The Revolution Will be Risograph
200 Comic, art and zine fests for 2025
Messaging with April Landry on Instagram, I became irrationally afraid that she thought I wasn’t a real person.
“Being able to meet people in person and share ideas is going to become more important as the internet continues to become unusable,” messaged April Landry, founder and organizer of the Luna Moth Zine Fest in Salem, New Hampshire. Unusable due to algorithmic misdirection, and intentional disinformation.
“It’s just good to know you’re talking to a real person,” she said.
Not being a bot, I volunteered something personal, how I keep thinking about Timothy D. Snyder’s advice in “On Tyranny” to make eye contact and small talk.
It’s “a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust,” he writes. The intentionality seems dystopian until I remember the US president-elect has promised to silence his critics, including journalists.
If disinformation can transmit worldwide via Meta, maybe the revolution will be local. A zine can be one sheet of folded copy paper, left on the flyer shelf of a coffee shop, and saved in a pocket. One physical unit of free speech and connection.
More people seem to be seeing it that way, April said.
“Lots of people in our community are doing zines on how to get help the government or corporations won’t give you,” she said, with topics on housing, sex education, cyber security and how to organize. “Info we need to survive the coming years.”
Applications opened January 14 to exhibit at the Luna Moth Zine Fest on April 19, 2025.
“Zines are resistance in their purest form. They are low-cost, easy to reproduce, and accessible to everyone. Unlike mainstream media, zines allow communities to tell their own stories, on their own terms,” according to the Southwest Workers Union.
Whether you write and draw about naloxone, or Marcie’s secret crush on Peppermint Patty, check out a festival in 2025. There’s a lot of strength to be drawn from numbers. If you’re a civilian, bring single dollars because it’s hard for us to break twenties.
My wife and I drove 12 hours on New Year’s Eve, home from a visit to family in South Carolina. It had hit 60° there that Monday, so 2025 dawned a little lonelier and darker.
We switched from the news to a Twilight Zone marathon, and I Googled the application windows for 200 zine festivals. I was surprised to feel my spiritual core, like an iron stove, slowly undergo a thermal expansion.
I was hope-scrolling Instagram, if that’s even possible. Lots of photos of artists at last year’s fests, smiling behind tables of unfettered expression, books, stickers and prints.
The Miami Zine Fair had grown to 120 tables, filling the Little Haiti Cultural Complex and rented tents, before COVID shut it down in 2020. The fair remained on hiatus another four years due to a health issue for founder and director Amanda Keeley.
It wouldn’t have been a surprise to self-publishers if the fair became “one of those really fun things that used to happen,” but — it’s back.
“We couldn’t be more excited,” Amanda Keeley said. “This is a crucial moment to provide a platform for diverse voices, especially as many seek community, activism, and positivity in uncertain times.”
The Miami Zine Fair is set for April 19, 2025, at Paradise Plaza in the Miami Design District.
“HELL YESSSS,” posted Julian Alicea, @thebrainwave on Instagram.
The fair was “a hub of young, enthusiastic and emerging creatives in Miami,” said Julian, the artist behind the documentary series, “Test of Time,” on long-lived Miami restaurants and bars. “The energy was fantastic.”
Zine Map and Directory
Click for 200 zine festivals ordered by region, and the date applications are accepted. Please double-check check dates with the festivals themselves.