Sydney Writer’s Festival Zine Fair

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What a lovely day for a zine fair!
May 30, 2009

I’m not usually this prevalent with two posts in a week, but with something as newsworthy as the Sydney Writer’s Festival Zine Fair, I had to get off my sorry arse and report in for KooK! I manned a stall down at the Museum of Contemporary Art with my peeps Tim Hilton and Rebecca Doubledecka, and I must say I had a lovely day indeed!

This was the first zine fair where I had branched out from only offering KooK and it was definitely the most fun zine fair I have participated in. The highlight of the day would easily have been the guy who came and picked up my Hangin’ On Cleveland Street zine, looked at every page, laughed like a crazed loony, put it down and walked off in hysterics! Strangely enough I also managed to flog a few old KooK #1’s for a buck even after I later realised I had put really old copies on the table that had ‘FREE’ on the front. If you took one for free I’m glad hahaha!

The only unfortunate incident up on the day was my extreme case of caffeine intoxication jitters after I virtually inhaled two strong coffees and a bottle of Coke in quick succession. This rendered me unable to hold a decent conversation for the first few hours. Luckily after years of attending meetings in corporate offices, I have perfected the act of nod and smile… It also made it virtually impossible to hold a camera still enough to take a picture, but here’s a photograph one of my wares on the table. Look I did my best… ;)

mca stand

As you may be able to see in the picture, I was also flogging my new zine Trash Talk about celebrity trash mags. Thanks to the site http://girlwithasatchel.blogspot.com for their great write up of the zine!

Anyway enough shameless self promotion Zina! Here’s some of my zine highlights from the day:

mca zines
Tim Hilton: His smokin’ hot zine I Require Your Full Attention sold out in the blink of an eye. I didn’t even get my mitts on one dammit!

Rebecca Doubledecka: If the number of people who bought Beard #3 or had a good laugh at it is any indication, people really love beards! Issue three even has a cameo from KooK’s own Troy McLure under another name…

Teeth: Teeth #6 rocks the house and all the cool kids had “Hi My Name is Annie Ly” badges on at the fair…

Just Like Candy: A crackin’ second issue with a great cover. There’s even an article by yours truly!

The Blue Rinse Society: Another busy table with an intriguing lucky dip. The third ‘I Am Russia’ themed issue also has an article from me. Look out for Issue 4 soon!

Tiny Paper Hearts: The lovely ladies were in fine form once again with great zines and a kick ass table filled with handmade treats.

Miss Helen: I picked up her new zine Fly Away Bird #8 and it’s definitely one of my favourite finds of the day. Zine fairs fill me with anxiety too Miss Helen. It doesn’t help when you’ve got the jitters like I did either… ;)

Vanessa Berry: Everytime I approached Vanessa’s table it was virtually impossible to get near it. I did manage to squeeze in and get my hands on an older issue of I Am A Camera that I didn’t have. Very inspiring!

Ordinary Magazine: Someone from this new online magazine thrust their card in my hand and I’m glad they did! Check out their great site at www.ordinarymagazine.org

Bird In The Hand: The Sydney based zine distributor had dozens of great zines available on the day. Noice work Suzy!

Finally, a big hello to all the other zinesters who I didn’t get a chance to meet but who made it such a kickass event. Next time I promise to drink less caffeine and come and say hello… ;)

Cheers
Z. KooK