2026 ZINE FEST INFO IS COMING SOON!

LIST OF 2025 ZINE FEST EXHIBITORS

Aidan Vanderwill 

Table #25

Portfolio/Social:  https://king-aidan.github.io/

Bio:  Aidan Vanderwill is a comic artist who makes humourous diary comics and surreal fiction. He is best distinguished in a crowd as "the guy obsessed with his characters" or "boat nerd".

Recent Project:  The Bowie Zine is a compilation zine with artworks from myself and my roommates. All of these comics feature our cat, Bowie! She's the sweetest, cutest, stupidest, loveliest black cat and this zine is a love letter to her. 

Alex Clark

Table #26

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/foodcookalex/

Bio:  Alex Clark makes comics when he’s feeling hyper- or hypo-emotional. He does work when he’s not feeling emotional at all.

Recent Project: A zine about delicious-tasting but bad-smelling food that Asian mothers make

Andrew Tran Vo

Table #18

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/anbovo?igsh=ZDVqZm55cXp4enZr

Bio:  Andrew Vo is a Vietnamese American artist who works at Sidestreet Studio Arts. He draws and make cards. 

Recent Project:  It was a zine fest in a skateboarding shop

Arnold Ramirez

Table #16

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/arnold_ah_um/profilecard/?igsh=NzlnOTQxeHNocjRj

Bio: Arnold Ramirez is a Mexican-American illustrator from Chicago. He likes to draw whenever he has the chance. 

Recent Project:  My most recent zine projects have been more like diary comics and illustrated journals from my own personal life and those around. Mostly how it feels to be growing into a generation that is still kind of lost. 

Bianca Perez

Table #21

Portfolio/Social:  www.instagram.com/binkz.art

Bio:  Miracle Brain is my bizarre, mucky corner of the universe. Inspired by 90s/Y2K cartoon grit, underground humor, and my offbeat brain. I’m Bianca Perez, a Mexican-American cartoonist and storyteller. I make unhinged, colorful worlds
that stick to you like gunk between your teeth.

Recent Project:  My most recent Zine is a dark humor guide about summoning creativity and a comic about a zombie apocalypse and another about a Pomeranian on a misadventure for a burger, and another Zine about little moments of a relationship.

Cindy Uriostegui
Table #24

Portfolio/Social: https://www.cattcostudio.com/ 

Bio:  CATTCO is a visual artist and storyteller exploring identity, belonging, and the ways our environments shape who we are. Through her work, she blends personal experience with cultural influences, creating immersive pieces that invite reflection on self-discovery, authenticity, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds.

Recent Project:  My most recent zine project is titled “Popo and Itza”, which explores an indigenous folklore love story. This is a story I grew up hearing about the famous Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl mountains and volcanoes in Mexico. It’s a tale of two individuals whose deep connection and romance ultimately turns into a bittersweet tragedy. Through this project, I aimed to honor my Nahua roots and this tragic tale while highlighting themes of love, loss, and resilience. The zine combines visual art and narrative text to immerse readers in the emotional journey, creating an intimate space to reflect on the enduring power of folklore and human connection. 

David Alvarado
Table #19

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/tuffasaurus/?hl=en

Death Blow Zine
Table #15

Portfolio/Social:  https://king-aidan.github.io/

Recent Project:  Death Blow Zine is a monthly released variety zine that supplies you with [ DEATH { 2 } MUZIC ] that shares a list of recommended songs by a wide range of genres such as industrial to factory sounds. With also ( 0RGAN 0F TH3 M0NTH ) lifting your knowledge of the medical world and what is running within your system. With many more bits and pieces for each zine, there is no requirement for a chronological reading either! So why don't you read it now?

Elias Gonzalez
Table #5

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/whateverelias

Bio: Hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, Elias writes and draws decently enough to be a self-proclaimed “pretty okay” cartoonist. He makes "funny" comics for "mature" readers

Recent Project: Most recently, I wrote, drew, and lettered an 8 page story for the small press comics anthology, The Rust Belt Review. The story followed the abused puppy, Shluppy, and his revenge on his owners.

Erika Alvarado
Table #1

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/mochii_bunnii?igsh=MWt5aHB2c2RwMnE2dg==

Bio: I am a queer latina Chicago based artist that focuses on themes of mental wellness as well as the simple joys of life. Exploring and shaping the idea of just existing. Although I struggle with my own stuff, my art has been my means of reaching out and finding joy again. 

Recent Project: I have small collection of informational zines with my "mascot" Motivation Dalmation! Each with a different lesson on how to take care of oneself, as well as activities. 

GG Christensen
Table #14

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/gg.crayon/

Bio: Through comics, Citizen Christensen tells stories picked up from homes throughout the country. In traveling, Citizen has been focusing on utility poles. Their widespread presence and massive stature create an entity that bares constant witnesses to our journeys, both daily and eternal. These cross-like poles include the seen structure itself, as well as the unseen utilities they provide eachother with. This holy network connects us as roadside memorials. They serve as unofficial markers of shared human experience- reminding us of the seen and unseen forces that make us.

Recent Project: I have a couple projects in-the-works at the moment. I am working on a second volume of zines surrounding my pet frog Gibby (@happy_gibby on Instagram). The first volume was well recieved and I hope to make a full book some day. I am also currently working on a longer zine on utility poles and people I will never see again- each being a utility pole. The most recent fest I exhibited at was SEX (super exclusive comics Xpo) hosted by the wonderful comic artist Darya Farah. 

Hannah Hallman
Table #13

Portfolio/Social: https://cottna.neocities.org/

Bio: Hannah Hallman is a lesbian cartoonist from Milwaukee. She draws gay comics, her newest graphic novel is called The King’s Companion. She is also a co-organizer of MILK Comic Fest. 

Recent Project: My last zine was from this spring called 100+ Anime Figures: These Are Their Stories. It’s a zine about my wife and i giving each other figures. I self published a gay fantasy graphic novel about getting over a bad relationship called The King’s Companion.

Hannah Jill Johnston
Table #28

Portfolio/Social: https://greenandwiggly.com

Bio: Hannah Jill Johnston is a cartoonist and fiber artist from New Jersey. She received her MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hannah has a passion for creating new adult stories about friendship, identity, and belonging. She currently lives in Chicago where she is watercoloring her debut graphic novel, Swan Song.

Recent Project: Freshly graduated from college, Swan and their two childhood bestfriends, Clare June and Mary, embark on the Yosemite backpacking adventure they’ve been dreaming of since elementary school. Swan is an introverted lover of nature who is trying to figure out what’s next. But with real life looming just beyond the bend, Swan must face the fact that the only thing waiting for them is a summer job at the farmer’s market. When a group of boys move in across the river, Swan’s introverted nature is put to the test. Will Swan open their heart and explore new connections? Or will they fall further into the existential doom of an uncertain future? Swan Song is a story of identity, yearning and friendship

Isabella Kinnick

Table #22

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/bella_art1319/

Bio: Isabella Kinnick is currently a student enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An artist who sticks mainly with materials 2-D in nature, with components building themselves out of traditional mark-making materials such as ink, paint, and graphite, and collage. A style defined with fluid movements, vivid colours, and graphic line work that sucks you into a world of whimsy, energy and perhaps just a little bit of chaos. Isabella's work combines the flirtatious and fun, with complexities that lie beneath the layers or marks that often deal with themes of personal identity, love, heartbreak, and documentation of the whirlwind of her own unique human experience that has been the first twenty years of her life, and continues every day with passion, purpose, and play guiding her to create as much as she can.

Bio: a 22 page self printed and published graphic story centering around the oracle Clarisse who serves as one of the the emperor's magician. Left in a state of depression after the death of her fellow mystic, Clarisse given the position of head magician, to help aid the current leader of the Kirin Empire, which is a post-apocalyptic world which takes aesthetic influence from Ancient Rome. However, things take a dive when she receives one of the most clear messages ever received. A future of utter chaos destruction, and darkness. This propels Clarisse on a mission to uncover more about the Empire and those who she thought she could trust, even having to question her own memories.

Jami Sailor

Table #31

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/littlejameszine

Bio: Jami Sailor makes (mostly per)zines about home, memory, and place. They occasionally write about movies. Jami isa white, queer, chronically ill library worker trying to be an okay person. Yes, they go to therapy. They are outgoing (esp at zine events). 

Bio: Rush Job 4 is a split zine with Embassy Row #2 by Shaun Larceny. It represents a mix tape of music that was important to the authors during high school. 

Joseph Robles Zambrano

Table #12

Portfolio/Social:  https://kaiahbelly.com/

Bio:  We’re Corey and Sol, the duo behind Kaiah Belly. We are based in Racine, Wisconsin.Sol creates all the art, while Corey handles the admin and keeps things running smoothly.

What started as a fun hobby has grown into a small business fueled by passion and community support. Every design begins with Sol’s sketches and ends with a carefully packaged product made with love.

Rainy Saturday Creative

Table #11

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/rainysaturdaycreative/



John Porcellino

Table #7

Portfolio/Social: https://www.spitandahalf.com/?s=porcellino

Bio: John Porcellino was born in Chicago in 1968 and lived in Hoffman Estates throughout his teenage years. He has published his autobiographical comics-zine King-Cat since 1989, and run the Spit and a Half Comix Distro since 1993.

Recent Project: King-Cat Comics #84: Poetic, autobiographical comics about everyday life: Family, friends, nature, and more.

Loveless Press

Table #29

Portfolio/Social:  https://lovelesspress.neocities.org

Bio:  LOVELESS PRESS is an independent nonprofit zinery from Spokane, WA. All zines are free to read forever, because art and information should be accessible for all...no strings attached.

Laurin Atkinson

Table #10

Portfolio/Social: Tripofgoats.com

Bio: Laurin is a writer who processes life through story, shapes curiosity into systems, and harbors an unnatural fondness for detours, details, and diagrams. She writes about memory, identity, parenting, trauma, and the weird logic we build to survive—all in short, nonlinear stories that somehow make sense by the end. She’s especially interested in how we hold memory, how we explain ourselves to ourselves, and what happens when the story you’re telling doesn’t fit the shape of the life you’ve lived. Laurin lives, writes, parents, and maps the mess in a suburb of Chicago where she continues to discover what shows up when she allows herself to move towards meaning. 

Recent Project: The Numbers Project is a zine series of personal nonfiction, each issue structured around a single number. One, Two, Three, etc.—each number becomes a constraint and prompt for exploring memory, observation, and emotional truth in short, nonlinear fragments. The result is a blend of personal narrative and micro-philosophy, designed for readers who want meaning that doesn’t arrive in straight lines, and who recognize themselves in pieces that add up to something more.

It's Weird Now Press

Table #9

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/its.weird.now/

Bio: It’s Weird Now Press is a collection of zines and handmade art books made by Leif. Art zines, perzines, fan zines… and everything inbetween. 

Recent Project: One of my recent zine projects is a perzine that looks at the absurdity of living and wanting to die in a darkly humorous way while also treating my former self with kindness and understanding - it does so through the lens of hot baths, Sylvia Plath and the gift of a faulty memory. 

Liana Fu

Table #4

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/lettersbyliana

Bio: Liana Fu 傅嘉恩 is a queer writer and zinemaker from Chicago. As a multidisciplinary artist inspired by the Cantonese diasporic archive, she plays with photography, collage, and printmaking to explore intimacy, process, and nostalgia. Her writing is supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the Illinois Arts Council. You can find her work in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Margins, Hyphen Magazine, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere. Read more at lianafu.com and on instagram @lettersbyliana. 

Recent Project: My most recent zine project is a house-shaped zine exploring memory and nostalgia through collage and fragmented language. You can view it (and other examples of my work) here.

Lonely Writers Club

Table #2

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/lonelywritersclubnw/

Bio:  A group of lonely writers from the Chicago metro area that come together for what we call a slamshop, poetry slam, work critique and zine publishing.

Melody Yang

Table #27

Portfolio/Social: https://melonfarmart.carrd.co/#comics

Bio: Melody is based in Chicago and makes comics about natural and unnatural life. 

Recent Project: My most recent zine project was a 12-page comic titled Hemelytra. It was about a character who goes for a motorcycle ride, crashes, and then transforms into bug. The zine touches on alienation from your body and accepting things that are perceived as monstrous as ordinary. I printed it on Risograph in two colors and bound the pages with thread. 

Mike Freiheit

Table #20

Portfolio/Social: Mikefreiheit.com

Bio: Mike Freiheit is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Chicago. He’s made three graphic novels and he likes cats. 

Recent Project: I put out a new mini for CAKE, Mr. Cat Tries to Live Again. A collection of little stories about 2024. 

Nadia Stodder

Table #23

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/oneeyedsuperkid/ 

Bio: Nadia Stodder, Creator of the Shadow Banshee the Oneeyedsuperkid and more lovable creatures and characters, is a multidisciplinary artist. Her zines and comics can be found all over Chicagoland and NWI at comic shops, book stores and independent businesses .

Recent Project: The Shadow banshee periodicals #1-4 are compilations of my comics featuring the Shadow Banshee and her advice column, as well as Oneeyedsuperkid comics and more Periodical #5: Questions Comics and Concerns, is in the works! The dreamwalker is a fantasy zine series about a girl who can go to a different world in her dreams. Bunny girl (Coming soon) is a mini comic about a cute little bunny who lives with her pet cockroaches is always getting herself into dangerous situations.

Nat Quayle Nelson

Table #23

Portfolio/Social: https://nqn.itch.io/

Bio: Nat Quayle Nelson is a nonbinary game developer, playwright, and zinester. Their zines are mostly personal narratives delivered with biting humor, nerdy pop-culture references, and deep empathy through life's endless contradictions. Most recently, she released an epic perzine trilogy starting with Churn Notice #1: Choosing the Life of Serfdom on an Urban Goat Farm.

Recent Project: Churn Notice is a trilogy of perzines about my experience WWOOFing on an urban goat farm! I spent the summer living and working on a farm for room and board, and wrote about all the crazy things that happened. Each zine is 24-28 pages, folio size (it was a ton of writing).

Olivia Brill 

Table #3

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/brill.opad?igsh=NHhsNXpybXc1dm51&utm_source=qr  https://www.instagram.com/vv_aannii/

Bio: Hi, we’re Zine Fiends! A group of artists based in the Chicago suburbs. Taking inspiration from Zine Club Chicago, we decided to create our own. We hope to bring zines outside of the city and appreciate your support!

Recent Project: Olivia- Olivia’s most recent zine project is about the recent death of her childhood dog, Maggie. Pouring love into each written word of the zine, Olivia expresses the profound sorrow she felt in the wake of Maggie’s sudden passing. This zine is raw and explores the shock of losing your last living childhood pet. Vani- Vani’s most recent zine project is about the niche of j-dramas. In particular she explores the nostalgia of re-visiting a childhood favorite TV series “Good Morning Call.” She details her love for the visual aesthetics and cinematography, her thoughts on the characters, and how her perception of something she once loved has developed years later. As a group, Zine Fiends’ latest project is a photography zine about minor details and sights around the Chicago Suburbs. The zine is called Stardust Vol. 2: In Plain Sight. This zine captures images that may be easily overlooked despite their beauty— they are little gems hiding in plain sight. 

Pink Slip

Table #6

Portfolio/Social:  https://pinkslippress.com/

Bio:  We’re PINK SLIP a grassroots art collective based in Elgin, IL. Our talents range from graphic design, to photography, music and more. Our goal within this magazine is simple—to spotlight underrepresented creatives and create a space to share ideas and art. We’re here to nuture our community and show what we love about the Midwest.

Rykley Braun

Table #17

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/rykley.b?igsh=M29kbDI4Z2I3YWhv&utm_source=qr

Bio: I’m a 22 year old animator from the PNW who’s just getting into zines. I like random tidbits of information and would love to share mine with you.

Recent Project: A series of loose, short stories. told in just a handful of pages. Working my way up to having a whole collection to potentially publish in book form.

Soledad Fernandez-Gonzalez

Table #30

Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/kaiahbelly/

Bio: Kaiah Belly is a small business that started with just a sketchbook and love for creating. We make art, prints, stickers, zines and more to add a spark of joy to your everyday. We believe art should be fun, accessible, and something that simply makes you smile. 

Recent Project: Our art club just made a collab zine all about dreams. Everyone brought their own vibe — drawings, doodles, weird stories — and we mashed it all together into one little book. It feels kinda like flipping through a shared dream journal. We’re all printing our own copies so each of us can sell them at our art markets, and it’s cool ‘cause the same zine shows up in different places at the same time, like a dream echo.

Zine Mercado

Portfolio/Social:  https://www.instagram.com/zinemercado