Last month, a little magazine named Broken Pencil celebrated its tenth birthday. At its party, it had a yodeling psychic, sexual-preference-quiz nametags, and lots of very hip literary people with neat glasses patting the magazine’s staff on the back in congratulations. Considering the rather strange contents of the magazine, the event was perfectly appropriate.
For a decade now, Broken Pencil has been a guidebook to navigating Canada’s underground publishing scene. In the beginning, it was mainly focused on zines, but it has since grown to include art, music, books, video, and ezines.
Founding editor Hal Niedzviecki started the magazine with another writer named Hilary Clark in 1995, and says it was essentially born out of frustration with trying to spread the word about independent writing.
“We decided what we needed was some kind of bigger magazine to connect people to all these little publishing projects, so we said, ‘Hey, that should be the thing that we start,'” Niedzviecki says.
What exactly are these little publishing projects, you ask? Zines (pronounced “zeens”) can be many things, but they are always independently produced, and non profit. Often they are handmade using only a photocopier and some imagination, and they are distributed mainly by mail-though some zines are sold in indie bookstores like Pages and She Said Boom (don’t bother looking for zines at certain shops that also sell pillows and their own brand of bottled water, though).
Broken Pencil includes feature article, new fiction, comics, excerpts from other publications, and visual art, in addition to its essential section of zine reviews. Essentially, it’s a zine about zines.
To give readers a better sense of what zines are, there are several categories listed in Broken Pencil: “Variations on the zine include the comic zine (indie comics), the litzine (literary-poems, fiction, essays), the perzine (personal, autobiographical), and the ezine (zines published only on the internet).”
The problem with zines is that they are by nature hard to find, and even harder to find out about. Broken Pencil’s zine reviews solve that problem-and go a step further, telling readers where to mail their well-concealed bank notes in order to get zines.
Another Broken Pencil initiative that is a great help to anyone interested in finding out about self-publishing is the Broken Pencil Zine Collection at the Toronto Reference Library. The collection has over 600 zines that you can browse through, as well as back issues of Broken Pencil itself.
So, why do the people at Broken Pencil concern themselves so much with disseminating indie culture?
“There is a monoculture out there and it’s breathing down our necks: zines and their zinesters are among the only things keeping the monster at bay. We’re part of a revolution-a very cute and entertaining revolution,” proclaims Anna Bowness, the magazine’s current editor.
On their own, most zines hardly seem revolutionary-they’re often just little collections of poems, stories, rants, or comics that an individual has decided to put together. But on a larger scale, zines are artifacts that represent a subculture of society in a way that nothing else does.
“Zines are sweet, honest-sometimes disturbingly honest-little documents of people’s lives, too: they can convey a kind of intimacy that no mass-produced or glossy publication ever pulls off,” says Bowness.
Zines are an easy way for people to create something uniquely their own-all you need is access to a photocopier and a head full of thoughts itching to come out. As such, a lot of zine creators are young people who don’t have any other avenue for self-expression.
Dan Field, a U of T student and former zinester, started making his own zine, smelly fish, when he was in high school.
“Since grade 9, I would always go to ska and punk shows, and one thing that I would always see at shows was a kid selling zines. I thought it would be fun to do my own,” Field explains. “It really seemed like a way to express myself.”
Broken Pencil founder Niedzviecki became interested in zines as an outlet to publish his fiction, and has since gone on to publish several novels and short story collections while continuing to act as BP’s fiction editor.
“For a lot of people [zines] can be a stepping stone to different kinds of artistic projects… and for some people it’s something that they always do,” Niedzviecki notes.
As if putting together a quarterly magazine wasn’t enough, the fine folks at Broken Pencil also offer an excellent opportunity to experience the zine community in the flesh with their annual Canzine festival of alternative culture, taking place this year on Sunday at the Gladstone Hotel.
At the free event (1 to 7 p.m.), you can check out 150 zines (and meet their creators) as well as a mixed bag of indie culture delights, including live burlesque shows throughout the day, panel discussions, readings, and underground film and video. It’s the largest festival of its kind in Canada (and possibly North America; Canzine also took place earlier this month in Vancouver for the first time), and will be bursting with creative vibes and goodies. It’s also a great way to buy zines-you don’t have to pay for postage, and the gratification is immediate, instead of having to wait for them to come in the mail.
As an interesting sidenote, Broken Pencil has roots at U of T. Hal Niedzviecki was once the Review editor of this fine independent publication, and BP’s production/design man John Hodgins also got his start at The Varsity.
“We kind of used The Varsity as our technical base of operations, and did all our layout and paste-up at The Varsity,” admits Niedzviecki, who also drove the paper’s delivery truck at the time.
Flash-forward ten years later, and their fledgling publishing endeavour is now a reliable signpost in the confusing warren that is indie culture. Here’s hoping Broken Pencil will continue to shine a light on the underground for another decade to come.
For more details on Canzine or Broken Pencil, see brokenpencil.com.
