In 2011, one of my favorite readings I took part in and hosted was part of Scranton’s first ever ZineFest. The event brought together zinesters, craft makers, and booksellers from Scranton, Philly and other pockets of the East Coast. The day featured an exchange of zines and crafts, and the reading was held in the evening at Anthology New and Used Books (this was actually the last ever reading held there, sadly).

I’m pleased to announce there will be a second ZineFest, to be held in June of 2012, at the Keyser Valley Community Center. This year, we won’t have to worry about any rain clouds lingering over the participants and tables because the venue will allow us to be indoors all day. The new venue also has a kitchen, so it will make it easier for us to cook and store food.

I met the other day with Jessica Meoni and Dana Marie Bloom, the two key organizers of the festival. I left the meeting feeling eager to be part of this event again. Soon, Jessica and Dana are going to send out letters inviting last year’s participants to partake in this year’s festival, and I am going to finish sending out invitations to writers we hope will participate in the evening reading. This year the reading will be different in the sense that we want the writers to share works that are music-themed, or have some type of socio/political undertone, to reflect zine culture. The reading should stand to be a good mix of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and we’ll have some of the readers back from last year, but also some new faces.

Once we finalize a date and line-up some of the zinesters and readers that will be attending, I’ll post more details here.