I Made a Zine

Notes on experimentation, perfectionism, and finally making the thing.

Womanist Wonder, Issue 01: Gathering Ourselves.

I made a zine.

I’ve made and printed things before, so the paper itself isn’t the revelation. What feels different is seeing the work line up.

For a long time, I had essays over here, book ideas over there, photographs in one folder, archival projects in another, and questions I kept circling without knowing exactly where they belonged. None of it was random, but sometimes it felt scattered. I could see the individual pieces without being able to explain the larger shape they were making.

Now I can.

I’m building a body of work.

Come Celebrate With Me is part of it. Socialight Society is part of it. The essays, books, archives, gatherings, photos, and questions I keep asking are beginning to speak to one another. Womanist Wonder is part of that conversation too.

The phrase came from one of my writing instructors, who used womanist wonder to describe my work. It stayed with me because it named something I’d already been reaching toward. I followed it into a literary zine.

The first issue is called Gathering Ourselves. It holds an essay about returning for the parts of ourselves that life may have scattered. It pays homage to women who have shaped my thinking… some up close and personal, others through the books, sermons, lectures, poems, and questions they’ve so graciously shared with the world. There are photographs, womanist thought, pieces of the archive, and a dedication to my grandma, Bertha.

A look inside the first issue of Womanist Wonder.

This is one of several projects I’ve been sitting with for a while. Perfectionism will have me waiting for the whole idea to reveal itself before I make the first thing. I’ll keep revising the plan, changing the name, and convincing myself I’m still working on it.

While researching zines, I kept coming across the word experimental. It stuck with me because experimental feels like permission. I can try something. I can make what’s in my head without knowing exactly where it’s going. The first version can simply be the first version.

After carrying the idea around, revising it in my head, and waiting for it to feel fully formed, I finally made the thing. Everything I create doesn’t have to arrive ready to change the world. Sometimes I can make something because it’s interesting, beautiful, or fun. Sometimes finishing the thing is enough to show me what comes next.

This Saturday, Socialight Society is setting up a booth at a Juneteenth weekend festival, and the first copies of Womanist Wonder will be there.

I’m excited to see it outside of my own head. To watch someone pick it up, turn the pages, recognize a name, pause over a sentence, or decide they want to keep it.

And now I’m wondering about you.

What have you been waiting to do? What idea have you been sitting on until the timing feels right, the plan feels complete, or you finally feel ready?

Maybe the first version doesn’t need all of that.

Maybe it just needs you to start.

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