One flip of the page reveals glamour photos capturing Asian American girlhood in 90s Southern California. Another flip maps every place in Los Angeles where a tear was shed. Another opens onto the small dramas of laundry day.
Zinesters fold these private, fascinating worlds into paper, so that strangers can take their discoveries home. Zines, rhyming with beans, are independently published works rooted in do-it-yourself culture, usually produced in small batches, with room for personal comics, art collages, political ideas and specific interests.
That community came together Nov. 7 for L.A. Zine Fest at Angel City Derby Warehouse in the Fashion District. Event organizers said in an interview that they received over 600 applications for 355 exhibitor spots this year. The festival offers a gathering place for celebrating a publishing culture that continues throughout the year in neighborhood libraries, workshops and the exchanges between makers and readers.
For A’misa Chiu, a comics artist and zine librarian who grew up in the South Bay, self-publishing means deciding how her experiences and identities are represented. Her zine “AZN Posse” gathers photographs from her and her friends’ teenage years.
“I love the personal nature of zines,” Chiu said. “I like the idea that you can form your own independent media — outside mainstream media — and that you can tell your own story.”
Zines’ modern roots reach back to science-fiction fan magazines, or “fanzines,” of the ‘30s. Punk communities embraced the form in the ‘70s, followed by the feminist Riot Grrrl movement in the ‘90s, using DIY publishing to circulate their stories and ideas.
Today, questions about whose stories remain accessible carry urgency. The American Library Association documented attempts to censor 4,235 unique book titles in 2025, the second-highest total it has recorded. In L.A., zinesters and librarians describe self-publishing as a way to represent their own communities and share information they consider essential, seeing it as part of political resistance.
“Right now, we still can publish and we still can get our voices and ideals and community-minded spirit out there,” Chiu said. “Our joy is our resistance, our families are our resistance, our experiences are our resistance … things like L.A. Zine Fest encourage that culture to keep going, and I think it’s really important that we participate.”
For writer and organizer Paula Macena, publishing also turns creative work into material support. Her creative collective, Pluto’s, gathers poetry, art and short fiction and hosts events around L.A. and Long Beach.
Macena said two of her collective’s zines raised money for families and organizations supporting communities affected by immigration enforcement, including help with immigration fees. Another supported wildfire relief.
Readings, music shows and workshops in coffee shops and thrift stores offer affordable creative opportunities Macena wished had been available when they began writing. Regulars have told them about friendships and weekly meetups that began there.
“I just love writing and I love community, so I make that my whole life,” Macena said.
USC alum Jesa Amascual said the freedom to publish meant finding art they could make from bed. Living with autoimmune conditions, Amascual turned to stories, poems and comics when their large paintings were difficult to manage.
Now based in Hawaii, they work with regular L.A. contributors through Sick Witch Press, with much of the editing and organizing happening online. The press aims for collective liberation through art centering themes such as resistance and hope.
“Sick Witch Press is about being sick and being disabled and making art anyway. Not making art by myself in my bed, but doing it in a way that I get to interact with people,” Amascual said. “The community that I continue to be so lucky to be a part of and build is bringing so much more power and energy to these intentions.”
Libraries give these publications another route to readers. At the Pio Pico Koreatown branch of the L.A. Public Library, teen librarian Danielle Fox said she had gathered about 200 zines for a recently launched collection.
Fox collects work connected to Korean and Oaxacan history and culture, activism and mutual aid, among other interests relevant to the neighborhood. She pointed to know-your-rights zines developed in response to immigration raids as information communities can update and pass around themselves.
“Everyone has something that they have specialized knowledge on, and everyone should have the ability to create and share and have that be represented in their community,” Fox said.
Preserving history is central to Au Chung, director of TRANS•FORM, a queer and trans arts initiative that began as workshops at USC’s LGBTQ+ Student Center. The USC alum started the initiative because they wanted places to share work and meet other queer and trans people outside nightlife.
Through the Los Angeles Queer Zine Fest, presented with ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Chung said zines are being added to ONE’s collection for future readers and researchers. The organizations also hosted an archiving workshop during L.A. Zine Week on preserving letters and other personal materials, so people can shape how their lives are remembered.
“You don’t need permission or recognition from a publisher or a printer to be able to kind of create your own material,” Chung said. “Nobody else is validating my journey as a queer person in larger spaces, so we kind of have to create our own history and become our own record keepers.”
Workshops also offer a place to discover what a zine can be. In the lead-up to the festival, organizers promoted community-led L.A. Zine Week events, including zine-making gatherings, film screenings and a mahjong gathering with a zine swap.
L.A. Zine Fest co-organizer Ziba Pérez sees these workshops as a calming break from digital and artificial intelligence overload.
“It’s just a really fun hour where you can be hands-on and get back to the analog and away from the digital,” Pérez said. “You’re making something not AI, and you’re using your hands and you’re being creative … everybody can be an artist.”
For comics zinester Tori Holder, the reasons to keep making zines can be found in the ordinary tasks that make up a life such as a daily commute or a load of laundry. To her, a zine’s destination matters as much as its making.
“To get to make something that connects with hundreds of people or thousands of people even, and lives on their bookshelf or in a corner in their room or wherever they decide to put it, to me, just having so many of those little intimate moments with other people is just so much more impactful,” Holder said.