As part of the 2023 Brooklyn Book Festival, Brooklyn Community Pride Center will host a Zine-Making Workshop in partnership with Booklyn.

Zines are handmade books. Typically, they are created by individuals, by hand, with basic materials–paper, scissors, pens, and ideas. Zine-making can facilitate the development of personal and community-based storytelling.

In this workshop we’ll teach the one-sheet bookmaking technique to develop a personal story into a handmade zine. Participants will also be invited to contribute to a collectively made book, using the flag book technique. This is a free workshop. No experience is necessary. Materials and tools will be provided.

Please complete and submit the workshop registration form so we have a better idea on how many people will join the workshop. For more information and questions, please contact Jako Douglas-Borren at [email protected].

This workshop is made possible in part by funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in collaboration with the New York City Council.

Booklyn Zine Club started in 2019, and since then we’ve hand-selected and mailed hundreds upon hundreds of zines to individuals and libraries all across the country. We’ve found all kinds of ways that we love this program, and we want to share that love with you. 

Joining Zine Club means three things: 

1. You’re getting great zines delivered each quarter, and building your personal zine collection. 
2. You’re supporting the zine community. More members means we can purchase more zines, which pays larger sums to these creators to help them to keep creating.  
3. We think you’re really rad.

If you need a little incentive to take part, we’re offering 10% off all annual memberships, plus a free tote bag or t-shirt for the first five sign ups.

Check out our page on the Booklyn Zine Club for more info, or if you’re ready, join here.

Are you an institution? We recommend discussing Booklyn Zine Club directly with us. Send us an email at [email protected]!

Teacher, artist, and activist Shana Agid joins Booklyn Calling for episode ten, answering questions from Monica and Booklyn curator Jan Descartes. They talk about the themes come up so often in her work, like privilege and absence, and Agid explains his way of trying to make sense of the world by coming back to the same core questions throughout his art.

Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also play all episodes right on our website here.

Shana Agid is an artist, designer, teacher, and organizer whose work focuses on relationships of power and difference in visual, social, and political cultures. Her books and prints combine image, text, and form to explore these through narratives of desire, landscape, and history. His work has been shown at The New York Center for Book Arts, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, and other venues. His artist books are in the collections of the Walker Art Center, New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress, among others. She is an also a collaborative design researcher and practitioner working with organizations to create systems and infrastructures toward self-determination, and a long-time member of Critical Resistance. Shana is an Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design / The New School in New York City.

Booklyn Calling is made possible in part by funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the NY City Council.

Booklyn’s abridged Education Book is new and improved. The abridged version is full of instruction sheets, to introduce you to bookmaking or to complement the bookmaking you already do. As a medium and a message, bookmaking encourages the development of the voice, the ability to articulate it, and the means to make it heard. Booklyn’s education program aims to provide the basic background, skills and techniques for learners of all ages and experience levels to express their ideas and manufacture their own media.

As always, the Education Manual is free. Download a reader-friendly copy here. Want to print out and assemble your own Education Manual book? Download the book-formatted version here, and follow the instructions below.

Booklyn’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Monica and Marshall go on a wild ride with Fred Rinne, as they’re pulled into his universe for an episode. Join in as they reminisce about his artist book beginnings, discuss the overlapping of art, music, and humor, share thoughts on Booklyn Zine Club, and have story time with some of Rinne’s books.

Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also play all episodes right on our website here.

Fred Rinne (born 1955) is an American visual and performance artist. His cross-disciplinary approach, outsider aesthetic and overriding cultural critique defines his work.

He began showing his paintings and sculptures in the 1980s and has exhibited at The LAB, Show and Tell Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Z Gallerie, and the Endeavor House in London, England. Rinne’s graphics and articles have appeared in San Francisco Bay Area publications Frank, Processed World, Filth, Weekly Weird News, Flatter, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser, as well as Le Dernier Cri in Marseilles, France.

In 1985, Rinne co-founded the sound performance group National Disgrace, and later the Bringdownz. These groups performed at Artists’ Television Access, the Great American Music Hall, and other Bay Area venues. Rinne began to produce artist books around 2000, including “Santa Christ,” “Temp Worker,” and “Ice Cream Bummer.”

He has collaborated on books with Marshall Weber, Scott Williams, and Dana Smith, and exhibited at the San Francisco Center for the Book, Booklyn Book Arts Salon, and other venues. His original, hand-painted books are owned by the Pompidou Center, Paris, France, Bibliothèque Nationale du Luxemburg, Kunstbibliotek, Berlin, Germany, as well as many universities and other collections in the United States.

“As an American, I feel that I have grown up bathed in pop schlock against my will. It was always the background noise of my culture… Instead of a real culture where songs actually mean something, we have this junk culture of entertainment working on the principle of planned obsolescence. We don’t have to eat the same hamburgers, listen to the same music, or see the same images. I struggle for a world where every man can be his own Manilow.”

Booklyn Calling is made possible in part by funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the NY City Council.