Wellington Zinefest annual zine market and festival returns to Mighty Mighty this Saturday, November 17th. Now in its 6th year, Wellington Zinefest is New Zealand’s longest running festival of zines.

‘Zines’ or ‘fanzines’ are self-published magazines created to highlight music scenes, fandoms, activism, craft, creative writing or simply the zinemaker’s own oddball obsessions. Zinefest brings together zinemakers and other independent publisher and musicians from Wellington and beyond to show case their work and present it to the public. The zine ethos tends to be immediate and DIY focused, with many zine available for sale at as little as a gold coin, or swapped for free for other zines.

As well as perusing zines, members of the public can join in at Zinefest collaborative zine workshop table. All materials are provided and everyone is encouraged to join and create a page to be compiled into a zine. The resulting zine is sent out to all contributors.

Zine makers hard at work, Wellington Zinefest 2011

Wellington City Libraries superb zine collection is no doubt a contributing factor to Wellington’s enthusiastic zine scene. Once again the Library’s zine team will be at Zinefest introducing their zine lending library to the public.

A ‘Best of the Fest’ is awarded to the most outstanding zine on the day. Previous ‘Best of the Fest’ winners indicate the high calibre of art and writing that does into Wellington zine making. 2010 winner Hannah Salmon was recently awarded the 2012 New Zealand Art Show Emerging Artist Award, and last year’s winner 11 year old Zora Patrick was an invited guest at Buncheon International Comic Festival in South Korea earlier this year.

Wellington Zinefest began in 2007 organised by Kylie Buck and the Wellington City Libraries. Since then it has been organised by a rotating committee of volunteers. Interest has grown rapidly each year, with Wellington Zinefest 2012 hosting a record 45 zine stalls. The Wellington event has been instrumental in inspiring zinefests in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin. The zine libraries, workshops and classes popping up throughout New Zealand all owe something to this seminal Wellington event.

Wellington Zinefest is supported by Wellington Creative Communities.

Wellington Zinefest 2012: Mighty Mighty (Cuba Street), Saturday November 17, 1-5 PM