London Alternative Press Event Announced

By John Freeman on October 5, 2009

Alternative Press are hosting another awesome evening of Zines, comix, book arts and poetry at their second Zine Friendly event at the Foundry in London in November, in order to promote the new project, the Zine Friendly Blog.

A resource for Self Publishers far and wide, the site will be listing venues, promoters, stockists and events that are all “Zine Friendly”!

To celebrate this the AP team are inviting small pressers everywhere to come down and promote their own work for free.

“All we are asking is that people donate what they can, even a zine or two, to help Alternative Press to keep promoting the scene,” says co-organizer Jimi Gherkin.

“There will be communal tables with lots of space for self publishers to leave their work,” he continues. “Also, printmakers or those with large work are encouraged to use the walls as a spontaneous temporary free arts space where you can stick up your work DIY style! BYOB (Bring Your Own Blu-tak!)

“Also, we are inviting some zine distributors to represent as much of what is going on in the scene as we can.”

There will be food and other fun stuff, too. “We’ll be having a cake sale with free tea, knitting circle, free blank zines for you to use and a poetry workshop followed by some performances and a short open mic.”

It all sounds like great fun and past events have been well received, so if you’re in London, give it a go.

• We Make Zines takes place at the Foundry, 86 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3JL on Thursday 12th November. Things will kick off at 7pm until around 11pm. More info at: http://zinefriendly.wordpress.com

• We’ll be presenting an interview with Jimi later this week as part of our “Matters of Convention” series compiled by Matthew Badham

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.