After posting about the 24-Hour Zine Challenge yesterday , I was curious to meet the people who would voluntarily lock themselves in Hugo House for 24 hours to make a 24-page zine.

I stopped by the second floor of Hugo House on Saturday, about three hours into the challenge.

Before I got to check out contestants' works in progress, though, I browsed through  ZAPP itself (the Zine Archive and Publishing Project). ZAPP is Hugo's library of zines—20,000 or so of them, all self-published and made for non-commercial purposes. Zines are filed in 30 categories that range from art, comics, music, and pop culture to reference, sex, sports, travel, and work. ZAPP even has a box of zines recorded on cassette tapes.

I eventually found myself hovering by the riot grrrl display on the wall with a special issue Bikini Kill zine from the early '90s. It's a bit overwhelming. I ask the guy at the main computer—Owen, the intern—for help.

Owen walks me through the history of ZAPP, which has been around since 1996. The archive used to be in the basement, but moved upstairs after some flooding in late 2007 (caused, in part, by the decrepit cooling system downstairs from back when Hugo House was a mortuary). Luckily, Hugo volunteers were able to save the books, some of which are more than 20 years old, rare, and delicate.

It's about 85 degrees in here, but the mood is congenial, if quiet. A few guys are sitting at the table, focused on drawing. A woman with long blond hair sits on the couch with a laptop. People walk in and out, carrying paper, scissors, rulers, and other supplies.

Owen tells me that July is International Zine month, and points me to a laptop with streaming video between ZAPP's zinesters here in Seattle and another 24-Hour Zine Challenge group at the Cosmic Monkey, a comic book shop in Portland. (NerdNerd has definitely written about Portland's Zine scene before.)

Comic artist Mark Campos (author of the mini comic Exapno Mapcase) shows me the first page of his project, a professional looking 8 1/2 x 11 comic with the word "BOFFO" in block letters.




"I did the 24-Hour zine thing at Hugo House a couple of years ago with David Lasky here," he says, gesturing to his left. Lasky, who teaches workshops at ZAPP, is leaning over a pre-stapled, 4 x 5.5" booklet, sketching quietly in pencil.

Hugo staff member Emily Wittenhagen clicks away at a desktop keyboard, working on a poetry chapbook. Owen the Intern is writing a history of SCUBA diving in a steno pad. A photocopied alphabet has been left on the table, mid-project.



In the next room, six writers are participating in a modified exquisite corpse (Draw a picture, pass it on. Write about the picture, pass it on. etc.). It's a speed-round within the speed-round of zine making.

They return to the ZAPP work room with the finished corpse. Edward Wolcher, a ZAPP volunteer and regular participant, stands at the cutting board assembling the pages with alternating words and drawings into a zine.

"The fun of making a zine is the mixed media," he says. "It gives you a way of making a booklet that's an aesthetic object. It's a loving thing to create."

He talks about the time capsule experience of going through the archive as a volunteer and reading deeply personal journal-type zines ("personal" is actually a ZAPP category) written by teenagers 20 years ago, or political zines from left-wing radical groups ("1989 will be the year of the uprising!").

"It's a secret fantasy of everyone who writes a zine," he says, "that someone will pick it up and enjoy it later in a radically different context."

All the zines produced in the 24-Zine Challenge will be available at ZAPP, which is open Wednesday (4-8), Thursday (1-5), and Saturday (1-5). If you're interested in volunteering or donating a zine, email [email protected].