I’ve spent my career at the intersection of journalism and independent publishing, and I’ve never seen a year quite like 2025. Last year, unease around tech influence, immigration enforcement, and the surveillance of public discourse forced independent publishers to reconsider how to get accurate information into people’s hands. The answer, for many, was an old one: small runs of handheld booklets called zines.
What we received in Zine Prize’s inaugural year was a portrait of this moment. 102 entries (45 also physically mailed in) from service reporters and punk archivists, community organizers and personal essayists, all printing something the daily newspaper abandoned and the algorithm can’t replicate.
The following nine winners rose to the top for their journalism and their zine-making. Judged by a team with backgrounds in journalism, education, library science, and zines, the winning titles tell you everything about where nonfiction zines stand — and where it’s going.
—Sarah Bennett, Executive Director
Best Visual Zine
Art, photo, and comic zines. But you need enough words to explain what we’re looking at. And there needs to be a point, because otherwise, it’s just pretty pictures.
It’s hard enough to judge zines in general, but Best Visual Zine is even tougher. The reason is simple: How do you decide what’s objectively good without letting your own aesthetics interfere? Or, as one judge put it, “I doubt anyone cares what I think looks cool.”
So the judges rated entries mostly on one concept: Did it deliver what the publisher promised? Then they looked at how the artwork and words combined to tell that story.
First Place: Call Me ZZ
“I’m obsessed with this one,” one judge said. The others mostly agreed, calling it both beautiful and powerful. Basically, Alexis Hunley’s zine is a series of two zines meant to be explored together, featuring what one judge called “poignant questions,” punctuated by photos of Black men, women, and children. Among those questions: “What does a Black family look like?” and “When did you know you were Black?”
If there was any critique, it was the lack of context for each photo. Adding captions would’ve made this zine even more powerful, because judges wanted to know who these folks are and when they were photographed. (Judging from the fashions, it goes back to at least the ’60s.)
Second Place: 17 Years of Pain
A story about suffering from endometriosis made all the judges wince – in the best way possible. Author/illustrator Kayla assembled a graphic novel of rough sketches (plus actual photos of their uterus) and even rougher handwriting. In fact, judges said this was a problem: “Her story is extremely moving, but the handwriting was really hard to read in spots – and we wanted to read all of it.”
Third Place: Mushroom Lessons
These eight pages of brief writing by Oakley Gabriel and delicate drawings by Eve Gordon aren’t really about mushrooms. The lesson is about community organizing. “Fungus shows us it’s possible to share a world,” Gabriel writes, his words swirling around Gordon’s images. One judge called this “mesmerizing,” and the others readily agreed.
Best News Zine
Everything from national politics to local problems. Your facts need to be accurate and your opinions need to be interesting, amusing, and/or thought-provoking.
Since this is the first year of ZinePrize, we wondered: Who’d win this category? Would it be zine publishers doing news? Or news publishers doing zines?
It was all the latter. We don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s interesting and encouraging. The entries confirmed that zine publishers would benefit from learning journalism basics, while journalists are already starting to experiment with zines.
First Place: Power Games
This helpful zine was published by Arizona Luminaria, a nonprofit news site. The reason wasn’t random. Luminaria spent a year reporting on the fraud mobile home dwellers face with their utilities – and how the summer heat is literally killing them. This zine distilled the reporting and listed helpful contact information for everything from help paying the bills to finding nearby “cooling centers.” The zine fits easily into a drawer and is a tightly written and nicely designed reference. Said one judge, “Luminaria is serving a hyper-specific community, and doing it in a way that’s thoughtful and makes perfect sense for a zine.” Another called it “super impressive and an easy choice for first.”
Second Place: ICE Zine
Published by 404 Media, which was launched in 2023 by former VICE Media staffers, this is a service zine for immigration protesters. It’s also the slickest winner: full color, professional illustrations, and refined writing. But even if it doesn’t look like a stereotypical zine, its purpose sure is. ICE Zine is a 10-page practical handbook with instructions for 3D-printing whistles to (this being VICE-inspired) “anti-surveillance fashion.” ICE Zine knows what it is, knows what it wants to do, and does it very well. One judge called it “the complete package.”
Third Place: A DC Tenant’s Guide to Heating and Cooling
The DC-based 51st calls itself “a worker-led nonprofit local news source” – and it calls this tiny zine “ a translation of service journalism to a format we can pass out when tabling at community events.” Much like Luminaria’s efforts for mobile homes, this is for renters. “This topic is extremely important,” one judge declared, “and the way it’s packaged and well-sourced is impressive in a small amount of space.”
Best Feature Zine
Music, food, fashion, culture, coin collecting, whatever. Just have something to say about these topics that’s wholly your own.
We thought this would be the easiest category to judge. It not only represents most zines today, it’s historically how zines got started and expanded over the last century. But choosing the best was difficult, precisely because so many excelled in their own lane.
First Place: For the Love of Joan Jett Blakk
If your life is half over, then this zine – and its subject – might be familiar to you. Joan Jett Blakk ran a Quixotic campaign for president against the first President Bush in 1992, with the slogan, “Lick Bush in ‘92!” This 14-page biography is designed like zines from the era, with handwriting and typewriting over photocopied black-and-white pictures of the drag queen/political activist. As one (older) judge put it, “This is retro-fantastic.” A younger one said, “Even if you didn’t know who she was, you did by the time you read even a little of it.”
Second Place: Keith Haring’s Murals at Public School 97 in the Lower East Side, 1985-1988 [Second Edition]
Is it a serious zine or an edgy term paper? The only ZinePrize entry with footnotes, this is a fascinating deep dive into three murals by the acclaimed artist Keith Haring. At 14 packed pages, the only thing missing are bigger photos and captions under them to explain what’s happening. A story about an artist painting murals demands that much.
Third Place: Recipes for Belonging, Vol. II
At first glance, this looks like a collection of recipes. But it’s actually about so much more than mere meals. As one judge put it, “These are the little things you can do to feel connected in your neighborhood, and to build community.” The actual recipes are just one way to do that, in addition to “venue tips” and “pre-dinner gathering.”
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