We publish new zineseach and every month (you read that right!), and we want to make sure you don’t miss any that could help you change your life and the world around you. So every month this year, we are going to share a roundup of what’s been released, and maybe a few sneak peeks at what’s ahead in the zine pipeline. So let’s dive in!
Unfuck Your Tarot: Using the Cards for Growth and Overcoming Trauma by Dr. Faith G. Harper Starting with Carl Jung’s enthusiasm for tarot’s archetypal power up through contemporary usage as a way to explore symbols and imagery in therapeutic settings, bestselling author Dr. Faith lays out helpful basics about the tarot and its connections to therapy work, alongside activities, prompts, and questions to consider in your own journey toward personal development and healing.
Transition Diaries by Finn Animal Bro An intimate, reflective, and charming personal account of coming out and transitioning, defying transmasc invisibility and enforced cultural norms. Through alter-ego KweerKat, the author celebrates the simple pleasures of becoming, being, and loving one’s self; the satisfaction of weight-lifting; the psycho-spiritual process of transition; and many other smart and tender thoughts depicted through sweet cat illustrations. Remember that no one else can tell you how to be yourself!
How to Pack for a Tripby Joe Biel and Elly Blue Packing for a trip can be overwhelming! Trying to future-cast the weather, how much you’ll walk, whether or not you’re going to dump a coffee on yourself…it’s a lot. Longtime and frequent travelers Joe and Elly have made this fun and friendly little zine to help you break down packing and trip prep into manageable chunks, full of tips and tricks to make it all easier.
Criminal or Hero?: Relatable Crimes of Modern Timesby Joe Biel and Elly Blue From political actions to mistaken thefts, unfortunate miscommunications to gleeful mischief, the most sympathetic person in these stories is usually the one on the wrong side of the law, with choice details and a little art to match. Read to be entertained and consider what we consider criminality in a new light—and you, too, can argue with your friends about your faves and foes within!
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Save money, save the planet, and craft a sustainable domestic life without relying on smelly, toxic, expensive consumer products. This handwritten and hand-drawn book of charming tutorials for natural housekeeping and home repair, organic gardening and food preservation, herbal first aid, and mending clothes is both fun and accessible. It’s full of simple skills that anyone can and should learn.
From creating healthy tinctures and salves to preserving excess food to fixing a leaky faucet, this book is great if you’re looking to live more simply, create a comfortable nest, and truly do it yourself. Combining the power of Raleigh Briggs’s bestselling Make Your Place and Make It Last to form a complete guide to everything you need to consume less and live more in line with your values.
The DIY information technology helping us build a better world
In an era of book bans, people are still finding ways to read, write, and share freely. One result we’ve noticed: a groundswell of zines. That’s why we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines.
What’s a zine? It’s a stapled, photocopied love letter to a passionate interest. People write zines about whatever they need to: to tell their story uncensored, to express themselves fearlessly in words and art, to share knowledge or resources, to celebrate something they care about deeply, to connect directly with readers. Zines can take many forms, from a handwritten manifesto distributed out of a fanny pack to a polished product sold in stores.
We have published and sold zines since 1996, and we’ve seen many waves of interest come and go. But we haven’t seen anything like the surge of zine sales that began on November 9, 2024. Sure, there was a two-week run on reproductive rights resources, books like How to Get Your Periodand zines like Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom pushing aside all other holiday bestsellers (even Slingshot Planners!) on their way to the top of the charts. But that urgency quickly died down, revealing an even stickier trend on our orders page—people were, and still are, loading up with assorted, seemingly random zines, on every topic, from every era. Zines about bees, government misdeeds, backyardbuildingprojects, mentalhealth, abortion, abortion, abortion. Zines and books about how to make zines.
What’s behind this hunger for zines? To us, it’s not that hard to see. We are all desperate to expand our understanding, to think freely, to feel safe connections with others and with our own thoughts, to learn the skills we need to survive this era. Online media, especially social media, is compromised. Books can be slow to come out, ponderous to read, relentlessly gatekept, banned up the wazoo. Zines are none of these. They’re a fix that satisfies the urgent need for pithy commentary, bigger perspective, getting a look inside someone else’s head without needing to have your own perfectly-formed and fully-informed opinion. They provide a small, safe bubble with no mandate for response. A zine is a safe place to not know, to be wrong, to change your mind, and to entertain other perspectives.
Zines can be banned, but they’re too slippery to be stopped, too slight to be taken seriously, some too underground to even be found. They are decentralized, passed hand-to-hand, and there are no gatekeepers to corrupt or bottlenecks to plug.
And the best thing about zines is that youcan create one! You can publish it yourself, all you need is something to say and access to a printer or copier. You can give copies to your friends, leave them in the public library or at Little Free Libraries, mail them to the creators who made you fall in love with zines in the first place. This is far from the expensive corporate allure of self-publishing a book-shaped object to remain forever hidden in the algorithm. Zines are a form of energy that can’t be contained by anyone, even us, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
So we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines, and this is what it means: read zines. Seek them out. We have a ton in our catalog, and we sell them to more and more stores. You can find a plethora of printed zines on Etsy and digital ones on itch.io. More and more cities and towns are hosting their own zine fests. You’ll find them hiding out in craft fair booths, in a bin at the library. Search for zines + your area of passionate interest. Once you start looking, you’ll see them everywhere. (And if you have a store, check out our zine about selling zines!).
And when you aren’t finding the exact zine you want, well, you know what to do. How do you think we got started making them?
If you’d like to submit a zine or an idea for one to Microcosm, you can read a little more about our guidelines and process here.Happy creating!
We’re all taking this election result differently here at Microcosm. Some of us are motivated, on fire, primed to rise to a crisis in proportion with its scope. Others are taking time off to cry, zone out, hold loved ones tight. Others are just getting through the days as normally as possible.
We remember eight years ago, when we didn’t see it coming: the shock, then grief, followed by focused action. We remember what hurt and what helped. One thing that helps, a lot, is to wake up knowing that our entire job is to put tools in your hands to counter the world’s bullshit. So we’ve made a new Care & Action Package of things that motivate us and help us deal and might help you too. We’ve also put together a selection of resources for all the different needs we can think of. Read on, find what you need, use the coupons you need to make it work for you.
If you’re having a hard time and need someone to talk to, write to us and one of our crew will write you back. Your voice, needs, and life matter. You matter. And together, we’ve got this.
—Elly and the MCP crew
Check out our recent toplists for other titles and resources that may be of use to you and your community right now. Read on to learn more about selected titles from our Care & Action Package.
From Conflict to Community: Transforming Conflicts Without Authoritiesby Gwendolyn Olton Experienced peacemaker Gwendolyn Olton shows you how to use your existing skills and intuition to transform a wide variety of conflicts into working relationships that meet everyone’s needs. In this practical, kind, realistic guidebook, Olton offers a variety of conflict analysis and conversation tools that you can use to navigate the most challenging interpersonal dynamics, and to better understand yourself and others along the way—all without calling HR or the cops.
The Courage Party: Helping Our Resilient Children Understand and Survive Sexual Assaultby Joyce Brabner and Gerta Oparaku Egy After escaping a playground predator, Danielle learns to understand what happened and how to carry herself with pride and conviction after five older women organize a “Courage Party” for her, sharing stories from their own lives. With realistic interactions with police, pediatricians, prosecutors, victim advocates, a community rape crisis center, and the courthouse, Danielle learns she is a “crime fighter,” able to protect other kids in the park, with many good grownups on her side.
Surviving: Getting Through the Shit Life Throws at Youby Dr. Faith G. Harper A zine for getting through it when life is piling it higher and deeper, the political and personal and social disasters that we know always come in waves. Getting Over It was about getting past whatever happened in the past; Surviving is about making it through the present. Even if you don’t believe you can survive this, Dr. Faith believes it for you, and offers some basic tools that anyone can use to make it one more day.
How to Get Your Period: A Guide to Performing Menstrual Extractionby An Anonymous Healthcare Worker In 1971, as part of their work with a feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and in a post-Roe era, demand is surging. This book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure.
Direct Action Handbook: A Guide to Organizing & Protesting Safelyby various contributors Have you ever wondered how to protest safely and effectively? It’s not just about showing up, chanting, and holding signs. You need to know what your rights are, how to handle the police, how to dress appropriately for all situations, what to do when tensions escalate, how to be an empathetic ally, and more. Packed with infographs and invaluable tips, this handbook is a must when you’re organizing your next protest or attending a rally or march.
If YOU have an idea for a book or a zine that might support people in the years ahead, we’re always looking for submissions of most any kind (especially zines!), but particularly about:
▶Abortion, birth control, sex ed, and reproductive health ▶Herbal medicine ▶Gender medicine ▶Queer and trans health, safety, and self-defense ▶How-to projects for resilient living (eg, gardening, building, energy, food preservation, mutual aid, online safety) ▶Activism and movement-building ▶Writing, publishing, and creativity in difficult times ▶Suicide prevention
Find out more about pitching and submitting to Microcosm HERE.
Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love is an illustrated guide to clothes and food and home. Raleigh Briggs bridges the gap between life in a disposable culture and the basic skills needed to save money and live more sustainably.
This book teaches you how to extend the lives of the things you love by repairing clothing, preserving home-grown food, and even repairing your kitchen sink and making your own soap. Briggs takes her longtime commitment to community building through the DIY movement and shares her valuable experience with the reader through a conversational tone in her hand-drawn and -illustrated guide.
The Utne Reader described Raleigh’s work as “A forceful antidote to the cheapening of thrift culture: a meticulously hand-lettered, pint-size volume. When you raise your fist against the values that derailed our economy, lift this book in it.” Now you can save money and save the planet while saving your prized possessions!
Microcosm began with zines, and they remain our bread and butter as a production ethos, as accessible information transmitters, and as incubators for creativity. We celebrate these pocket-sized testaments to DIY ingenuity year-round, but July is officially recognized as Zine Month, so we’re shining the spotlight on our wide-ranging zine collections to celebrate.
Below are excerpts from a few themed collections we put together to amplify the amazing work being done in itty bitty book form, with each theme containing a little something for everybody. Dig in, enjoy!
Make some contraptions, harvest your own herbs, make your own cleaning supplies, or organize some rad events with this collection of zines all about DIY!
Sometimes you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping someone with theirs. This collection is all about self-care, self-love, and self-preservation.
In this collection, we’ve gathered some of our most original, you-won’t-get-these-anywhere-else zines. Radical nuns, substitute teaching, grumpy baristas, and more below!
In a world of systems that aim to keep us feeling helpless, sick, and disconnected from our bodies and emotions, it’s crucial to learn how to care for ourselves—and each other. From reproductive freedom to recruiting herbal allies, from supporting your own mental health to offering support to loved ones, life is full of opportunities to take back our agency and see ourselves as collaborators in healing.
To celebrate the release of new zine How to Get Your Period, here’s a collection of works that embrace a radical understanding of “self care” as an empowering ethic for healthier individuals and communities.
In 1971, as part of their work with their feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, which has the side effect of ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and now, in a post-Roe era, the demand is surging. Written by an anonymous medical professional, this book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure. You’ll also learn when not to perform ME and find an overview of other safe and effective options for bringing about menstruation or ending a pregnancy in the first trimester. In addition to heralding the incredible discovery of these historical heroes and affirming the need for abortion rights, this book offers menstrual extraction as a method to understand and protect our own bodies, choices, and reproductive rights even as they are under attack.
Alive With Vigor! compiles stories of surviving—and thriving—from a wide spectrum of contributors. Deeply personal essays recount matters of preventative health care, the hard decisions we each have to make, Do It Yourself health care, and how to deal with extracting health care from government/corporate health care systems. Alive With Vigor! has a special focus on queer, youth, and transgender people, recognizing that everyone has different health care needs. Finally a how to book where you can put the advice directly to use in your life!
A guide for practiced herbalists and midwives to better serve their communities with herbal abortion options. Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings from Gerard’s Herbal and other early texts. The time is now for us to learn from forgotten knowledge and keep ourselves and the people around us healthy and fully in charge of their own reproductive health and rights.
If you’re the sort of person who takes on every project and responsibility until suddenly it’s one thing too many and you get completely burnt out and drop everything and start the cycle again from scratch … this zine is for you. Includes hard-won pointers on how to train yourself to have more sustainable work habits (using tricks from dog training!), shore up your professional boundaries, and get more organized so you can have a better handle on all the things you are very likely to continue taking on. Stress and overwhelm are tough to live with every day, and the go-getters of the world could use to take better care of ourselves and have more fun.
A thorough and classic examination on tried and true herbal treatments for common gynecological problems, as well as great basic sexual health info for anyone with a uterus. It begins, “Patriarchy sucks. It’s robbed us of our autonomy and much of our history. We believe it’s integral for women to be aware an in control of our own bodies.” Diagrams and herbal remedies teach you how to diagnose and heal many basic problems from bladder infections to inducing your period to ease cramps to even dealing with pregnancy. Learn herbal remedies to ease every stage of the menstrual cycle. There’s references to further reading, descriptions of herbs, and even a section on aphrodisiacs. The sections include: Body Mapping (in brief), About Menstruation, Love in the Age of Aids, 35 years of fertility, STDs and Other Aliens, The Ovaries and the Uterus, Aphrodisiacs, How to Prepare and Use Herbs, Picking Your Own Herbs, Herbal Properties and Dosages, Interesting Reading, Useful Addresses. This book deserves to sit next to your copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves.
Support encourages everyone to take a step back, listen, think, and talk about sex, consent, violence, and abuse. If you or someone you know have ever been assaulted or victimized, how to be an ally can be confusing. These words and the connection they offer can help. With ideas and encouragement to help yourself and others cope with, prevent, and end sexual violence and abuse, this collection of personal experiences, advice, guest articles, and comic excerpts wants to help.
For decades, the U.S. has been obsessed with “self-esteem” or rather with our lack of it. But self-esteem isn’t actually that great, and getting all puffed up about yourself isn’t exactly a recipe for the good life. How about self-compassion instead? Bestseller Dr. Faith explains the difference between the two and offers some helpful exercises in developing more compassion for yourself. It’s actually very different, she explains, than letting yourself off the hook for your bullshit. It’s more helpful to accept that you’re human so that you can learn and grow rather than push aside your problems or wallow in your mistakes. Also, kindness to yourself helps you be more kind to other people as well. Everyone wins!
Fireweed, as the full title implies, is all about introducing your kids to plants. It’s about teaching young children the joy of gathering edibles, and making them into candies, teas, jellies, or even medicines. There’s tips for going on plant walks, and suggestions for good introductory plants like ginger, mint, and marshmallow. There are recipes for prickly pear crisp, catnip tea, and simple fermented herbal infusions. The authors conduct a couple interviews with parents about their experiences sharing plants with their children. This zine is really inspiring.
In activist circles and elsewhere, it has become commonplace to speak of self-care, taking for granted that the meaning of this expression is self-evident. But “self” and “care” are not static or monolithic; nor is “health.” How has this discourse been colonized by capitalist values? How could we expand our notion of care to encompass a transformative practice?
Following “For All We Care,” analyzing the contradictory currents within the category of care, Crimethinc presents “Self as Other,” combining that text with three more essays in which individuals recount their personal struggles with the concept and practice of care.
Shop the list for even more of our radical self-care titles, or check outsomepacks. Keep taking care of each other!
Behind the scenes of Bob’s quest to bring two outsider genres together at last
Bob Suren’s new book, Weird Music That Goes On Forever: A Punk’s Guide to Loving Jazzis out now, with art by Brian Walsby and forewords from Lucky Lehrer and Paul Mahern. We chatted with Bob about the writing and publication of the book and the punk-to-jazz pipeline.
Microcosm Publishing: What inspired you to write your book?
Bob Suren: An unsatisfactory experience at a jazz club. When I first got into punk rock as a teenager, some more seasoned punks taught me about how punk rock works. They loaned me records and zines and made mix tapes and invited me to shows. The few jazz clubs I have been to have not been particularly welcoming. After a visit to some snobby club, I thought, jazz isn’t supposed to be like that. Really, nothing should be like that. But jazz was the original outsider music. Granted, I wasn’t kicking around when it was but it sure seems dusty and aloof now. I belong to several jazz groups online, to gather knowledge and read opinions, and there’s very little sense of humor in the groups. There is a lot of what the kids call “gatekeeping” and a lot of jazz experts flexing their credentials. Of course, there’s quite a bit of that now in punk, too, and I plead a little guilty. Anyhow, after being given the third-class treatment at a jazz club, I got the idea to write a book that compares jazz to punk and I started writing it the minute I got home. I sent Microcosm the first thousand words or so that very night.
MCP: What was it like to publish with Microcosm?
BS: This is my second book with Microcosm. I hear that for your seventh they give you a monogrammed smoking jacket. The first book I edited in person with Joe, side by side at his desk in Portland over five or six days. It was very easy and smooth and the finished product was not much different than the rough draft. For this book, I worked remotely by email with Olivia and there were a lot more things to debate and fix in the edit. I think we did three front to back edits over a period of maybe three months. I was starting to get sick of looking at the thing but Olivia made some good suggestions and she caught a few fact errors in her cross-research which made for a better book. And a much longer book. I used to be skeptical of the editing process but I now realize that a second set of eyes is a big help
MCP: What was the submission/query process like for you?
BS: Since I already had a relationship with Microcosm, it was very easy and informal. I sent Joe a three sentence pitch and the first thousand or so words as soon as I wrote them. Maybe like 10 minutes after I wrote them. Joe’s original response was that it might make a good zine. He told me to keep it around 36 pages. I didn’t think I could do the subject any justice at 36 pages so I said, “I’m just going to write it the way it needs to be and send it when I feel like it’s finished,” which is a very fucking jazz approach to writing. At one point, I thought it was going to top out short, at around 100 pages. But I keep finding great info. I couldn’t believe it when the final page count was 256.
MCP: What else have you written?
BS: In 2015 Microcosm published Crate Digger: An Obsession with Punk Records, my memoir of 30 years in punk rock as a fan, a collector, a band member, a record label, a store, a distro, a prolific t-shirt bootlegger, basset hound owner, and more.
MCP: What are you currently reading?
BS: I read a lot of nonfiction. I like pop science books like Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks. I love memoirs. Some of the best memoirs I have read were by Meat Loaf, Paul Stanley, Geezer Butler, John Stamos, Rob Lowe, Chrissie Hynde, Belinda Carslie, Tina Fey, Molly Shannon, and a not famous guy from Texas named David Crabb wrote wrote something very funny called Bad Kid. I have given two copies of Bad Kid as gifts. Check it out. I have been dipping into non-fiction, too. I think America’s best non-fiction writer is a guy from Portland named Willy Vlautin. I have read every Willy Vlautin book and I have written him fan mail, just like the fan mail I used to send Kevin Seconds. Except I didn’t ask Willy Vlautin for free stickers.
MCP: What’s the best book you read in the last year?
BS: Willy Vlautin’s latest book, The Night Always Comes. Also a novel called The Lemon, written by three people under the pseudonym S.E. Boyd.
MCP: What’s next for you?
BS: Maybe I will get another idea for a book and maybe I won’t. I have no idea. Once I get the inspiration, I work fast. Crate Digger was written over maybe six weeks. Weird Music took me maybe ten weeks to write. I just need a spark.
Bob Suren spent decades as a professional punk rocker, playing in bands, releasing records, running a store and a distribution company, writing for zines, shooting photos, and booking shows. Now he’s kind of into jazz. Read another interview with Bob on our blog.
Check out the video below, and also read the blog interview Gwen wrote for us to talk more about her book and its process of coming into the world!
MCP: What inspired you to write your book?
GO: There were a few things that coalesced to inspire me to write the book. I had finished reading Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse and her discussions of “bad friend” groups and the influence they have on conflicts stuck with me. At the same time, I was supporting many folks with conflicts that were relatively minor – not the sort of thing you might bring to a mediator but enough that they were disruptive in a person’s life. Meanwhile, whenever I was invited to facilitate a workshop on conflict or attend someone else’s workshops or skillbuilding on conflict we were very rarely talking about how to support others in conflict when you’re not a mediator or the parties aren’t really sitting down together to discuss. And amidst all of this, has been the growing awareness of just how much we escalate conflicts up to authorities instead of working within our circles to try to work things out.
What was it like to publish with Microcosm?
Easy peasy! I don’t have a basis of comparison since this is my first book, but communication and transparency have been excellent, which I really appreciate.
What was the submission/query process like for you?
They were pretty straightforward processes. I had an idea for this book, I fleshed it out a bit and submitted the idea. Then, I exchanged some emails with Microcosm and provided a writing sample or two and that was that!
Do you still have your original query to us? Are you willing to share it?
Sure! See below:
This book would benefit the reader by offering a large array of strategies for transforming conflicts without appeals to punitive authority figures.
2. Doing it Better: Conflict resolution and accountability after abuse in leftist communities
3. Unfuck Your Boundaries: Build better relationships through consent, communication, and expressing your needs
My book is unique from these and other titles in that it provides the reader with tools for successfully navigating these struggles as both a participant in a conflict and as a 3rd-party intervener without formal training. Folks would be interested in buying this book when they want help keeping community and relationship intact and don’t have access to formal mediators or facilitators, or cannot afford them. I want to offer this book because I see a deep need for collaboration and conflict transformation skills and believe folks can be empowered to work on these practices even without formal training. I want to offer something that is approachable and easy to pick up and brings relief to those who are in conflict and don’t know where to turn. I have a background in transformative mediation, restorative justice and restorative process facilitation, group decision making facilitation, and a number of communication practices including Motivational Interviewing and NVC. I have a MA in conflict resolution. I volunteer as a mediator and conflict consultant for a number of small organizations including a local low-power radio station and roller derby league. I also offer non-court based mediation to folks by referral for free.
I appreciate your consideration and am open to feedback about this pitch if you have time and willingness to share it. Thank you.
What else have you written?
This is the only book I’ve written but I write newsletters for the organization I work at frequently as well as blog posts. I have some things on Medium.
This is weirdly hard for me to answer because I have an aversion to choosing a favorite or best anything and also because of my poor sense of time but two books I really enjoyed and think I read last year are:
Besides living, working, and trying to be part of community generally here in Rochester, NY, I’m working on some projects combining visuals / illustrations and writing. Right now I’m working on a visual guide or workbook or zine on some conflict practices, trying to turn some information into some easier to digest and use illustrations. I’m also in the early stages of collaborating with a friend in the Netherlands on visuals, maybe a book, on collaborative practices.
Where can people find you online?
I’m not in a ton of places / spaces online but here are a few I can think of:
Not for the book at the moment. I do a lot of in-person events related to conflict with work which you can find at our website. Hoping to do some in-person book events soon!
Out today! April 11th, 2017 from Microcosm Publishing
The bestselling zine is now a charming new paperback encouraging readers to save money (and the planet) by fixing their own clothes.
Clothes are expensive and the clothing industry is the 2nd most polluting industry worldwide, not to mention responsible for oppressive labor conditions. DIY enthusiast Raleigh Briggs offers a simple solution, giving readers the basic tools to fix, sustain, and breathe new life into clothes they’d otherwise throw away.
“Ideal for thrifters, vintage clothes collectors, and anyone into not tossing their clothes because a button pops off or a zipper is stuck. There is something deeply pleasing and satisfying about mending and making clothes last.”— Angry Chicken
“A really solid foundation on sewing.” – Utne Reader
