2012 Brooklyn Zine Fest!

Here's an early head's up that I will be tabling with The Worst at the Brooklyn Zine Fest on Sunday, April 15th. This year, the fest will be at Public Assembly in Williamsburg. More info can be found here.

The even cooler part is that I'll be sharing a table with the fabulous Lauren Denitzio of Black and Red Eye , who created this fabulous poster to help raise money for the zine:

If you can't wait till April to get one, you can order them online from her here.

Gratitude, and Benefit Recap

Its hard to believe the zine benefit show was nearly a month ago now (!). I thought I'd update everyone on how things went and repost what I read for folks who couldn't make it. We were able to raise $600, an amount well beyond my wildest dreams and which will help me cover printing costs for quite some time. I'd like to shout out Maria Arettines, Sarah Hanks, Tommy Pico, and Cynthia Schemmer for reading such amazing pieces, and Worriers, Slingshot Daokta, and Bridge & Tunnel for bringing both music and dialogue about loss to the stage.

The Worst So Far:
Back in 2008 a reviewer described the zine as “an intense compilation of grief stories”. I think the word intense best describes the reactions and dialogue around the zine that i have been privileged to take part in since the first copies entered the world. But in the beginning, I was shocked that people found the zine “intense” because for me as a griever, it was one of the first things i encountered that matched the strength and depth of the feelings that I was going through. It didnt seem intense at all, it felt comfortable and like a relief to read similar stories. I can truly say, around five years after I distributed the first call for submissions, that the process of making this zine has saved my life. I can also say, that, As ive grown both personally and publically, I’ve learned that yes, the zine really is intense. Sometimes even downright unreadable, depending on where someone is at on a given day. However, I spend a lot of time thinking about why grief and loss is so “intense”, and kind of a taboo issue in our culture.

As I said in the zine, we live in a capitalist society that is primed to generate loss and trauma while at the same time silencing us if we attempt to articulate our experiences of disempowerment. Silencing grief and our true feelings serves the status quo myth that everyone in our society has all of their needs met by the system as it is and nothing needs to change. If everything’s fine, we should all be able to to “keep calm and carry on”, instead of get pissed and fight oppression. I’m excited about The Worst because it provides so many opportunities for us to speak the truths of our experiences, and in that truth lies the power of community.

On Support--
My dad died in 2001, and a big part of his life was music, so there are a lot of songs that remind me of him. On my birthday a few years ago, we had spent all night singing karaoke in a private room, and were leaving around 5am to go home, hoarse but exuberant at the new vocal heights we had reached together. As we entered the larger public room, I realized that a woman was singing along to L-O-V-E by Natalie Cole, a father-daughter duet that my dad and I had made up a ridiculous routine to when I was young. Exhausted physically and emotionally, I burst into tears and collapsed. At the same moment, recognizing the song and remembering that it was special to me, one of my dearest friends reached out and caught me. He shuffled me into an adjacent room and held me until I was done crying, and we eventually went outside to rejoin the rest of our friends. This simple act of memory and literally making a space to support my feelings stands out to me as the kind of authentic support I believe everyone is capable of offering to each other. The kind of authentic support I had hoped to illuminate through the creation of The Worst, and which has echoed throughout the project in emails, letters, and stories of connection in the face of loss.

In short, if you have the capacity to be a friend, you have the capacity to be a friend to someone going through bereavement. However, in order to access this capacity within ourselves, we have to talk about it. We have to write and read about it. And we have to do these things in dialogue with each other, so that we can practice new ways of offering support, so we can know when we’ve made a mistake, and so we can access creative ideas about how we might be able to try again.

Around the beginning of the summer, page 14 of issue 1 written by Cindy Crabb “went viral”. I’m still not really sure what Tumblr is or how it works, but all of a sudden, this page was Tumbling and REtumbling all over the world wide web (736 times and counting). What was on this page? It was a simple list of ways to help a friend whose parent has died. It included things like “for me to play music to you inside your room” “for me to get people to stop trying to cheer you up” “to go outside and scream”, “for me to ask you questions” “for me to just be near and silent”. Basic stuff, right? Why is this list of basic acts of care so illuminating when applied to grief? I think it has something to do with the taboos our culture places on grief and grieving. This list is so helpful because the items on it include ways to directly confront, address, and engage with the person’s experiences as they grieve. and in our culture, this is a radical notion. When we dare to break this enforced silence around grief and its associated emotions, when we name “our worsts,” we become empowered again to act, to cope, and to heal.

Looking around and seeing everyone who has contributed submissions, drove me to the printer to pick up boxes and boxes of photocopies, folded and collated and stapled, offered to play music tonight, to read, and all the faces i see of friends who have caught me when I stumbled trying to figure out how to carry this burden, I’m just left with tremendous gratitude. I’d like to thank Jordan from Silent Barn who had the show relocated mere days after Silent Barn was robbed. Eaden for letting us have the show here instead. For the Birds for believing in me and pushing me to do this after many years of not asking for help. All the readers and contributors, and bands who are here tonight--this is a collaborative project and would not exist without people taking the chance to speak, write, and read about the tough stuff.

**Extra thanks to the steadfast Virgo Kate Wadkins for taking these photos to document the event!!**

.pdf of Issue 2!

Thanks to the amazing helpfulness of my penpal Nevada, the .pdf of The Worst Issue 2 is now online for your downloading pleasure (and convenience, and free-ness!!)

Check it out here, along with Issue 1, which Nevada also kindly scanned and uploaded for me a few years ago. FYI, the zine prints on legal size paper.

Aside from being able to provide people with an online version of the zine, I am excited to have had so much help from someone I've never even met in person--a perfect example of why making zines and contributing to zine culture really does connect folks in a community they may not have found otherwise.

Save the Date! Worst Benefit Show in NYC September 3!

Hey all,
I'm excited to share that I'm organizing a benefit show in September to raise money to support the continued printing costs of the zine!! I am lucky to be a member of a vibrant and active DIY community full of skilled people who are helping me out to create a space where we can celebrate the zine, have a good time, and raise some much needed funds. The official details are below:

For the Birds Feminist Collective presents:

"Who'd ya lose & How ya Dealin'?":
A benefit show for The Worst: Compilation Zine on Grief and Loss

part of the Birds of Summer Series

Saturday September 3, 2011
Death by Audio // 49 S. 2nd St. between Kent & Wythe
L to Bedford or B62 to Driggs/S. 2nd
ALL AGES // NO BYOB
$6-10 Sliding Scale
Doors @ 8pm

FEATURING:
Bands:
Bridge and Tunnel
Worriers
Slingshot Dakota

Readings by:
Cynthia Schemmer
Tommy Pico
Maria Arettines
Sarah Hanks
Kathleen McIntyre
and more!

Tabling by:
For the Birds Collective
Birdsong Collective

Puppetry by:
Geppetta Whimsy-Core Puppet Theater

And, most excitingly, there will be cupcakes!

A year's worth of updates. . .

As you can see from the cobwebs all over this blog, I've been majorly busy the past two years with grad school. The exciting thing is I'm finally done! This summer will be full of lots of awesome things, like workshops, readings, and hopefully a benefit show so that I can keep printing both issues. Issue 2 has sold 400 copies and counting and I've gotten great feedback on it (check out this awesome shout out from radical librarian Kate Angell!! and minireview from contributor Tommy Pico, the mastermind behind Birdsong) and its available at Click Clack Distro, Riot Grrrl Distro, Stranger Danger Distro, Bluestockings Bookstore in NYC, and Brooklyn's Storefront Gallery as part of the Brain Waves collection curated by the always amazing Kate Wadkins. This summer I'm also hoping to continue publicizing the second issue and eventually scanning it so it can be available online like the first issue.

I also wrote this piece on feminism and grief on the For the Birds Blog. In social work school I was able to do lots of work exploring the pathologization of grief and mourning by the mental health industry, so I may try to excerpt some of that information and repost it. In general, I'd like to thank everyone for the support, encouragement, submissions, emails, ideas, and commitment that you all have never stopped providing me with. The zine has transformed from a paper object into a crucial community that never ceases to energize me. <3

The Worst Issue 2 available at Riot Grrrl Distro!

I am excited to share that both issues of the Worst are now available through Cindy Crabb's Riot Grrrl Distro, which, if you have not checked it out yet, is jam-packed with awesome titles, many related to self care, health/mental health, and healing from trauma. It has grown so much in the past few years and its always encouraging when folks like Cindy take on the often unglamorous task of keeping these great zines available. Also check out Timothy's zine called "Dad" for more writing on loss.

<3

Reading This Thursday in Brooklyn!

Hi All,

I will be reading a sampling of my personal writing about my dad dying as well as my submission from the second issue of The Worst this Thursday at the Storefront Gallery in Brooklyn. If you're in the area stop by (and you can pick up a copy of the zine there as well for 5 bucks!). Hope to see some of you there!

Kathleen

STOREFRONTpresents:

---

LITERARY THURSDAYS:

a series featuring the work of emerging writers and poets.

four graduate students read:

(3 nonfictionist from Sarah Lawrence

and

1 social worker from Hunter College)

Thursday, Nov 4 @ 7:30PM

Stacey Kahn is a graduate of Skidmore College and currently an MFA student in nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence. She's been published in Epiphany magazine, among other publications. She is the assistant editor at Epiphany and is a contributor to the music site Play Me. She is currently obsessed with rice kripsy treats and the band Pavement. Stacey Kahn is not a descendant of Genghis Khan.

Kathleen McIntyre lives in queens and goes to school for social group work. Since her dad died in 2001 she's been puzzling over ways that people can help each other heal. She edits "The Worst," a compilation zine on grief and loss, releasing Issue 2 this past September. For fun and survival, she's in For the Birds feminist collective and she dances whenever she can.

Tim Gomez is from the land of milk and honey, otherwise known as California. He hates newborn babies and Christmas Day. He is also a taco connoisseur. He writes about none of these things.

Cynthia Ann is a writer and native New Yorker who currently lives in Brooklyn and is working on her MFA thesis in creative nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a co-founder of the feminist collective For The Birds and has recently released the first issue of an oral history zine called Habits of Being. She has been published in Feminist Review, Drawn and Quarterly, and the For The Birds blog. She currently works on staff as a nonfiction reader for the Sarah Lawrence literary journal Lumina as well as the Brooklyn journal Epiphany.

This reading was organized by Cynthia Ann with special thanks to Kate Wadkins.