Astoria celebrates analog art form with its first Zine Festival

Heather Douglas loves making zines, both long and short, big and small, about subjects both serious and lighthearted. The zine — its name a shortened form of magazine and is pronounced “zeen” — has been around for decades, and can refer to a single sheet of paper folded into multiple panels and hand drawn, or multiple sheets of paper folded in half, similar to a chapbook.

The zine arguably saw its zenith in the late '90s and early 2000s, before the rise of social media and the ubiquity of internet platforms that provided a million digital forms for self-expression. But for many cartoonists and zinesters, like Douglas, the physical, analog nature of the form is one to be treasured and the fact that it brings people together — offline, in real life — is one of its many appeals. That’s one reason she approached her fellow Astorian, Kirista Trask with the Cambium Gallery about creating a Zine festival, something she said as a lifelong Astorian, she’d never seen before in the city.

Trask was enthusiastic, and by chance had just put out her own zine about the gallery. They created the “Astoria Zine Festival,” which takes place at the gallery this weekend. Douglas and Trask join us, along with BB Anderson, a Portland zinester and co-organizer of the long- standing Portland Zine Symposium. They all share more about the enduring appeal of the art form and why they consider it more vital than ever.