- Love the Indies
- Posts
- Inside Richmond Zine Fest 2024: A Report by Nicolás
Inside Richmond Zine Fest 2024: A Report by Nicolás
A punk city, a safe space, and a river of zines
Yusuke Nagata
May 27, 2025
Hey folks—have you heard of the Richmond Zine Fest? It’s a zine event that draws creators not just from across the U.S., but from all around the world. Locals even call it the “Queer Met Gala”—how awesome is that?
In this week’s edition, I’m sharing a special report from my friend Nicolás, who took part in last year’s Richmond Zine Fest and documented the whole experience.
He breaks down what the event was like, what could be improved, and shares some great tips for anyone interested in making zines or tabling at future fests.
If you’ve ever thought about diving into the zine world, this one’s for you.
Table of Contents
📢 Announcement: To Everyone in Tokyo
This weekend, I’ll be joining an event called Planet of Zines (POZ) as a guest exhibitor. This time, it’s a Photography Edition—a zine fair featuring only photographers. Big names like Kisara Okada are also taking part.
Even though it’s technically a zine event, each participant will be using wall space to showcase their work, so it’ll have more of a photo exhibition vibe.
I’ll be showing some prints I made especially for the event—and of course, I’ll also be selling my latest zine, 404 CONTACT SHEETS.
Also, on Saturday night (May 31) after the event, I’ll be hosting a photo walk! If you’re in Tokyo, come shoot with us after the fair. (Photo walk is exclusive to zine buyers.)
🌎️ Planet of Zines Photography Edition + Photo Walk
Date: May 31– June 1, 2025 | 1-7PM
Venue: The blank Gallery in Harajuku (MAP)
Admission: FREE
Zines + wall prints too
May 31, 7PM → Photo walk (zine buyers only)
Alright—now handing it over to Nicolás. Let’s go!
Inside Richmond Zine Fest 2024: A Report by Nicolás
Hello! I’m Nicolás Aguilar, also known as @anafrito — a filmmaker from Mexico who has been shooting film photography on and off since the mid-90s.
With a background in skateboarding and graffiti, I made my first zine in 2022, collaborating with my poet friend J.C.C. to combine images and text.
That experience sparked something new. In late 2023, my partner @ceethruportals and I launched arigatos press (@_arigatos), a collaborative DIY project we describe as “independent of independent.”
It’s become a space for us to share our photos, illustrations, and ideas — and to collaborate with friends and artists we admire. So far, we’ve self-published over 10 zines and helped distribute another artist’s work as well.
Nicolás also took part in a zine fest in Tokyo. Photo by Yusuke.
Richmond Zine Fest: the Local Queer Met Gala
As a friend from Richmond told us, the Richmond Zine Fest (@richmondzinefest) is the local Queer Met Gala. It is THE event of the year for many creatives in this great underrated east coast city.
People come from all over the USA and other countries and get together once a year to talk about zines and showcase their creations.
The event lasts two days, with day one being full of activities like workshops and talks, and day two being the day for the actual tabling.
Thanks to a fantastic and precise organization, Richmond Zine Fest is held at the city’s public library, where it has been going on since 2007, organized by a team of voluntary local people with an emphasis on mutual aid, support, and community.
This gives the event a high demand of potential tablers. If selected to table they provide a very affordable entree fee and a few stipends for makers to print their creations.
This might sound like it’s a very niche event, but not at all as it welcomes all kinds of audiences in a known public space. Clearly a non-profit community building kind of event.
Everyone was rocking their best outfits and comfortably flaunting themselves.
Richmond public library is a big library, therefore the event felt the same. There were over 150 tables, distributed on two floors.
Since entering the venue you start seeing stands with community oriented resources like covid tests, narcan for counteracting drug overdose, contraceptives and more, all accompanied by really cool and well done informative zines — it is not only the “artists” who can make a zine, and this objects can serve several purposes.
And of course there were the creators, many, many of them, all with very different zines to offer. The atmosphere felt very calm and collected the whole time, very aligned with the fest’s zero tolerance to harassment policy.
This year’s sign and t-shirt read:
no sexism, no racism, no ableism, no ageism, no homophobia, no fat phobia, no transphobia, no hatefulness.
Masks were highly encouraged on the attendance, and exhibitors were asked to wear them at all times. It felt like the organizers were making a true effort to make the fest a really safe space for everyone.
Attending the fest were many queer people, but also students, artists, punks, elder citizens, families, office people, even a few school field trips. It felt like a gala, since everyone was rocking their best outfits and comfortably flaunting themselves. Amazing.
We Used a Local Newspaper as a Tablecloth
We were located in the hall downstairs, at the end of the “funnel” before entering the big auditorium. Our booth is always the same: a small, DIY, no bullshit, what you see is what you get table.
We like to travel light so we bring no stands or anything like that. Not even a tablecloth. We always get the day’s copy of a local newspaper and use that instead of a tablecloth.
This matches well with the aesthetics of arigatos so it has become a tradition to do this at every fair we have travelled to.
We had zines with us, but also stickers, digital and darkroom prints of our photos, drawings, pins, and hand spooled 35mm film ;).
Richmond is a very punk city, a safe haven for weird people.
Before this, we had only participated in fests in Mexico during 2024. In Mexico, the zine fests in which we have participated are more like outdoor markets that are not exclusively for zines but more like art and creation fairs.
Although we had done one “zine fair” in Mexico before, Richmond Zine Fest truly felt like our first experience at a fair entirely dedicated to zines, and it exceeded all of our expectations.
This doesn’t mean the ones in Mexico weren’t good or interesting, but the difference was clear in terms of audiences knowing more about zines in the US than in Mexico.
It was a success for everyone.
Anticipation was high and the turnout went big. There was so much support and excitement for this second time of rebirth for Richmond Zine Fest.
The atmosphere was electric, people’s best outfits were being rocked. Full house on both days!
We met lots of sincere interest from everyone who came to visit us. We had a sliding scale on our prices too, so there was always something for everyone on our table.
Several of our zines sold out and we also traded a bunch of stuff with visitors and fellow exhibitors.
The organizers were very open. The first day we did a surprise reading of my VIVA LA BICI zine, as they allowed me to fill in for someone who could not make it to the zine reading event.
That brought a lot of attention to our work on the second day, in which we had fantastic reception.
Although the vibe was calm, we had a never-ending flow of people visiting our booth from the beginning to the end of the day. For real, we didn’t stop for a minute—I literally couldn’t leave our table until the end of the day.
Richmond is a very punk city, a safe haven for weird people. We felt a genuine interest for helping, sharing and learning.
Its DIY spirit definitely inspired us to make more stuff and gave us confidence in sharing our work, which although meticulously manufactured is very gritty and dirty itself.
We met amazing people who we want to collaborate with and felt inspired by their creations. Would love to repeat for sure.
Things to Improve & A Note to Readers
We also found a few things we’d like to improve for next time:
Set up a better system for tracking sales
Print QR codes for payments and links to our social media
Bring more backup copies of our zines, just in case
And to everyone reading Love the Indies—here’s something I want to say.
As some folks say: Nike that shit—just do it. If you’ve got an idea, make it real. All you need is a piece of paper and a pencil.
A lot of great things come out of having limitations. Put your pencil on the page, or your fingers on the keyboard—and let the energy start flowing. It’s better to make a rough, imperfect zine than to make nothing at all.
Keep practicing. Keep shaping your thoughts into words and images. I want to see what you make.
Nicolás Aguilar
See You Again Next Tuesday
Thanks for the awesome report, Nicolás. Now I really want to go to Richmond Zine Fest myself.
You can check out the zines produced by Nicolás and his team over at arigatos press on their website—definitely worth a look!
Here at Love the Indies, I’d love to feature zine fest reports from readers too—so if you’ve got a story to share, feel free to DM me on Instagram!
See you next week!
Reply