March 24, 2011: Pet Calendars, and 24 Zine Challenges with one of my favorites.

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This is an interview with the fabulous Sarah Evans who is the co-founder of the Anchor Archive Regional Zine Library found on cute little Roberts Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I first met Sarah Evans in Halifax at a show at the One world Cafe, or at Scuzin's, Capp Larson's temporary diner, or at a porch party. I don't totally remember. OH YEAH. I actually do remember: I met Sarah Evans through one of her zines about farming. I read the zine in the grainery, 10 years ago, and then I borrowed my friend Shan's bike, and biked in the critical mass friday evening bike ride, and I saw Sarah there, hanging out with Caleb, another future friend who I thought I would never been cool enough to talk to. Caleb had taken apart his bike to paint it, but then was having trouble putting it back together.

I told Sarah I liked her zine. I was aware of having a zine awe-struck crush on her. I rode Shan's bike, and I thought: how do I even talk to these cool people?

And THEN,about 5 years later, somehow I met her again, on a porch or at a show, probably through Capp, or Sonia, and Sarah invited me to come do a zine residency and live in the little shed, and I did.

Sarah Evans just does great things, she's one of those people that does rad things all the time, and is all walk, not talk, and Halifax is a great location for that kind of behaviour. One of those really neat, heart warming, beautiful projects is the PET CALENDAR, that had been taking place for the last six years.

Listen to this interview to hear all the details, and loveliness of the Pet Calendar, and to also hear about 24 Zine Challenges

Listen by pasting this URL into your browswer:
http://www.radio4all.net/files/sarah.mangle@gmail.com/4332-1-petcalendartopodcast.mp3

Contact Sarah, and learn more about the Anchor Archive, and the Roberts Street Social Centre: www.robertsstreet.org

March 17, 2011: The Manarchist Gets the Megaphone

Kaley are roomates and friends who write zines together under the name Go It Alone Together. They live in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The first zine they made together (in 2007) was A How to Guide To Manarchy. This tiny, cute, relieving, hilarious zine highlights obvious problems of macho anarchist dude behavior within so-called punk, anarchist and radical left spaces and communities. The problems of manarchism are often obvious but manarchists are rarely called out, (in my experience)to their faces or in any ongoing way. Its a hard thing to do. This zine uses humor to highlight the problems of manarchism.

This is one of the ways that zines are awesome. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to sum this up in the right words right now. People can write things that are really true, that we know are true, but rarely say out loud to the people who most need to hear them. Zines can comfort people that need the reassurance that they are not alone in their frustrations. And zines hang out, silently holding people accountable. Showing up in bathrooms and bedrooms and info shops in cafes in bike shops in community centers.

Learn more about Go it Alone together. Visit: (http://goitalonetogether.ca/)

To here the interview with Kaley and Emily about A How to Guide to Manarchy, visit: http://www.radio4all.net/files/sarah.mangle@gmail.com/4332-1-manarchyfinal.mp3

March 10: The Awkward Sex Zine

Natalie and Kim are the editors of The Awkward Zine project. They are great. All the people who wrote in this zine are also great. The Awkward Zine Project is a great idea.

listen to the interview about the zine project by copying this address into your browser: http://www.radio4all.net/files/sarah.mangle@gmail.com/4332-1-These_Things_That_People_Make_-_March_10_2011_at_10_00_-_CFRU_93.3.mp3

Learn more about the Awkward Sex Zine Project by visiting their website: http://awkwardsexzine.wordpress.com/

March 3 2011: Amy Leigh's Twelveohtwo

All of a sudden time just passes. All of a sudden its not 2004 anymore, its not 2002 anymore and we have all this stuff to reflect on because things actually have changed. When I moved to Toronto I decided to finally go through these cardboard boxes of paper that i had been moving from house to house to house over the last 4 years, that I hadn't opened, I had just kept moving these closed boxes of paper from house to house. As I side note: I've kept every journal I've ever written in, based on advice from the best drawing teacher I've ever had, Adrian Norvid. I keep all those Journals in my closet.

So when I moved into my current home in Toronto last September, I sat on the floor and I listened to the radio and I opened all the cardboard boxes of paper. Among lots of scratchy drawings, embarrassing poems, receipts and letters from friends, I found these gorgeous screen printed posters for events that happened in 2002 and 2003 in Montreal, at a time when extravagant screen printed posters for events were the norm. Posters for art shows, for music shows and zine fairs. I put the posters on my wall in my new bedroom in Toronto. I realized that at that time, in 2002, I took that time of phenomenal art for granted. I thought that I would walk down all the streets of the world, and always be able to be surrounded by amazing and inspiring posters. And now I know better.

Amy Leigh has had her zine distro, TwelveOhTwo, for the past seven years. We're in a different time for zines now, then when she started the distro. Its a new era. Zines are not dead. Far from it. And theres something extremely cool, and valuable about doing the thing you do, through trends, and through changes in technology, and different political times.

It was lovely to have Amy Leigh over to my house and ask her questions about her distro, about the priorities for her distro, projects that inspire her from elsewhere, and Amy's reflections about building community, and organizing and also hear Amy Leigh's thoughts/critiques on Canzine and Broken Pencil. She's a lovely, hard working smart person.

to listen to this interview, paste this address in your browser: http://www.radio4all.net/files/sarah.mangle@gmail.com/4332-1-thesethingsamyleigh.mp3