Congratulations to our Broken Pencil Zine Awards 2022 winners!
Best Art Zine 2022: Round Trip by Theo Belc
Round Trip is an illustrated 2-colour riso print origami fold-out. As the reader rotates the folded-out page, the zine loosely follows a character journeying through a fantasy world. This zine was created as a study of 2-colour mixing and an exploration of how paper-craft can be used to support a narrative.
Best Comic Zine 2022: Make-Believe & Wannabe by Melanie L. Yan
“Make-believe & Wannabe” is a comic zine created by Melanie L.Yan, also known as Melatonien. The zine records a bit of the daily life of a sensitive triangle and a plastic sauce pack fish.
Best Perzine 2022: The Bed Knife tm and Other Tales of Abnormal Psychosis by Jennifer Copping
This is a 32-page zine that’s an artistic exploration of the author’s experience with psychosis as a person with schizoaffective disorder.
Best Political Zine 2022: Notas sobre un recorrido / Notes on a Tour: the El Paso Processing Centre by Gabriela Galíndez and published by Lois Klassen
This bilingual (Spanish and English) artist zine is a folded, riso-printed, guidebook to the interior of a US immigration detention centre. It is created from the perspective of an El Paso-based artist and graduate student who joins an official tour offered by the centre’s administrators. The texts and notebook drawings serve as witness to the inconsistencies and thinly veiled human rights violations that are commonplace in the everyday operations of national border regimes.
Best Litzine 2022: Harm Done by Michelle Wirth & Austin Brady
Harm Done is a poetry/art zine created by a collaborative duo examining themes around gender and masculinity: living outside of binary concepts of gender, the absurdity of white midwestern-American male culture, and clashing internal and external perceptions of self. It includes call-and-response poems, poems blending phrases from both authors, Austin’s visual work paired with Michelle’s poems, and Michelle’s drawings haunting the margins of Austin’s art.
Best Fan Zine 2022: The Same Rainbow’s End by Emmanuelle Princesse Chateauneuf
Meet Clark Kent and Lois Lane. To put it briefly, she’s way too horny and he’s just not ready. What’s more, they’re both secretly obsessed with each other. Only time will tell if these two hot messes will come together despite all obstacles and meet one another, in love, at the same rainbow’s end.
Best Collab Zine 2022: Sitting on Chrome by Jacqueline Valenzuela
“Sitting on Chrome”, was first released in June 2022. It was created to be sold alongside a group exhibition at an artist-run gallery space, Flatline Gallery, in NorthSide Long Beach, CA. It was meant to show work that the artists had previously created and tell readers about the participating artist through artist bios. And a means to make art accessible to any viewers who saw the exhibition but could not afford to buy a piece from the show.
Best Info Zine 2022: Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you’re depressed as fuck by Sonali Menezes
Depression Cooking is Sonali’s newest zine-baby + is addressed as a love letter to her depressed kin. It is part easy recipe book, part manifesto for surviving under the crushing weight of capitalism as a Mad person. These recipes have been compiled over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic from; 1. cooking tricks she picked up over the last 10 years, 2. conversation with friends + family 3. social media comments and messages.
Best Overall Zine 2022: Harm Done by Michelle Wirth & Austin Brady
There were so many amazing nominees this year! Check out the videos below to hear from the zinesters themselves
Art Zine 2022
Comic Zine 2022
Perzine 2022
Political Zine 2022
Litzine 2022
Collab Zine 2022
Fan Zine 2022
Info Zine 2022
Best Overall Zine 2022: Harm Done by Michelle Wirth & Austin Brady
Zine Awards judge Mary Houlihan shares her thought’s on why Harm Done was the best zine of 2022