What Is a Perzine?
Personal zines turn a maker's experiences and thoughts into work they choose to share.
A perzine is a personal zine. Its main subject is the maker's life, thoughts or experiences.
It could describe an ordinary routine, a friendship, a journey, work, family life or a difficult period. Barnard's genre guide notes that personal zines may be single issues or ongoing projects.
How it differs from a private diary
A diary can remain a record for its writer alone. A perzine is shaped into a publication for readers, even if that audience is small.
That changes the work of editing. The writer chooses where to begin, what background to explain and which details to leave out. Something obvious to the person who lived it may need a sentence of context for someone else.
A perzine can use diary entries, but it does not need to reproduce them unchanged.
Personal does not mean exhaustive
You can write about one part of your life. You do not owe the reader a complete history or your most private experience.
A zine about the meals you make after work can be personal. So can a collection of drawings of places where you have waited for someone.
The connection comes from your perspective: what you notice, remember and choose to explain.
It can take several forms
A perzine may contain an essay, photographs, lists, comics or fragments of writing. A clear sequence helps these pieces belong together.
For example, an issue about moving could begin with the old room, follow the move and end with the first evening in the new place. Another could organise the same experience around five objects. These are possible structures, not descriptions of an existing zine.
Choose the form that helps the reader follow what matters to you.
Read personal writing with care
A first-person account tells you how someone understood their experience. It does not automatically speak for everyone in a similar situation.
The writer may also use a pen name or omit identifying details. Respect the information they chose to make public rather than treating the zine as an invitation to investigate their private life.
If you want to share a page online, ask first, especially when the work contains sensitive personal material.
Begin with a small account
Choose one event, place or question. Write it, leave it for a while, then decide which parts you actually want another person to read.
That pause gives you room to edit both for clarity and for your own boundaries.
How to Make a Perzine takes the process further.