token girl: like a girl, but better

Thursday, 21 April 2005

my deepest sympathies

there was tonnes of stuff to see at the zine fair on saturday. unfortunately i couldn't attend any of the workshops because i'd made unbreakable plans for the early evening, but i made sure to scour every stall during the time i had there.

i hung around the shoebox distro table for ages, browsing the array of pastel-toned treats. taryn hipp's girl swirl zine caught my wandering eye. the cover of GSZ #10 is a mock up of an original sweet valley high cover, with the trademark high school logo replaced with the zine name. which is exactly the 'idea' i had for the cover of my fantasy mag Small Town Flirt, of course.

girl swirl is a perzine, combining the personal and anecdotal with the zinester's own fiction and reviews. issue 11 even contains a darling mini-zine, which is a letter addressed to gwen stefani. it is the cutest thing.

what made me buy girl swirl, though, is the zine's recurring theme of childish (by which i mean not adult) grief. it's an examination of how the loss of a parent affects the family left behind - but it's not sad - well not intentionally anyway. taryn has corresponded with other teen/twentysomethings through her zine who have lost parents too.

it's at times like this that i wish i had really gone to SVH...

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