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Homemade & Bakeshop Zines

ZB zines authored by & with me (Amanda Wyatt Visconti)
Cover of zine titled 'DIY Web Archiving' Cover of zine titled 'Queer Book History' Cover of zine titled 'Absolute Units of Letterpress: Plus Rad Measurement Facts'
Cover of zine titled 'Speedweve for Mending' Cover of zine titled 'The Good Pets of UVA Library' Cover of zine titled 'read censored history, thwart fascism'
Cover of zine titled 'BookLab Time Machine: Mini-zine' Cover of zine titled 'Lasercutter Cheatsheet Mini-Zine'
Cover of zine titled 'Look! Here's your unusual letterpress blocks invitation to joy' Cover of zine titled 'Yes, Virginia, there is ICE here too'

“Homemade” Zine Bakery zines are made by me (Amanda Wyatt Visconti); “Bakeshop” Zine Bakery zines are collaborations made by me + other folks.

All zines (in order of release date, starting with most recent):

10. read censored history, thwart fascists. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #6)
9. Absolute Units of Letterpress: Plus Rad Measurement Facts by Amanda Wyatt Visconti and Shane Lin. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #5)
8. Queer Book History by Amanda Wyatt Visconti; Alex Wingate; Nicole Infanta Keller & Cait Coker; & the SHARP Queer Book History 2025 Bibliography Team. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #4)
7. “BookLab Time Machine (“Very Drafty V1!”) by Amanda Wyatt Visconti. (Zine Bakery Biscuit #3)
6. Yes, Virginia, there is ICE here too by Amanda Wyatt Visconti. (Zine Bakery Biscuit #2)
5. The Good Pets of UVA Library by Amanda Wyatt Visconti, with UVA Library colleagues. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #3)
4. DIY Web Archiving by Quinn Dombrowski, Tessa Walsh, Anna Kijas, Ilya Kreymer, & Amanda Wyatt Visconti. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #2)
3. Look!! Here’s your unusual letterpress blocks invitation to joy: a collage mini-zine by Amanda Wyatt Visconti. (Zine Bakery Hand Pie #1)
2. Speedweve for Mending (#DHMakes Methodz Zines #1) by Amanda Wyatt Visconti & Samantha Blickhan. (Zine Bakery Bakeshop #1)
1. Lasercutting! Cheatsheet mini-zine for a Very Specific use case by Amanda Wyatt Visconti. (Zine Bakery Biscuit #1)

Zines by type (format or topic-specific series with BREAD NAMES)

Biscuits (mini-zines)

Hand Pies (quarter-size zines)

Brioche (“Letterpress for All!” series)

An ongoing series of zines attempting to contribute to making letterpress more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible (including financially and physically). Nos. 1-4 in this series were peer-reviewed (with an accompanying intro essay) for Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal. Zines and essay will be linked from these pages once the issue is published in 2026. Zines in this series that are in the drafted stage appear under the “forthcoming” section further down this page.

  • Brioche #4: Moveable Text Art Now!: (What am I trying to impress?) (Do I even need a printing press?) by Amanda Wyatt Visconti
  • Brioche #3: My First Press: Accessing or buying a press for letterpress printing by Amanda Wyatt Visconti
  • Brioche #2: Just my type: finding, buying, or making your 1st letterpress type by Amanda Wyatt Visconti
  • Brioche #1: Vandercookin’ for All Types & Sorts: An intro to typesetting, makeready, & printing your 1st print on a Vandercook press by Amanda Wyatt Visconti

Bakeshop (zines by me with co-creators)

External bakers (zines led by others, with contributions from me)

  • “Play with your data”. Zineification by Claudia Berger. “Themed Reading Card Decks” tutorial section text is authored by me.

Upcoming releases! Um. In the next year or so?

My to-zine list is kind of long…

  • “Identifying Big Wood Type” lol (the people have spoken)
  • The two remaining “I will make zines of at least the first three #DHMakes Methodz Talks” zines, collaborating with + on Alex Wingate’s English Paper Piecing talk, and Claudia E. Berger’s zine-making talk. If possible, I do still hope to make zines of the subsequent Methodz talks as well. All #DHmakes Methodz Talks are listed here.
  • “Bigger BookLab Time Machine: A charter-drafting zine for BookLabs & similar, by [you????] and Amanda Wyatt Visconti, modeled on Jess Walters’ ‘Exchanging Perspectives’ zine”. An expansion of the mini-zine version, as that really couldn’t fit the length of question, number of prompts, nor the contextual info I wanted. Adjacently…
  • With Ronda Grizzle, a minizine on “why make charters for academic collaborations?” (particularly digital humanities ones) and a full-size zine teaching how we teach charter-making and use in the Scholars’ Lab
  • More Letterpress for All! zines. Currently drafted:
    • When the press rollers just right: calibrating roller height on the Vandercook printing press** (Letterpress for All! Brioche #5)
    • Rainbow Rolls: How to print with gradient inks! (aka split fountains; for Vandercook & cylinder presses)** (Letterpress for All! Brioche #6)
    • Loaded Letterpress: How I plan complex broadsides** (Letterpress for All! Brioche #7)
    • Tidy Tympans: How to change the tympan on a Vandercook Universal Press** (Letterpress for All! Brioche #8)
  • “ComPENLANDium” zine of advice related to & appreciation for Penland School of Craft
  • Stretches & physical acccessibility hacks for letterpress printers minizine
  • “Unsolicited advice” series of rando things I want to recommend without buttonholing some poor soul in reply to a vaguely adjacent Bluesky tweet to do so (with some cover art I am quite pleased with!)
  • Other zines I have drafted in my digital & paper folders but don’t remember ATM!

Using & assembling my “homemade” zines

Tutorial zines: “learning access level” scale

“Learning access level” rates my how-to zines on a 1-3 scale of how accessible it is for you to pick up and do the same thing I describe:

  1. You likely have everything you need already to do this on hand
  2. You may need to acquire some supplies or equipment (total <$200 for intro project, at least; hopefully more like <$35)
  3. You may need to acquire costly supplies/equipment ($200+) and/or happen to have access to equipment you will likely not be able to purchase yourself (e.g. lasercutter)

Assembling 8-page mini-zines

  1. Initial folds & cut steps, in images via Ashley Topacio (you can also Google for many video options)
  2. Getting everything lined up neatly (paraphrasing Reddit user Jay-ish’s helpful tips):
    • After folding into 1/8ths and making the cut, loosely fold into correct final shape, but don’t press yet
    • One long edge of the cover will be open (i.e. you can lift it to see it’s back side); gather all pages and this open-long-edge half of the cover, arrange carefully, and hold against table
    • Fold the close-long-edge half of the cover onto the other pages, and press all (always start from middle and move away from middle to outer edges).

FWIW this zine folding style is impossible to get as perfectly aligned as if you cut out and stapled each page. You’ll either have inner pages sticking slightly out past the edges of the outer pages, or some inner crumpling.

Assembling a quarter-letter folded zine (aka “hand pies”, for Zine Bakery Homemade quarter-size zines)

Screenshot of the quarter-size how-to

I learned this method from Nathalie Lawhead’s Electric Zine Maker tool for making zines, which includes some lovely weird-web/great-art web design to boot!