This Month's Newsletter

WHAT IS THE FANZINE NEWSLETTER?

The term fanzine speaks to the idea of creating a publication for fans by fans, as a means of creating community.

The first time I heard the term “Fanzine” was in the famous Billy Bragg song, “The Great Leap Forward”. It speaks to the difficulties of being an artist striving for the divine, the perfect, while living in the real world, a world that will always fall short of the perfect dreams of the artist.

In my recent years as an aspiring artist I have found the biggest failing of modern life is one word, community. The shattering of social circles due to technology, aka screens, and a general sense of needing to constantly work to simply survive has left all of us feeling fragmented and isolated. An artist newsletter isn’t going to solve that, but maybe it can at least be a hub to facilitate us all becoming more connected.

This first newsletter is essentially an introduction to the things that the Fanzine Newsletter will do to help create community. At the end of the newsletter I will restate all of these in a shortened list.

THE ARTIST CALENDAR

I have found that when I first was getting involved in art and writing circles, the hardest part was simply finding events. One of the main features of the newsletter is our Artist Calendar. Here we have a Google Calendar that has art events broken down both by type, comedy, poetry, visual art, etc., and by region, North Jersey, Central Jersey, NY State, NY City, and more. Access to the calendar is not limited to the newsletter, but the Calendar will be mostly easily accessed from our website here.

THE FANZINE DISCORD CHANNEL

Another issue I have also found in building community was the difficulty of sharing my works with other artists and then getting feedback. I have found one of the best ways to do this is through an app called Discord. Many of our younger members may know the app, but for our more seasoned members, Discord is like a mix of phone calls, group texts, and email all in one place, where people can talk by voice, video, or messages in organized groups. The goal here will be to create a forum for artists to share their work and get feedback if they want.

We will also have other groups in discord for specific topics as well. There will be weekly prompts for poetry and other writers with writers’ block. There will be areas for self promotion. And lastly, if you have any suggestions for new groups or topics, there will be a group for all member suggestions. This is a newsletter for writers BY writers. We want YOUR suggestions so we can better serve your needs and desires. You can join the discord here.

ARTIST PROMOTION

Lastly, I have found that one of the hardest things I have found as an artist is the practice of self promotion. Between the fear of sharing something deeply personal with strangers and the general self doubt of being good enough, self promotion is hard. Therefore, the fanzine newsletter will do its best to help artists in our community self promote. As mentioned before, we will have a discord channel for self promotion, but that’s not all. Each week we will have a local artist spotlight. Each month a new local artist from the newsletter community will be promoted at the end of our newsletter. They will be promoted in the bottom of the newsletter with a biography, a chance to share any upcoming works and projects, and an opportunity to share any social media, etc. That will be located here.

LASTLY,

As Billy Bragg says in the Great Leap Forward: “here comes the future and you can't run from it. If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it.”

Now although, technically, this is really the opposite of a blacklist, in the spirit of artistic rebellion I’m welcoming you to join our blacklist!

If you are interested in this project, add your name and email to our newsletter with the link to the right. If you have any friends or artists you know who might be interested please forward this email or the link to our newsletter to them as well!

Welcome to the Fanzine,

• Alex Scofi (The Fanzine Writer)

This Month's Featured Artist

TBA

WHAT DOES THE FANZINE NEWSLETTER PROVIDE?

1. The Artists’ Calendars: a google calendar with art events broken down by category and location. Can be accessed here.

   1. Categories

      1. Poetry Open Mic

      2. Poetry Workshops

      3. Comedy Open Mics

      4. Music Open Mics

      5. Music Shows

      6. Open Stage Events: Open mics for music, comedy, & poetry

   2. Locations (starting with, but not limited to)

      1. North Jersey

      2. Central and South Jersey

      3. NYC

      4. Upstate New York

2. A Discord: a mix of phone calls, group texts, and email all in one place, where people can talk by voice, video, or messages in organized groups. You can join here (Link not up yet).

   1. Topics (starting with, but not limited to)

      1. Sharing work (advice, if requested)

      2. Looking for local events

      3. General Chat

      4. Publishing Advice

      5. Shameless Self Promotion

      6. Looking for Collaboration

      7. Prompts for Writing (anti-writer’s block medicine)

3. The Monthly Artist Spotlight

For questions on the Calendar or Newsletter you can email:
thefanzinewriter@gmail.com.