A 'zine? Really?

Yeah, I know, but I’ve spent my entire life inventing group projects that delight others but which rely on me to get the job done— it’s too late to stop now.

To recap: On Tuesday mornings I go to Backstreet Community Arts to be the coach for the Writers Group, which is not as romantic or as productive as it might sound. Recently though I’ve had two writers who are sticking it out, and this is how The Backstreet & zine came to be.

A few weeks ago someone I follow on BlueSky put out an all-call for his ’zine, the theme being “You Gotta Leave: rebel stories about getting kicked out of places.” It must be noted that I have been a solid, law-abiding citizen my entire life, but there was that one time in high school… so I submitted my story, they accepted it, and they even sent me a hard copy.

One of my Backstreet writers decided after a couple of weeks poking at some of his older fiction that he wanted to learn to write poetry. Sure, I thought, why not? I started him with some basics — iambic meter — and by the end of the session he was turning out, to put it mildly, poetry. (I’m profiling Danny tomorrow, so stick around for some of his work.)

One of my tools for people who show up at Writers Group without clear ideas is to hand them an issue of The Sun Magazine and show them the different genres therein: interview, personal essay, fiction, poetry. I especially direct them to the monthly section called “Readers Write,” in which people have submitted their 500-word personal essays for the topic announced a couple of issues earlier, and ask them to write what their submission would have been for that topic.

So I suggested to Danny that he submit one of his poems to The Sun. I still think he should do that, but in the meantime this damnable idea popped into my head: We could do our own zine at Backstreet, publish it quarterly, feature the work both of the Writers Group and the scores of artists who come there to do their work, and then we could leave it in the coffee shop downtown. (Downtown Newnan is one of those charming, small-city movie sets, literally, and yes, we have a coffee shop on the square.)

AND — hold that thought, it was a joke — after some giving some consideration to the idea of letting the denizens of Backstreet name it, I settled on a better idea, an old one of mine.

Years ago, the estimable and formidable ladies of Newnan decided that our Art Deco Municipal Auditorium needed some serious restoration, so they formed a committee and convinced Charles Wadsworth to return every year to do a concert to raise money for the effort. (We renamed the auditorium in his honor and had a bust of him made by one of our local professional sculptors. Newnan is a fascinating place.)

Then they tried to convince him to start a small music festival here, and despite acknowledging that we had plenty of performance venues, we didn’t have one of the critical aspects necessary for this thing to succeed: at the time, we didn’t serve alcohol, nor could you buy anything but beer or wine in the stores. Oh well. (We have since repealed Prohibition in Coweta County.)

While we were working on that doomed project, I came up with a scathingly brilliant title for our festival. As I put it in a previous blogpost:

At any rate, at the time, I thought that we should name the event the Newnan &… Festival: Newnan &… Opera, Newnan &… Jazz, Newnan &… EDM, you get the point. It would give us absolute freedom in programming, plus is a marketer’s dream.

Even more, it is a designer’s dream. The ampersand? I don’t know a typographer who wouldn’t swoon at the thought of the opportunities. I even have a whole font of ampersands, called Coming Together!

Just look:

coming together font, capital letters

So now I’m trying to come up with a production schedule that will work with an art studio full of artists and a handful of writers who are not paying attention. We’ll have themed issues and one free-for-all issue. Art can be presented on its own or as an illustration.

First, though, I have to come up with some kind of science fair backboard to explain the concept to them all and see if they’re up for it.

Or maybe this could be another Newnan &… Festival and I won’t have to actually produce any publication. Stay tuned.

This is an abortive attempt.