PA Live! Blog of the Week: Bareing Skine

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details?nxd_id=278842

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Bareing Skine by Rachel Dispenza (http://bareskine.tumblr.com/).

Once upon a time, in the days before the internet and blogs, creative people with opinions still wanted to find a way to express themselves and share their thoughts with the world. Out of the pamphleteers of old came the idea of "zines": home-made, hand-made, self-published magazines, usually photocopied and stapled together and distributed free or for a small price.

Zines had a heyday in the late 1980's, but faded away somewhat as the internet offered other ways for people to express themselves: user groups and bulletin boards, later blogs, and then things like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

But starting a few years ago zines started to make a comeback as people began to embrace this lower-tech means of expression that had a real presence in the bricks-and-mortar world. Blogs could be edited and posts deleted,  but once a zine was in someone else's hands there was nothing you could do to change the content.

The Scranton Zine Festival is an annual event held to bring zine creators from all over under one roof. On the event's blog they list the participating creators and publishers who will be sharing their zines there, with links back to their personal websites or blogs. One of those was Rachel Dispenza of Tunkhannock, creator of the zines Progression and Progression: Part 2. On her blog, Bareing Skine, Rachel shares sample pages from her zines, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into making them. She also provides links to places where you can buy the few remaining copies of the last print runs of her zines. In the sample pages you can see the striking combinations of images and words that make up every page of her zines. Reading these zines can be a gut-wrenching experience, and Bareing Skine can help to prepare you for it - or it can set you up so the emotional impact is even greater.

Bareing Skine and the related zines, Progression and Progression Part 2 remind me of an incredible bit of experimental literature from the 1970's, Joseph Pintauro's The Rabbit Box. If this blog and these zines are any indication, Rachel Dispenza is someone whose works may someday make a huge impression on a broad audience. Progression Part 3 is in the works, and you should definitely check out Progression and Progression Part 2 while they're still available. Visit Rachel's blog, Bareing Skine, and get a taste of what her zines have to offer!



If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Uncharted Frontier EZine

Allan Kaspar, of the DnA Project Band blog is starting a new project that involves a blog.  I interviewed him about the new endeavor via text message.

Me:  "What's this new thing you are doing?"

Al:  "I'm starting a free ezine for short fiction writers, artists and photographers who are not yet mainstream.  It will distribute through all smart phone bookshelves/libraries.  Going to be an awesome creative venture."

Al:  "The ezine is located at http://unchartedfrontier.com"

Al:  "It'll be in ebook format going through smashwords so it'll convert into .mobi, .epub, etc formats."

Me:  "When does it launch?"

Al:  "As soon as I finish putting up the preview story."

Me:  "Ok, sweet!"

Al:  "Well the website anyway, issue 1, I'm hoping for beginning of August."

From the About:
Uncharted Frontier Magazine focuses on the best fiction and art from the creatively talented albeit undiscovered. We seek to provide a vehicle and voice to those we feel should be heard! Do you have the passion to create a good short story? Do you have a budding talent for photography and want to show the world? See our Submission Guidelines for details!

Undiscovered Frontier aims to be the best FREE fiction e-zine made specifically for mobile devices! We aim to have the ezine published on the Amazon Bookshelf, iTunes, and all major digital distribution outlets aimed at the smartphone and tablet audience!

Thank you for reading, and welcome to the Frontier!

--

So there you have it, head over to http://unchartedfrontier.com and check out the preview and look for the first free issue at the beginning of August.  

~Michelle

Thelibrarywordfountain's blog

Here's another blog I found on the Scranton Zine Festival's list of participating zinesters. (Turns out Michelle had found out about it via different channels shortly before me!)

Thelibrarywordfountain's blog
http://thelibrarywordfountain.wordpress.com/


From their "About" page:

Word Fountain is a cut-and-paste Zine originating from some creative minds within the Osterhout Free Library. Word Fountain was born in 2009 and has since expanded.


Staff:
Rachael Goetzke
Iris Johnston
Ed Lupico

As of this writing, the Word Fountain zine is still accepting submissions for a special Hurricane Agnes edition. But hurry - cut-off date for submissions is the anniversary of the Flood of '72 - June 22nd! See here for more details.

Edit by Michelle on 07/31/12:  I found that the deadline for this submission has been extended via the 570Writers blog.  

You have until August 8 to get your submissions in for the Agnes/Irene flood issue of Word Fountain. From the Word Fountain post: “We hope to collect donations for this issue to create a special fund for flood victims. We are also looking for sponsors for this special project.”

See the details here: http://thelibrarywordfountain.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/but-wait-theres-more-time-left-to-submit/

bareing skine

The good folks at the Scranton Zine Festival have included a list of the people who will be presenting their zines (and other creative works) at the New Visions Studio & Gallery in Scranton on June 9, 2012. The list is impressive; people from near and far will be there. Some of the "zinesters" are from Northeastern Pennsylvania, and a few of them have blogs connected to their zines. Here's one of them:

bareing skine
http://bareskine.tumblr.com/

by Rachel Dispenza, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania
creator of the zines progression: part one and progression: part two

My name is Rachel Dispenza. I made the first page of what will soon be my first zine on November 1, 2011, and after that is done, I’m going to keep making more. On this blog you may find some pages, typed up excerpts from my own journal, and anything else that just seems to fit. I write frequently and think feverishly and hope my words affect you in some small way. They’re all I have to call my own.

Check out Rachel's blog to get a taste of what her zine is like. You can order copies of it online, or just come to the Scranton Zine Festival to meet her in person and purchase a copy directly!

Scranton Zine Festival

Scranton Zine Festival
http://scrantonzinefest.wordpress.com/


Following my meeting with my writing group (The Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective, which does not have a blog...yet) yesterday, a few of us hiked a few blocks to grab a late lunch. Along the way, one of our company brought up the matter of Zine Fest, and wondered if I might know when it was. I didn't, and had only been vaguely aware that such a thing was going on. In fact, I had almost forgotten about zines entirely since my college years, until a conversation with blogger, zine publisher and enthusiast Erin Delaney a few years ago reminded me of their existence.

I'm lookin' behind us now, across the count of time, down the long hall, into history back...

Imagine a time before the Internet. Before blogs, and podcasts, and tweets, and YouTube, and Facebook, Before iPods. Before cell phones, at least cell phones small enough to put in a pocket, and cheap enough for everybody to own. Back when photographs were taken on chemical emulsions, and having fifty-seven channels on TV seemed like a lot.

In such an environment, how would you share your opinions, your ideas, your brilliance, and your creativity with the world? One answer, for those with the right combination of talent and resourcefulness, was - and continues to be - the zine.

"But what is a zine?" you might ask. Well the good folks at the Scranton Zine Festival have anticipated your question, and answered it here:  http://scrantonzinefest.wordpress.com/about/what-is-a-zine/

I remember reading zines in my college days, usually ones I picked up at a second-hand bookstore downtown. (I believe it was the Scranton branch of "Mostly Books.") I haven't run across any in the years since, and thought that perhaps the labor-intensive act of creating a zine had passed away in favor of the relatively low-effort act of updating a blog. But as Erin reminded me, zines do still exist - and there's enough interest locally to result in the Scranton Zine Festival.

And almost as if they were trying to make a point about the relationship between zines and blogs - the Scranton Zine Festival has a blog!

Scranton Zine Festival
http://scrantonzinefest.wordpress.com/

The Scranton Zine Festival is Saturday, June 9 at the New Visions Studio & Gallery, 201 Vine Street, Scranton. (For a quick image of the place, see here; for the New Visions blog, go here; and for the New Visions Website, go here.)