Before I became a journalist, I was a guerrilla publisher. My zine, which featured writing and artwork by young queer women, got a write-up in this newspaper 26 years ago.
I created “Secrets Between Girls” with some friends while helping out at Burlington’s Rhombus Gallery, an all-volunteer art space in the Howard Bank building at the corner of College and Church streets. Former Seven Days art critic Marc Awodey ran the place, along with Burlington Coffeehouse organizer Jeff Miller. There, Awodey taught dozens of writers how to make little books out of a single piece of paper. We gave these Minimal Press publications out at readings or sold them in repurposed vending machines.
In the late ’90s, Rhombus was a nexus of creative, anti-corporate energy. It hosted touring musicians, open mic nights, poetry slams, art that was banned from the city-owned Firehouse Gallery.
Last weekend I discovered a kind of sequel: the first Vermont Art Book Fair, at Burlington’s Karma Bird House on lower Maple Street. Visual art editor Alice Dodge previewed it in last week’s paper. When my wife, Ann-Elise, and I arrived on Friday night, two floors of the building were crammed with photographers, screen printers, cartoonists, zine makers and people admiring their wares.
On one table: clothbound, hardcover copies of The Observer’s Guide to Japanese Vending Machines ($70). On another: a hand-sewn, hand-drawn paper zine, “The Art of Courting: told by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and random men on Grindr” ($5). Hillary Savage of West Danville’s Hard-Pressed Community Printshop & Zine Library sold exuberant letterpress placards that summed up the ethos of the event: “Long Live Print & to Hell With Gloom!” ($15). I bought one.
Everyone at the event was either talking with someone or flipping through books, with nary a cellphone in sight. I felt self-conscious pulling out my iPhone to snap photos and take notes.
I couldn’t help thinking of Awodey, who died in 2012. Ann-Elise was on the same page. “This reminds me so much of the scene at Rhombus,” she said. There was even a vending machine selling miniature art prints.
Members of the Iskra Print Collective studio helped us silk-screen our own copies of designs by artist Nathaniel Russell. My instructor, Karla Dagovitz, applied the paint, then showed me how to use the squeegee on the screen, a delightfully physical process. “Keep it at a 45-degree angle and press down hard,” she said.
While waiting for our prints to dry, Ann-Elise and I bought a selection of work by students from Middlebury College, the University of Vermont and Saint Michael’s College.
When I returned by myself on Saturday morning, I ran into Evan Bobrow, a Rochester, N.Y., creator who runs Rathaus Press and has exhibited at similar fairs throughout the region. Bobrow was inviting people to draw themselves as a puppet for a future book project. I happily complied.
“Why do you work in print?” I asked him.
The tactility of print is important, especially in a digital age.
Evan Bobrow
“I think the tactility of print is important, especially in a digital age,” he said. He believes people are craving physical objects right now. “The choice to make things on paper, when you could just not do that, is in itself a radical act.” Music to my ears.
Bobrow, who recently earned a library science degree, urged me to submit my zines to two queer zine libraries. It’s important to preserve them, he advised.
Indeed. My work at Seven Days has made me acutely aware of the of the impermanence of print. I’ve witnessed the decline and/or disappearance of many publications over the past two decades. I’m fully engaged in preserving this one.
Before I left the fair, I ran into Jace McCormick, the UVM student responsible for “The Art of Courting.” I had bought his brilliant and beautiful zine the night before, but apparently it was not for sale; someone let me purchase it by mistake. Turns out the lovingly crafted copy I got was the only one! I would have returned it, but I lost it after I left.
McCormick took the news well, offering a benediction: “It belongs to the streets now.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “‘Long Live Print’”
This article appears in April 15 • 2026.
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