Happy first day of summer, y’all! This is my season and I am really happy to finally have some energy and nighttime light. Despite the daily horrors, some fun things are happening in the next month so I hope you’ll join me for some of it!

New Zines!

Act Your Age: Vol 2 is out! It’s the second volume of the collaborative zine about fandom after age 35. This volume’s theme is “Dark” and it explores some of the darker parts of being in a fandom at a big age.

Many thanks to Kathryn Hemmann, Michelle Scott, Laura Fletcher, Veronica Arreola, Vanessa Walilko, and Raizel Liebler for the essays and Tina Furr for the lovely cover. You can also get the zine at Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago and at upcoming events I’ll be at.

Zine Fests

Speaking of which, I’ll be busy at two zine events next month. On July 15th, I’ll be at Chicago Zine Fest (Harold Washington Library) as an organizer and panel moderator. My panel: “My First Zine” will be in the morning so come early! I’ll also have some copies of both volumes of Act Your Age and Fangirl Confessional at the organizer’s table.  Then on July 26th I’ll be tabling at South Side Zine Fest (Richard J Daley Library) with the entire Wild Ramp collection, including the oddly popular My Years of No! Please come say hi! I’ll be there wearing a cute KN95.

Then I have some more fall fest announcements too but I want to take things one month at a time because life be life-ing.

Other stuff

Please check out the book  Fandom For Us By Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences by Alfred L Martin. It’s a great book that gets into the 201 level nuances of being a Black fan (that is, no longer centering our exclusion from white spaces and talking about the spaces we create for ourselves). It’s a great read in general but I’m also very briefly cited in it, which is cool. I’ll be writing a full review for the Wild Ramp Patreon soon so watch out for it.

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On a more reflective note, I have been thinking and talking a lot with others about how hard it is to show up and do “business as usual”  in this moment, even those things that are fun and joyful are harder in the face of fascism, and I truly get why people are struggling, crashing out, burned out, and  making the choices they are making - good and bad. I’ve also been thinking a lot about what sustains us right now, not just escapism but how do we get and stay more intentional about taking time to rest, to care for ourselves and our loved ones while we do our part of the work to keep ourselves alive and free. I don’t have a lot of answers but I have a lot of ideas of what we can do and what I want to do to support that in my little part of the world.

I truly believe it’s more important than ever to pause and reflect, do things that aren’t urgent or purposeful, to rest our bodies and minds as much as we can and to be intentional about the things that we do have impact on and are passionate about. We truly don’t have all of the time in our lives that we may want to do this, so I invite you consider how we can create and support these kinds of gentle spaces and moments for each other, and let me know I can be a part of that!

xoxo

Keidra