black zine fair: discursive circus

DISCURSIVE CIRCUS is where Black creativity flips history, identity, and freedom into a living spectacle—where ancestral echoes, analog traces, and Janet Jackson’s “Escapade” pulse through cut-and-paste collages, resurfacing art as both protest and celebration, and inviting all forms of expression into a joyful leap through the Black Radical Tradition.

The Black Zine Fair is a celebration of all things Black and independent publishing in New York City that will take place in PHA’s Grand Hall (free and open to the public) on Saturday, May 3. The fair invites Zine makers, educators, collectors, and the zine-curious are invited to gather, trade or sell zines, and exchange knowledge surrounding zine-making, publishing, and do-it-yourself culture.  

Featuring nearly 60 exhibitors, the Black Zine Fair is a hybrid fair. Virtual programs are scheduled for the weekends leading up until the in-person event on May 3, and include a love letter writing workshop led by writer, poet, and multidisciplinary artist Annika Hansteen-Izora; a workshop by writer Danialie Fertile that asks the question, “How do we immortalize the body in print?”; and a keynote archival activation led by Jehoiada Calvin, co-founding organizer of Beet Street Zine and Archive Assistant for the Johnson Publishing Company Archive.

In-person programs include an all-day zine trading and making stations in addition to workshops featuring marbling, screen printing, collage, and generative writing with Khari Johnson, Jonell Joshua, Tulani Pryor, Jehoiada Calvin, Raymond Pinto, Zoe Pulley, and Leslie Diuguid of Du-Good Press.

The fair is organized by Sojourners for Justice Press (SJP), a micro press that opens its platform to people working experimentally with print based media, publishing short form and ephemeral zines, pamphlets, and booklets that engage do-it-yourself, black feminist, and abolitionist philosophies or visions. SJP was founded by Mariame Kaba and is co-directed by Neta Bomani. Co-sponsors include the Barnard Zine Library, The Free Black Women’s Library, Orange Tangent Study, Print Center New York, Weeksville Heritage Center, and Powerhouse Arts.

RSVP here.

Posters by Malachi Lily & Neta Bomani