Ahead of Canzine 2013, we will be doing short profiles of some vendors we’d like you to know about. If you like what you see, please come support their work at Canzine on Sunday, October 20!
Photo credit: House Hippo Press
Remember that awesome House Hippo commercial? Well, Erica Lenti and Sofia Mikhaylova did. They named their zine press after, as they put it, “the world’s cutest would-be pet” and have been putting out amazing LGBTQ feminist works ever since.
“It’s fun to work with collaborators (sometimes) and we like getting the queer & feminist word out there, because it’s SO HARD to find stuff that isn’t mainstream publishing, ya know?” wrote Sofia in an email. “But the movement has really moved forward and although it still kind of sucks that like queer people and PoC etc have to go underground and self-publish to make their voices heard, at least that community really does care, which is so nice. ”
The duo’s works include accidental poetry taken straight from the bowels of the Internet — Craigslist Toronto’s missed connections section — and a pretty rad zine about girls crushing on girls.
Below are Erica’s descriptions of the rad new zines House Hippo Press is bringing on Sunday, along with their previous works. For more House Hippo, check out their site!
The Queer Quartets
The Queer Quartets and Other Poems was a collaborative effort between HHP and poet Helena Kaminski. Helena approached us with some poetry she had written and we agreed to make it into a chapbook. It’s the first poetry zine we’ve worked on as a press.
Honest Dating Profiles
Honest Dating Profiles is our friend Hana Shafi’s work. It’s the first graphic zine we’ve put out – and the first of a four-part series that depicts the “honest” online dating profiles of a wide range of people. It was inspired by Hana’s online dating stint this past year. What I really like about this one is that she included people of all types – it really embodies our mandate on inclusion as a queer and feminist press.
Diary Entries from my Eating Disorder
Diary Entries from my Eating Disorder is a perzine that Sofie put together. It’s a really poignant and raw look at an ED from a feminist perspective. The entire zine is made up of scans from Sofie’s personal diary while she was suffering from anorexia. It’s probably my favourite of all our new content just based on how honest it is. This one will tug at your heartstrings, for sure.