Zines as Empowering Adult Education Tools: A Presentation Zine

Digital collage made out of various colourful paper strips and shapes (stars, swirls, squiggly lines) on a brown paper background. Black text over white tape reads, "ZINES AS EMPOWERING ADULT EDUCATION TOOLS".

How can we use zines in adult education to empower learners to make social change? In this zine, I examine a political activism zine by Kyle Tran Myhre through the lens of this question. The slides within are originally from a presentation I gave in one of my education classes, which I’m proud of and decided to turn into a zine. I hope you enjoy it!

Digital collage on a brown paper background. On the left is a screenshot of a post on Bluesky by Kyle Tran Myhre that reads, "I’m set up today at the founding conference for the anti-war action network. Workshop later on narrative/arts-based tactics for organizers, plus the big free zine library. More at guante.info/zines". There are two photos below this of his Free Zine Library, one of the library in a case on a table and another of a close-up of the sign that says, "FREE ZINE LIBRARY / PLEASE TAKE + SHARE" and explains how the library works in text that is illegible in the screenshot. On the right, black text reads, "We are brought together through the common medium of zines. Zines are community-building tools for collective struggle and social change".

GET THE ZINE: https://sagepantony.gumroad.com/l/zdffq

I am making this zine available at a Pay What You Can (PWYC) rate for greater accessibility.

The Educational Power of Zines: On Making Academic Research More Accessible Through Zine Making and Reading

Finally, after a two-year hiatus, I am releasing a new zine!!!

Hi, I’m Sage, a zinester and graduate student studying education. I have done a lot of academic and non-academic writing in my life. I believe in bridging the two, especially in making academic writing more accessible to people outside of academia. Zines are an excellent vehicle for doing this. They hold great educational potential that is often underutilized. I want to see more educators teaching with zines! I also want to see everyday people be given greater access to academic research through zines. This multi-media zine explores these ideas and provides some examples, instruction, and resources. I hope to get readers on board and excited about the educational power of zines!

GET THE ZINE: https://sagepantony.gumroad.com/l/oxbyul

I am making this zine available at a Pay What You Can (PWYC) rate for greater accessibility. I will also look into making a print copy available soon at a low cost.

Belated fall poem

The mountain gradually turns orange and burns away

Like last summer’s sun

Winter comes

Or will come

And likely, I’ll still be sitting at this desk

Forgetting that leaves exist

Turning the heat up and down

Watching my neighbour clean her window

Feeling the seasons change outside of me

Hello again

How lucky to have a view like this in the heart of the city.

Two and a half years since I came here and climbed this mountain.

I was careful on its icy paths then.

People ask why I came to Montréal.

I was following a dream.

But then, of course, life here became a reality.

One I’ve come to love just as much as the city.

I thought I wasn’t a city person, but I just hadn’t lived in Montréal. I feel such a connection to this city. My life here hasn’t been idyllic or easy. In fact, sometimes it’s been quite hard. The dream I followed here has reshaped into something else entirely. The life I wanted and the life I have are quite different, yet I find myself in a life that I love. There have been so many changes and more are coming. I look forward to them and know they will all come with their own challenges, ones I can’t yet see. And I also know I am exactly where I need to be.

Why Is It So Hard to Keep Making Art When I’m Falling in Love?

Photo of a leafless tree in a park taken at dusk, with glowing yellow streetlights, other trees, and a pale blue sky behind it.

Why is it so hard to keep making art when I’m falling in love?

I release a zine called How to Keep Making Art at a time when I’ve fallen in love and am struggling to make art. I strain to finish the zine and postpone its release date by over a month as I scrape it together. I am exhausted by this process and awash with irony.

The line disconnects. I fall out of love and back in again. The period of reprieve is quite short, but that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? To be in love again?

Instead of writing, I take the metro to my new lover’s house. I stay over later than I intend to, always.

I am distracted and unfocused. I am never getting enough sleep. I am falling in love with another human being. I am flooded with happiness, and I am also very anxious. My therapist and I talk about how excitement and anxiety are the same feeling wearing different lenses.

I always lose my mind a little when I fall in love. I have to tell my lover that I am not usually this unstable, I promise. It’s just that this is new and intense, and I am terrified.

Reactions to this disclosure tend to vary. I can tell you, however, that this person knows how to hold me.

I run home late at night before turning into a pumpkin when I stop to check on how my tree has fared in the recent ice storm. I need her to be okay. She’s lost some branches, but she’s stood the test of time. She’s all right. I lean my head against her trunk and write a poem. It’s the first poem I’ve written in weeks. I tap it out on my phone, kiss her, and then make my way to bed. I turn into a pumpkin.

I am tired all of the time but never stop long enough to let the fatigue catch up. I am not writing, and that makes me sad. I am allowing myself to be swept up, taken in, and absorbed. I don’t know how to love any other way. I’ve tried.

This is neither good nor bad. I am riding the waves of a new intensity, is all. I will come back down to earth. Trust me, I always do.

I wanted to sleep in later but kept thinking about the rice they gave me and how much I wanted to sweeten and have it for breakfast. Sweet rice is the next best thing to cereal, and it’s all gone now.

I can’t keep moving at this pace. I need to slow down before I have to stop. That’s the key, you know—slow before you are forced to stop.

I am a writer who is barely writing. Everything else takes precedence. I am not protecting my time like I used to, but neither am I wrapping myself in a cocoon and hiding away from the world. I am running through the city streets in the afternoon and late into the evening. I am visiting my love. I am bringing us pie. We are wrapping each other up.

I believe I can have both love and writing, that these two essentials can co-exist. They just have to make room for each other.

I just have to slow down long enough to check on my tree and type out a poem—to make note of what is happening. Because what is happening is scary, brilliant, and beautiful. It will not consume me whole because it never has before, and I will come out the other side and find the words again.

We joke about how you won’t die alone if you die on your stairs while wearing my shoes all wrong. I thought I would die at thirty. I can’t say I’m ready, but I am grateful. Grateful for all the love and poems I’ve given myself to over the years.

I run home late at night before turning into a pumpkin, and the city around me is radiant with life, and I am radiant with life, and so, of course, out comes a poem.

I spend yet another day at the computer
While the world outside freezes over
A lovely Montréal ice storm in April
Is it ’98 all over again? The internet asks
Icicles form on my bicycle
Tree branches pierce windshields
And sheets fall off skyscrapers
Evening comes, and I want cereal
My lover says, don’t go out, no
Not unless you really have to
So I stay in and look out the window
At our newly frozen April

It isn’t until I go out the next day
And see the extent of the devastation
All the trees that split and fell
My neighbourhood park, a battleground
That I know I must make time to see you
For you were there in ’98, and before
And you’ll be here forevermore
And I will love you
In no time at all