We love zines almost as much as we love writing and giving back to our communities. During the summer of 2021, we came up with an idea to combine ALL of these things. Our Editor in Chief, Lindsay Chudzik, recruited a team of her service-learning undergraduate students to collaborate with previous Feels Blind contributors to illustrate their work. The students selected the pieces they wanted to work with, though we decided before bringing them on board that all of the profits from this project would go to Safe Harbor, an organization where some of Lindsay’s service-learning students volunteer. This felt like a win-win-win: our authors will see their stories in another medium and those stories will find a larger audience, the students who mostly are majoring in art will get hands-on experience and have the opportunity to add to their portfolios, and Safe Harbor will receive monetary support for the important work they do.

Our first batch of zines will be available at our table at AWP (T126) and at our AWP Offsite Event, but most also will be available for direct purchase using the links below for each story. We will be adding to this list in the coming weeks:

“Sleep Deprivation Was Banned by the Geneva Convention, You Know” by Shannon Frost Greenstein (first appeared in Issue #6 of Feels Blind Literary), illustrated by Annabelle Starr

“The Buddy System” by Tricia Leaf (first appeared in Issue #5 of Feels Blind Literary), illustrated by Kelly Zhao

“Stray” by Brigette Pugh (first appeared in Issue #5 of Feels Blind Literary), illustrated by artist I.R. Sheppard

“She Stepped into the Ocean” by Madison Gray (first appeared in Issue #4 of Feels Blind Literary), illustrated by Emily Belson

*”Holiday Guests” by Theresa Ronquillo (first appeared in Issue #5 of Feels Blind Literary) was illustrated by Atieh Zanganeh, the same rockstar who designed our new logo. These are not available for purchase through MagCloud because they have to be assembled by hand, but we will have copies at AWP.