Fife Queer Zine Fest

Saturday 21 February, 11-6pm

Fife Queer Zine Fest is a new celebration of LGBTQ+ creative activity in Fife. Featuring an artists’ market alongside talks, workshops, music and spoken word, it’s a cosy celebration of proud lives and subversive ideas.

A zine is a wee magazine (that’s where the name comes from!) that anyone can make and share. A zine can be as simple as a folded sheet of paper or as elaborate as a glossy journal, using writing or photography or collage or drawing or anything else the zine-maker enjoys. For decades, zines have been part of LGBTQ+ and feminist culture, featuring at punk nights and community gardens, protests and collective events.

Everyone is welcome to join, browse and take part at this grassroots event where independent writers and artists can come together to swap and share their publications and learn from each other. It’s all free, but do book a ticket to some of the events below to guarantee your free spot!

*PLEASE NOTE SOLD OUT EVENTS WILL STILL HAVE SPACES AVAILABLE ON THE DOOR

Full Programme

11am-12pm Quiet Hour

Book a ticket for the Zine market quiet hour, a gentle way to experience the festival. Masks encouraged and booking required.

11am-4pm Zine Market

The heart of our zine fest is our big room of makers, sharing their handmade art and best underground publishing. We’ve 16 tables of local artists and community groups to chat with. There’ll be zines for sale – and you’re encouraged to bring your own to swap! Free and unticketed.

11.30am-1pm Cut and Paste Art with Kirsty McKeown – Drop-in

Rejecting fast-speed communications, Dundee Zine Fest Co-Organiser, Kirsty McKeown invites you to think of the humble pin-badges as a space for profound, and often politically-critical statements. This drop-in workshop will you leave wearing your own declaration of DIY cultures.

You are invited to cut and paste images and messages onto badges, making artworks designed to be displayed on jackets, jumpers and backpacks.
All materials will be provided, with source imagery from a range of magazines and print material.

2pm-3.30pm Planter Painting with Equality Network’s Ruth McGill – Drop-in

A chance to paint your own beautiful planter with this travelling workshop from the Equality Network. Rooted in Pride brings LGBTI+ people together to share space, build connection and strengthen community, resilience and wellbeing

1pm-2.30pm Bad Feelings Zine Making with Darcy Leigh

Let’s make a zine together about all the bad feelings we have! Darcy will lead us in a creative workshop to explore the difficult, miserable and resistant, all building up to a one-day collective zine. Ticketed.

3pm-4pm Comic Making and Self Publishing with Ollie Hicks.

Ollie Hicks presents an informal and hilarious how-to guide and set of hacks and tips for getting started on making, publishing and distributing your comics to your local community and beyond. Ticketed.

4.45pm-6pm Closing Gig with Rebecca Radical, 4RK4NGEL and Essa Flett

We’re finishing off the day with a cosy gig of words and music from local artists. Ticketed.

Plus Highland Zine Bothy zine library, quiet reading area/zine making, food drinks and coffee from EH9 Espresso.

Book a ticket for the quiet hour, talks and workshops on the right of this page. For more information email queeringtheclachan@forganartscentre.co.uk

Practical Information

All activities will take place indoors but you are welcome to explore the grounds and garden. There will be some tickets to talks and workshops available on the day but please book ahead if you can. For drop in sessions you are welcome to join in and drop out at any time. Children of all ages are welcomed but this event is aimed at 16+.

Access

The rooms, grounds and most parts of the garden in use during the event are wheelchair accessible. You can tell us about your access requirements by emailing info@forganartscentre.co.uk. We will ensure there is seating available throughout the venue and grounds. Our foyer will be set up as a comfy, quieter area during the event. For travel directions from Dundee or Fife you can find more information on our Visit page.

Please allow yourself more time to get here on Saturday if travelling from Dundee as there are Major roadworks on the Tay Road Bridge and traffic is down to a contraflow.

Mutual Aid

There will be a crate in the Zine Fair available for you to discreetly leave donation of basic food, toiletries, etc. for  the Taybridgehead Food Bank.

Zine Fair Tablers

Aileen Lees
Aileen (she/they) is a queer writer and artist based in Perthshire. She is the founder of Decolonising The Outdoors, a creative and community project which dismantles narratives of dominating land and extracting nature. Her newest print series, Queer Ecologies, celebrates the breaking of binaries.

Instagram: @aileenang_ AND @decolonisingtheoutdoors

Beth Hamilton-Cardus
I’m a Fife-based maker, creating mixed media zines about all sorts of stuff like neurodiversity, gender, folklore, childhood nostalgia and pop culture. My work is fun, colourful and counter cultural as I believe that joy can be a powerful tool for resistance against negative norms.

Instagram: @beth.busybrain

Change Mental Health
Change Mental Health is a national charity which operates an LGBTQ+ peer support group in Fife. They provide transformational support for people ensuring that everyone has access to the support they need, when they need it and in a way which works best for them.

Instagram: @changemh_

Comics Youth
Comics Youth SCIO is a charity for children and young people aged 8-25, based in Dundee. We deliver comics-based literacy, sequential art, publishing and wellbeing projects, as well as comics workshops at community spaces and other organisations around the city.

Instagram: @comicsyouthscio

Elisabeth Flett (she/they) is an award-winning author, theatre-maker, musician and poet. Their self-published debut novel No Such Thing As Kelpies came out in November last year and is a queerly contemporary re-imagining of Scottish folklore full of selkies, kelpies, and things that go bump in the night…

Instagram: @essaflett

Fife Pride
Fife Pride is a celebration of love, identity, and community. It’s a safe, inclusive space where everyone is welcome. Come as you are, stand together, and Be Proud. Be You. Fife Pride hosts an annual march and year-round events.

Instagram: @fifepride

The Gay Saint
We’re The Gay Saint, a student-ran queer zine at the University of St Andrews. With up to fifty contributors to each zine, we produce around six per academic year and run a blog alongside our printed work!

Instagram: @thegaysaintmagazine

Jo Jackson 
Jo Jackson’s (she / her) zines are rooted in her interest in coming home to ourselves, each other, and the more-than-human world. They are places for her to collect her thoughts on life through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, Yoga and eco-feminism. She also has a Substack and a Youtube channel under the Mellow Belly name. And works full-time as an audio documentary maker.

Instagram: @mellow_belly

Russell Dornan 
Russell Dornan (he/him) is the queer human behind SCRAMBLED, a small-print project blending digital and analogue through photography, glitch aesthetics, typewriter art, handmade ephemera, and tactile print culture. He’s interested in process, material, and experimenting with things that feel discovered rather than designed.

Instagram: @russelldornan

Man* Made / Made Man*
Made//Made Man* is a quarterly digital publication by trans mascs, for trans mascs, celebrating a plethora of creatives across multiple disciplines.

Instagram: @manmade.mademan

Nari
Nari is a queer weirdo artist from West Lothian. They make zines about anything that’ll sit still long enough, but music and their personal life are the most patient models.

Instagram: @nari.arts

Oakley Lawson
Hi there! I’m ForestOfOak, or Oakley, and I’ve lived in St Andrews, Fife my whole life. I’m an autistic queer kid, and a lot of my zines reflect that (even if it’s just that some of them are really nerdy!), and I’m super excited to be tabling at my first event!

Pen Pals
Bio/blurb: We’re a peer support group for queer and/or neurodivergent people based in Fife. We’re all about connection, wellbeing and creativity.

Instagram: @penpalskirkcaldy

About the Contributors

Kirsty McKeown is an artist who works with a variety of materials and processes including college, printmaking, analogue photography and altered objects; often using found materials from her immediate environment to influence what is made. She is a collector and a gatherer and frequently uses archival materials to inform her work. Working predominantly using analogue processes, these hands-on modes of production reflect the labour-focused context of her research and a deliberate rejection of fast-speed digital communication. Repetition and multiples feature prominently in her practice, often creating artworks in the format of zines, posters and badges, ensuring that these politically-critical artworks are accessible in and beyond a gallery context. Alongside this, she is passionate about self-publishing; co-organising Dundee Zine Fest – a semi-annual event that celebrates self-published zines, publications, printmaking, comics and other DIY creative culture.

Instagram: @helloitskirsty

Equality Network. Rooted in Pride brings LGBTI+ people together to share space, build connection and strengthen community, resilience and wellbeing.

Darcy Leigh is a zinester and academic, one half of Easter Road Press. He’s into DIY everything, Themes from his work include fatness, transness, tits, ambivalence, Jewishness and psychiatry. He appreciates pigeons, innovative zine folds and dark truths. When not in queer zine land, Darcy works in the ivory tower and is also committed to its destruction (aka, is a Lecturer in Law who researches the ongoing history of the British Empire).

Ollie Hicks Ollie Hicks is a Gender Non Conforming Butch Dyke Freak. They live with their wife Emma Oosterhous on the Wirral, and write, draw and edit comics for silly horny freaks!

They are the writer of the graphic novel trilogy GRAND SLAM ROMANCE (co-created with Emma). Their next book with Emma, Gay Persuasion, a modern queer adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, is forthcoming from Avery Hill in 2027.

They love using their self-taught riso knowledge to make comics, zines and art, and have a passion for creating comics community spaces

Rebecca Radical

‘Great, short, catchy songs full of feeling and truth with brilliantly constructed lyrics telling stories about everyday life, personal beliefs and experiences. Rebecca delivers her lyrics in a way that lets you know how she felt when she wrote them. Some are slightly sad while others have a sarcastic wit. Most are just funny or tongue in cheek but they all paint pictures of everyday life that are easy to relate to and full of colourful language without being offensive.’

Instagram: @rebecca_radical

4RK4NGEL (she/they) is a dundee-based queer independent musician and songwriter. Her music is heavily inspired by spoken word poetry, and pierces to the heart of the queer experience while speaking truth to power.

Instagram: @i_4am_4rk4ngel

Elisabeth Flett (she/they) is an award-winning author, theatre-maker, musician and poet. Their self-published debut novel No Such Thing As Kelpies came out in November last year and is a queerly contemporary re-imagining of Scottish folklore full of selkies, kelpies, and things that go bump in the night…

Instagram: @essaflett

The Highland Zine Bothy is Mainland Highland’s first zine library – in a bothy! The artist and volunteer-led initiative has hosted over 30 events locally and internationally, as well as houses a growing collection of over 400 zines from the UK and beyond.

Instagram: @highland.zine.bothy

More information

Fife Queer Zine Fest is part of Forgan Arts Centre’s Queering the Clachan, an arts project led by Harry Josephine Giles for LGBTQ+ folk in North East Fife. We’re running workshops in towns and villages across the North East, and making space for Fife queer folk and their friends to have places to meet each other, get creative and share their stories. We want LGBTQ+ lives in North East Fife to be vibrant, connected and celebrated.

Queering the Clachan is funded by Fife Mental Health and Communities Fund.