Meet Christine Stoddard, Founder of Quail Bell Press

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C Stoddard

Tell us a little about yourself.
My name’s Christine Stoddard and I’m the founder/executive director of Quail Bell Press & Productions, LLC. Quail Bell runs regular projects, like Quail Bell Magazine, and also releases special ones, such as “The Persistence of Poe,” a documentary film. I live in Richmond, Virginia, locally known as RVA.

Who or what are your influences?
The imaginary, the nostalgic, and the otherworldly.

What subjects do you touch upon in your work?
Folklore, history, social justice, community design.

What is your most recent work?
Quail Bell ‘Zine/Issue 3 and Quail Bell Look Book.

What are you looking forward to most at the fest?
Making pals and spreading the word about QuailBellMagazine.com!

Quail Bell

Zinefest Readers

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2013 Poetry Line-Up
The poetry reading will take place after the zine-art trading, selling and purchasing. Taking place at New Vision Studio & Gallery, the reading will occur from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Poet and professor Brian Fanelli will host the reading.

Rachael Goetzke earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and teaches writing at Misericordia University. She is the Managing Editor of Word Fountain, a literary magazine she started in-house at the Osterhout Free Library. Working as an Early Literacy Outreach Specialist serving young children in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania area, she also runs poetry and writing workshops throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. Her poetry, short fiction and non-fiction has been published in Word Fountain, Tiny Booklets, and Ripasso. She is currently working on her first memoir entitled The Girl with the Ambiguous Uterus. She blogs about everything music and writing here.

Steve Keating, a Dunmore native, lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Communication Studies at West Chester University. Out of school, Steve spends his time playing guitar and writing poetry and short stories.

Stanton Hancock is a poet, author, and musician from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Stanton has a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Bloomsburg University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. He is the founder of the indie publishing company Three Chord Press and is excitedly finishing the final preparations for its first release, Split 7 Inch, slated to be released this spring.

Brian Fanelli’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published in Popshot, Boston Literary Magazine, Portland Review, Harpur Palate, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Solstice, Red Rock Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of one chapbook, Front Man (Big Table Publishing), and the full-length collection All That Remains, forthcoming soon from Unbound Content. Brian is also a contributing editor to Poets’ Quarterly and a book reviewer for PANK. He has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and is currently a Ph.D. student at SUNY BInghamton and a creative writing instructor at Keystone College.

Andrea McGuigan has been hosting poetry readings in the greater Scranton area for more than ten years, including the Test Pattern reading series, the Anthology Books reading series, and the current Prose in Pubs series. Andrea is a rostered artist-in-residence with the NEIU #19 and has taught poetry workshops and residencies in schools and at Arts Alive and Arts Alive Intermediate. She is a regular judge for Poetry Out Loud, a national performance poetry competition in which local schools participate. Her book of poems, Spinning with the Tornado, was published by Paper Kite Press in 2003. Once upon a time, she owned a bookstore called Anthology. Andrea lives in Scranton with her husband, Conor, and their cat, Kiki Ray Simone.

Jim Warner is the author of two poetry collections Too Bad It’s Poetry and Social Studies (Paper Kite Press). His poetry has appeared in The North American Review, PANK Magazine, Word Riot, and other journals. Jim received his MFA at Wilkes University.

Maggie Craig is a freak, a queer, and a punk who writes for freaks, queers, and punks. She likes to take real things and real issues and change them, make them the same but different so it’s easier to get at the truth in them. She makes ordinary things magical and shows the magic in ordinary things. The Narrows is her first novel and she’s currently working diligently in the slums of Brooklyn, NY to scribble out its sequel.

For more information about the poetry reading, please contact coordinator Brian Fanelli, at bfanelli84 (at) gmail.com.

Meet Rachel, Editor of Word Fountain

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Tell us a little about yourself.
Word Fountain is a literary magazine founded by some creative minds at the Osterhout Free Library in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  We strive to bring attention to creative voices of all types and ages.  Occasionally, we feature a special themed issue, such as our Flood Issue to help recovering flood victims.

Who or what are your influences?
Obviously, the library and literature of all kinds.  Music and Shakespeare are two main passions of the editors of this magazine.

What subjects do you touch upon in your work?
Subject matter varies and can be heavily music-related in some issues.  Not surprisingly, a lot of the content is about love and loss.

What is your most recent work?
Our most recent issue is a special flood issue to benefit flood victims in Northeastern, Pennsylvania.  The content features themes from Hurricane Agnes and Hurricane Irene.

What are you looking forward to most at the fest?
It is always good to network with other creative minds.  There is always a positive vibe at these festivals.

Grants & Invites

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Grant Information

Thank you very much to the County Commissioners of Lackawanna County as well as the Pocono Council on the Arts for providing us with the much-needed funds to facilitate the festival. We are super appreciative for your generosity over the years. With this support, we plan to add new workshops in addition to a discussion panel consisting of underground newspaper collectors, writers, letterpress artists and more. One workshop we are currently establishing is a cooking demonstration with locally-produced foods from the Anthill Farm CSA (community supported agriculture) located in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. CSAs are a great way to give back to the land and farmers in our area and gain fresh, organic produce. After all, Pennsylvania is mostly rural! That being said, why not hop on over to our Kickstarter page and give the Scranton Zine Fest that extra boost to help pay for these awesome workshops and panels. You’ll get some nifty handmade stuff in return, ya dig?

Etsy Invites

For a couple of days now, many of you may have been receiving some Etsy invites to the festival due to the review of your zines or art. We’ve been looking for some outstanding pieces to include in our festival and we’re looking for some new faces to add to the already existing awesomeness of our returning veterans (thank you to all those who come back; your support is what keeps us going!).

If you are located within New York City or Philadelphia, the Martz Bus Trailways is located in these bus terminals and will drive you directly to Scranton. You will get off at a bus station within walking distance to our venue. If you are are too far away to make it in, yet you would still like to be part of the festival in some way, we do accept prints or zines to be mailed to the address we provided you within your Etsy message. We will set up a little display for you just as long as you include the prices of your work. We will try to sell your work at the front table and whatever does not sell, we will mail back along with your profits. We do not accept any commission. No catch-22, promise.

2 Weeks to Go!

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Hey guys! Just reminding you that our Kickstarter page is up and ready (with only two more weeks to reach our goal)! Thank you very much to Kenny Amato, Edward Dermody, and A.j. Michel for a total donation of $50.00 towards our cause. Our goal is to get a panelist of rad speakers, poets, zinesters, underground newspaper artists and writers to add to our festival. Thank you for all your support. Please tell your friends about the fest!

Join us on Kickstarter!

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Hey guys! I was just dropping by to say, please check out our Kickstarter page. You can help us out and get yourself some pretty cool stuff in return! Our goal for this is $500. If we don’t reach it, you get your money back. Thanks for all your support and see you in a few months!

It’s That Time Again

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Hello fellow zinesters and artists alike and welcome to the start of the third annual Scranton Zine Fest in the heart of the downtown Electric City. The zine fest team has been working to bring you the best experience possible. Every year, Dana Marie, Brian and I sit down and talk about what went well about the previous year and what we could work on.

This year, it was pretty much a general consensus that the tables do need to be pre-ordered. To better serve you, we put easy buttons at the end of the zinester and artist forms. It will take you to the PayPal website where it will ask you to make a “donation.” This will be your payment for your table. If you don’t have a PayPal account right now, I highly suggest creating one. It makes transactions like these way easier. This will also be a first-come, first-serve basis so please sign up as soon as possible to reserve your spot. There will be only 24 tables! This does not mean 24 people necessarily; it depends who gets a half table. If by any chance you cannot make it, please email or call one of us so we can clear up your spot.

Another change we’re making is about food. We want to give you more options. There will be vegetarian and vegan choices in addition to this year’s menu. We will be sending the menu along in your care packages so you can get an idea of what food we will be offering. I’d also like some more of your opinions about how we had our runners going to get you food. Did you like this idea? How can we help serve you better with the whole food thing?

Lastly, if you’re feeling a little generous, we will be establishing a Kickstarter page to help fund some costs of the festival. There’s a lot of money that goes towards advertising in general as well as fees for the venue and labor costs so any help is appreciated. You’ll get some pretty nifty swag in return, though. More posts will be made about that later when I have it up and running.

Special thanks to the Pocono Arts Council and our legislators for funding our endeavors in the art community. We greatly appreciate your support.