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Showing posts from 2019

It Isn't Writer's Block

I said I can't write lately, and someone said it's writer's block, but it's not. It's more like, well, I could sit down and write, but it feels meaningless and small. Of course, writing has always felt small to me on some level, or I wouldn't have focused on all things teeny tiny. Surely I'll return to some "small but mighty" writing and publishing projects soon (as a friend kindly described them years ago). I was grateful to be able to raise a couple hundred dollars for Immigrant Families Together with my last tiny zine. I have an idea for a new zine that will tell the story a new online friend shared with me about her work with recent immigrants in New Mexico. If I didn't believe in the power of writing, I wouldn't spend my life teaching college students how to write in clearer and more focused ways. And it's a privilege to have the time and ability to write, and the access to a computer and a printer and an internet connection. But

New Zine Coming, and a Chapbook from a Friend

Well, I did end up raising over $200 with my Well, It's a Job zine! It was really exciting to be able to donate that much money to Immigrant Families Together. Thank you to everybody who donated. And I still have copies of the zine, so if you or someone you know would like a copy, you can still use the PayPal link that's included in the earlier blog posts to order one. I'm working on another fundraising zine now, this one with poems based on my own experience rather than emerging from found text. I've chosen all the poems and just need to write a little intro part and do the layout. I want to get this done in time for tabling at an upcoming book fair at the Washington State History Museum on April 6. I'll post about it on the blog, too, of course! The title is Some Poems for the End of the World . By the way, I'm not putting out a call for submissions for content for zines because I need to keep things small/manageable, but I do want to keep making these fund

Close to Two Hundred

Thanks to everyone who has donated and/or shared info about my zine fundraiser for Immigrant Families Together so far. I just made a donation at the IFT GoFundMe site for $110, bringing the total to $165. Maybe the zine will cross the $200 mark over the next few days. I hope so! Here's the link if you want to donate and receive a copy of Well, It's a Job for your own zine-reading pleasure. (Recommended donation amount is $2 to $10.) I've been busy making more copies. I've also been thinking about finding an event where I can table with the zines, so please let me know if you have any ideas. I could just set up with a TV tray somewhere around town at a community event (I have a pretty cool vintage TV tray, in fact). When I think about what's happening to people--and especially kids--at the hands of our government, I feel small. And I feel very, very angry. I was heartened when I learned about Immigrant Families Together because it is a group of individuals

Fifty Dollars in a Day

Thank you to everyone who has donated to zine fundraiser so far. Since announcing the zine just a day ago, I've been able to raise $50 to give to Immigrant Families Together . I just went to GoFundMe and made what I hope is the first in a series of donations made possible through the community of friends and artists that I feel proud to be part of. If you'd like to share info about the zine fundraiser, please do share my Instagram or blog posts--or create your own post if you like my project and tell people about it via social media, email, etc. I received two donations today directly because of my posts being shared. In particular, I want to say thanks to the Olympia Zine Fest for sharing my post on their Facebook page. I know that a lot of us are feeling disheartened, to say the least, with the political situation in the US, and it feels overwhelming to try and do anything to meaningfully respond to it. So I went back to what I try to do when I feel overwhelmed: I do a

The Return of Teeny Tiny

I made a new zine! The zine is called Well, It's a Job , and it's a collection of a few of the poems I've written over the last couple years using text from Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I wrote these poems by literally cutting up a paperback copy of the book and pasting down bits and pieces from the book with a glue stick. The zine itself is, in classic Teeny Tiny Press format, made from a single sheet of paper folded into eight pages. The actual cut-and-pasted images of the poems were too big to feature in the zine, so I've typed up the poems (though I did cut down one of the poems even more to make it fit onto the last page of the zine). I'm making cardstock covers for the first run of copies of the zine, too, so hurry to order if you want the unique cover. The best part is that I'm selling this zine by donation, with proceeds to benefit Immigrant Families Together , an organization of volunteers who are working to help immigrants who have been d