Yesterday was the Chicago Zine Fest, where AofR had landed a table, which meant we got to take our freebie resource zines on the road, as well as our new anthology projects, plus some other zines & merch from me and the others, including our Chicago Cryptozoological Zines, which moved crazily more than anything else. We did laugh at the fact that the more art & writing related products sold far less while the zines we made up in like an hour as a joke made us more money than the pursuits we've spent years working at, but such is the world. Even still, I celebrated by ordering tacos with my new-found cash, and thought about the differences between something like Zine Fest and the AWP book fair, where dgp usually does pretty well--I guess the difference is people looking for a different sort of content. I've often thought of taking the chapbooks to zine-oriented events, but I'm not sure they would do as well as they do in other places.
Mostly I am finally reaching the end of my labor intensive pursuits at the library and settling back into the usual groove, though we are soon to be planning for fall, including what may turn out to be my favorite exhibit/focus topic ever--BEAUTIFUL MONSTROSITIES: BITCHES, WITCHES, SHE-BEASTS, & FINAL GIRLS. We've decided to push back the mass delusions topic til spring since we are planning the larger conference event.There are also some other writing projects in the works about libraries and resources underway that I now get to turn some attention to.
I am still playing catch-up in the studio, but am looking to launch a bunch of new books in the next few weeks as well as get to work on the pieces of the mermaid anthology, which I am determined to have wrapped up by end of summer. I am also playing around with the idea of switching back to issues for wicked alice, which was what I veered away from, but seems like a better idea than the infrequent updating I've been plagued with the past couple of years. Maybe having goals or deadlines will not allow it to slip to the very bottom of the priority list quite so much.
As for my work, I am working on daily bits of the EXQUISITE DAMAGE project...my sort of lyric essay, memoirish, prose-poem thing. (which you can get a taste of by joining my Tiny Letter mailing list.) The zodiac pieces are also still writing themselves, so look for more of those..(I'll also be tossing some of the scrolls that did not sell at Zine Fest into the occasional dgp order..)
