I’ll be in conversation with John R. Davis about his amazing book Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of DC Punk Fanzines, at my former place of employment, Quimby’s Bookstore at 1854 W. North Ave here in Chicago.

John published the zines Slanted and Held Like Sound. (His zine publishing career started with soliciting $10 ads from Simple Machines and cold calling Guy Picciotto from Fugazi for an interview). He was also the drummer for the Dischord band Q and Not U. Most importantly however, he heads up the Punk Oral History Project at the Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland’s Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library where he is the curator. I’m excited to talk to him about this book, his archive of DC punk zines and his former career as a Kinko’s employee.

Get more info about this event at the Quimby’s website here.

Making Zines, Making Change: A Conversation about Collaborating, Publishing, Selling, and Archiving DIY Art is a panel I’ll be on, with scholar-teacher (and head of the Factsheet Five Archive Project) Jason Luther with other Chicago and Milwaukee-area artists, authors, publishers, and archivists, including Kirsten Leenaars, Marc Fischer, Milo Miller. It’s at the Haggerty Museum is at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

All are welcome. Registration is free and strongly encouraged/much appreciated, which you can do here. This panel is the first (of three) opening events for Artifact, the 8th annual Writing Innovation Symposium. This event is inspired by the symposium as well as the Spring '26 Haggerty Museum of Art exhibitions Declaration of _____ and Let the Real World In.

I should also mention that I’ll be there a little early, around 4:30 to sell some zines too, so if for example, you don’t have the new Caboose I put out last year and you wanna get it in person instead of here at my Etsy store, here’s your chance.

Making Zines, Making Change is made possible by the Haggerty Museum of Art and Marquette English/FAME as well as the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lemonis Center for Student Success along with long-time WIS partners Raynor Library and Macmillan Learning.