About


About The Edge Of The Universe Printing Press


The Past

My name is Roy and my world changed a little during the Summer of 2011 when a friend who had been living in Australia for a year came back and presented me with a Zine all about the inexplicable actor Nicolas Cage. It was an epic work of trivia, cut out hair styles, quizes and fun facts. Whatever your opinion of the man's acting, he sure is an inspiring person to dedicate writing a zine to. I immediately wanted to make a zine myself and pretty much decided there and then that it would be about music.

Review and pictures: Article magazine

What's a zine you say? Well, let me tell you what I have found out so far: 'Zine' is short for fanzine and are universally labours of love. They are small DIY magazines that are created by individuals in their homes or their place of (other) work, and are 'mass' produced , normally on photocopiers, again by the same individuals, again at their home or place of work, which is dead handy if your place of work has a photocopier. Zines can be about anything you want, popular choices so far seem to be music, music scenes, poetry, local sporting events, cartoons, politics/philosophy and let us not forget the 'personal' zine ( or 'perzine') which is usually more personal, unsurprisingly, they can read more like diary entries, be a gateway to the inside of your head and your world and deal with interesting topics such as subjectivity and identity.

Pic: http://900bats.com/2010/how-to-make-a-zine/


Over those Summer months I came up with the idea of making small A4 sized zines that could be mass-produced cheaply, which means I could give them away for free and also that I could print out lots and lots. The idea was to give them away as a small leaflet-style pocket-sized zine that you could pick up as you were browsing your local book or record shop, or getting lunch or a drink in a cafe. The final idea was to hook up the zine with music streaming services so that, by way of a URL printed in the zine, readers are able to listen to the playlist I had created. The music zines are all themed around specific geographical/historical sounds and has been a good excuse to spend hours finding out about music genres that I've had an interest in for a long time. I've started a series of music zines, 3 so far, and have many ideas to keep making them for a while yet. I also occasionally write short stories and after a while working on the music zines decided to expand my zine making expertise in to fictional realms.

The Now
Since moving back to Sheffield I have continued to print and distro zines around the cities' galleries, book shops and other cultural hot spots. I also wanted to find out about the writing community in Sheffield and get involved. I went to a young writers event run by the indefatigable Signposts gang who do all they can to support creative writing in South Yorkshire. I met good and interesting people, people who invited me to join them at Bank St's very own bi-monthly writers group. It's been real fun going along to this very open and democratic writing group, creating writing, discussing our own work and also leading some sessions.

Bank Streeet Arts Pic: http://amanostudy.wordpress.com/


The Future
Recently I discovered that a friend of mine called Sarah, who I'd gotten to know this year in Sheffield, is a writer, and not only that but a full-blown, unabashed writer of novels, to all extent and purposes: a novelist. Quickly joining forces, we are now planning to use the medium of zines to help spread creative writing across South Yorkshire. We are going to run story writing and zine making workshops to share our experience and self-publishing know-how. We are also planning to support writers in the editing, publishing and distribution of their zines. For my own part, seeing your work in print and having something physical to give or sell to people makes the writing infinitely more valuable. It gives you as the writer a really clear sense of purpose in your writing and, what's more, your own writing creations actually go out there in the world, and are read and maybe are even enjoyed and/or make people think differently about the world - which is what writings all about right? My grand vision is to help create a skill-sharing group of writers/self-publishers and to slowly build up a zine catalogue that is both a living documentation of the works created and also a means to sell and distribute the zines throughout South Yorkshire and the world. But back to the near future, our first confirmed event is going to be a zine making workshop event at Bank St on 2nd November as part of Off The Shelf. More details to come, but we're planning for this to be a sort of official/public launch for The Edge Of The Universe Printing Press so rest assured it'll be a fun party. See you there.

2 comments:

  1. hi, tell me a postal address for you! I did a review zine from the weekend and you have a mention so I wanna post it to you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael! Sorry we've taken so insanely long to reply to this. We're rubbish.

      We've got a mention in a review zine? Suh-weet! That's dead exciting. You can send it to me (Sarah) at Flat 2 Westminster Chambers, Gell Street, Sheffield, S3 7QW. Thanks!

      Delete