Tess and Halisia started Brine, a collaborative zine, in 2017. When the first issue came out, thirty people piled into a tiny basement room in a house on Brooks Street in Missoula, Montana. Musicians and readers performed for people sitting crosslegged on the carpeted floor and standing in the hallway. Over the next four seasons, Brine grew. Josh Taira became a valuable part of the team. The spring release party had a full band and actual folding chairs. Brine was sold in local stores and shipped all over the country. But, when Tess got into graduate school and Halisia needed to finish her degree, Brine was suspended …
… UNTIL NOW.
When the country began to shut down due to COVID-19, the zinesters (from their new homes in Minneapolis and D.C.) hatched a plan to build something out of the chaos. The call for submissions gleaned art, writing, comics, poetry, even a mysterious pop hit found on a VHS tape dug up from the soil of a flower garden.
The collection of work comes from all over the world and gives a peek into what came OUT when we were shut IN.
Get your Brine shirt now!
Limited edition Brine shirts support our online platform, the website and future issues.
We were so happy to create a special edition of BRINE for our lovely creative community, but we had one big question — how? Back in Missoula, our friends at Missoula Copy made sure our physical zines were perfectly printed at a cheap rate. But, with our current circumstances, how could we design and create accessible zines?
We found Flipsnack, an online platform for publications like ours, and spent days (weeks?) building the Quarant-zine. It wasn’t until we hit publish that we realized the free version didn’t allow for fullscreen viewing. It was impossible to read and the upgrade cost $168!
So, rather than starting over, we decided on a new plan:
Pay for the upgrade, which includes more flip books with higher page counts
Upload the Quarant-zine for your (free) reading pleasure
Upload all four past issues onto Flipsnack as well (this will take some time, but we’ll get there!)
Keep all five online for the full year subscription, after which we will host the PDFs on this website and …
You can also help by DONATING any amount to Halisia’s Venmo: @halisia or Paypal: halisia.hubbard@gmail.com
THANK YOU!
