Paper Cuts zine fest returns Saturday at Dunbar Garden

Fans of all things scrappy and DIY should put Paper Cuts, a free mini festival dedicated to the circulation and celebration of zines, on their calendar. 

Held at Dunbar Garden (1720 S. Chester St.) from 1-5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7, the fest brings together more than 30 zinemakers and vendors, all of whom will have their wares for sale. Plus, there’ll be music from DJ Ken Cosmic, Kenny Wiley and Kid Cult; attendance by community outreach programs such as Migra Watch Central Arkansas and Little Rock Peace for Palestine; screen printing; the completion of a barn mural; donated beer from Lost Forty Brewing and homemade tamales; and more. 

For the uninitiated, zinemaking is a longstanding tradition in which underground (and often marginalized) writers and artists circumvent the timeline, exclusion and niceties of commercial publishing by just doing the damn thing themselves, bringing into the world extremely niche mini-magazines by way of whatever resources (photocopiers, staplers, etc.) are at their disposal. 

Paper Cuts functions in Little Rock date back to 2013. This year’s event came together after Eliot Peterson, the manager at Dunbar Garden, partnered with previous organizers and local zine enthusiasts like Henry Rhodes, Jose Hernandez, John Pugh, JaQuintin Means and Jessi Perren. 

“It’s really awesome to have something that is tactile and paper because it’s going against the scroll of what we’re constantly being fed on social media,” Peterson said. “Here’s something that someone else created, and you can have a face-to-face interaction with them. I think it really matches up with the ethos of Dunbar Garden.”