them, I hear yet another shitty story, yet here they are, throwing what is supposed to be the biggest “zine fair” in the country, and we keep going and keep complaining. So now I have some questions for you. Yeah, you!

For those of you who are local(ish), why do you go to Canzine, or why don’t you go to Canzine? How do you feel about Canzine in general? What would you like to change about the zine fair, and what would you like to stay the same? How do you feel about Broken Pencil? What do you wish you were seeing in that magazine? Whose voices would you like to be hearing?

WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL ZINE FAIR LOOK LIKE?

I am very interested in having conversations about this, not just complaining, but thinking about and discussing solutions as well.

Canzinally Yours,

P.S.: I say “fuck” a lot.

P.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!

[I wrote this on October 20th, 2011, and chose not to publish it until after attending Canzine and having some time to think about this year’s experience of the event.]

I am writing this a few days before attending Canzine, a large zine event held by the magazine Broken Pencil, which purports to be “the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts.” I’ve never been a fan of Broken Pencil, but I am a fan of zine fairs, and this will be my sixth year tabling at Canzine. Most likely, it will also be my last. Each year, table registration also includes a “free” subscription to the magazine (I put “free” in quotes because the price of a table has risen dramatically over the years, so the subscription no longer feels free, and also, because if I could opt out of the magazine subscription and simply pay a lower fee for my table, I would). I don’t often read the magazine – I flip to the back and skim some of the zine reviews if they a) seem interesting, or b) are written by people I like, but after that, it goes right to my recycling bin.

Nothing in Broken Pencil has ever been relevant to my life. Flipping through the magazine generates eyerolls at best, and sheer anger and confusion at worst. Remember the time they printed a “zinester gossip column” undermining the efforts of survivors of abuse to bring abusers to accountability, and accused the so-called “drama” of Microcosm Publishing to be not much more than a series of internet arguments? Yeah. And remember the time they said that holding events in accessible spaces is a priority to them, even though, to my knowledge, Canzine has never been held in accessible space, and although this year’s event was rumoured to be accessible, a notice was sent out last minute to note that no, of course it is not. Again. Last year, Broken Pencil published something I had made without credit and without my permission, and it was submitted by someone who had been told to stay out of my life because he is a creep. Gross! And when I wrote them a letter telling them to credit me in the next issue, and to let them know that I am not okay with my work being associated with the person who published it and why, I was told that credit and my letter would appear in the next issue – they weren’t, and the situation was never again acknowledged. I’ve also known folks who were told they would be paid for their work, only for their articles to be printed without payment after all.

Broken Pencil, you give me the creeps, and you are so far removed from the community you claim to support that you don’t even understand why we have such problems with you. Tabling at Canzine is always a difficult decision for me. I love going to zine events, I love spending time with my zinester friends, I love the adventure of it all. But I am really uncomfortable with supporting Broken Pencil by showing up at their events, and paying for a table. Each year, I say this will be the last year, but when registration comes up again, there I am, typing in my name and my zine titles, sending them money for a table, encouraging my friends to join me so I don’t go insane. And then I get pissed off again and swear I will organize my own event with my friends, we will swear off Canzine for real, their problems and mistakes are too big for us to keep forgiving.

And this year, again, when table registration opened up, I got over-excited, signed up immediately, told my friends to join me. Each year, disgusted at the amount of non-zines for sale at a so-called zine event (screenprinted t-shirts, embroidered crafts, useless plushies, unaffordable items, I am looking at you), we promise to take over the event with zines, perzines, PAPER! And we have our fun, yeah, but we also have our general discomfort and disappointment, and we gather afterward to gripe and complain, and I feel like I want to change everything but I don’t know how.

And now, here is my biggest problem with Broken Pencil and Canzine this time around: Back in September, a friend and I were asked to participate in a panel on mental health zines. I was slightly dubious of becoming more involved than I wanted to be, but I was also excited about the opportunity to share, and yes, excited even to use Broken Pencil as a gateway to have a little more exposure of my writing, to potentially have crazyfolk and other folk who care about mental health and brutally honest stories find my words, and hopefully be inspired to share their own. So I agreed. I was asked to send a bio and a picture for the event listing on their website, and I did. This is the bio I sent:

Maranda Elizabeth writes about mental health, self-care, finding & making a home, learning & sharing, queer & gender identities and adventures. They make a zine called Telegram Ma’am, and has a blog at marandaelizabeth.com.

And this is the bio they posted:

Maranda Elizabeth writes about mental health, self-care, finding & making a home, learning & sharing, queer & gender identities and adventures. Maranda makes a zine called Telegram Ma’am, and has a blog at marandaelizabeth.com.

Notice the difference? Yeah. The erased my ambiguous gender identity, and of course, they didn’t bother to ask first, to clarify their decision, or acknowledge the change at all. When I sent the email, I told them I prefer the pronoun ‘they’, that that’s why I used it in my bio. And they took it away.

You know, if I were considering attending an event, and I knew that there were queer folks involved, that there were folks with gender neutral identities involved, I would be really stoked on showing up. I’d be really into it, and I’d invite my friends to come along. I might even feel included and accepted by the folks organizing the event and participating in the event. But Broken Pencil chose to erase that one little word that means so much to me, and they took that feeling, that experience, of inclusion and acceptance away from anyone who might have chosen to attend the panel, who might have had questions to ask, who might have had stories to share. They took that all away, and I am pissed off. It was a foolish move on their part, and not something I am willing to forgive.

Brokenpencilly 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!