Shop Talk: Getting the Word Out

​A panel conversation on print distribution models and methods with Queer Reads Library (Hong Kong & Vancouver), GenderFail (NYC), Mortar Press (LA), and Brown Recluse Zine Distro (Oakland).

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​Brown Recluse Zine Distro is a zine distro for BIPOC by BIPOC; we are collectively run and community supported. BRZD distributes political educational materials that uplift and center QTBIPOC engaged in autonomous forms of resistance against the violence of capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and imperialism. We center Black zinemakers in our distro; offering Black zinemakers 100% of the cover price to distribute their work.

​Secure Brown Recluse's Future: https://gofund.me/ee8c4105e

​Fundraiser for Mari Rueda: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-maricelas-family-while-she-fights-for-justice

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​Mortar is a one-person, print-on-demand micropress that aims to disseminate radical literature from a diversity of leftist perspectives, with a particular eye toward new translation and archival materials. This goal is exemplified by its central series, Underpinnings, under which it republishes affordable, attractive, pocket-sized editions of urgent political writing that is out of print, hard to find, or otherwise calling for redistribution. Operating on a profit‑for‑survival model, Mortar Press is made possible by the archivists and infoshops of the world—and especially by Wooden Shoe Books & Records. For this reason, fully-accessible digital editions of all its titles are available for free download at mortarpress.com, and all materials are published either without copyright or under a highly permissive Creative Commons license.

​A. Jinha Song (she/her) is a bookseller, organizer, designer, and erstwhile medievalist recently returned to Los Angeles after a three-year stint in Philadelphia. As the one-person Mortar Press, she sources, edits, designs, and publishes new and out-of-print leftist literature. She is guided in her various roles by commitments to access, collaboration, and liberation beyond metaphor.

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​GenderFail (founded in 2015 by Be Oakley) is a publishing outlet that seeks to instigate works that expand queer subjectivity through a working-class lens . GenderFail sees failure as a boundless source of inspiration in our work, as a tool to both undo acts of oppression and imagine new systems of liberation. Often these failures are not ours but ones we inherit through systems of Zionism, colonialism, white supremacy, and other forms of silence of oppression. At It’s heart, GenderFails greatest desire is to inspire revolution in the hearts and minds of it’s readers.

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​Queer Reads Library (QRL), as a response to the censorship of ten LGBTQ-themed books for children and young adults in Hong Kong's public libraries in June 2018, operates in the multi-disciplinary practices on running in a mobile format with curated printed materials, queer archiving, researching on queer visual culture, engaging workshops and producing zines as documentation of dialogues, ideas and resistance. The libraries are currently located in Hong Kong by Beatrix Pang (they/them), and in Vancouver (Canada) by Rachel Lau (they/them). QRL serves as a testament to queer friends living in all societies, who still share their images and stories amidst dangerously increasing tides of transphobia and homophobia, with the aim of connecting with and engaging queer Asian individuals across continents.QRL was co-founded by artist-curator Kaitlin Chan (she/her), whose contributions laid the important groundwork for our mission.

​Rachel Lau is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and library worker based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, colonially known as “vancouver, canada”. Inspired by the tenderness and strength of the queer and racialized communities that claim them, they use zine-making and self-publishing as a conduit for feeling deeply and cultivating collective resistance against the imperialist-white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy (to borrow from bell hooks). With Beatrix Pang, they steward Queer Reads Library, a mobile library of queer books and zines founded in Hong Kong and presented internationally.

​Beatrix Pang (they/them) is a Hong Kong-based visual artist, cultural producer, and independent publisher exploring community, migration, and queer identity through lens-based media and printed matter. They are the founder of Small Tune Press, co-founder of ZINE COOP and Queer Reads Library, and initiator of the Migrant Workers Library archive. Beatrix curates community gatherings including ZINE YO! FEST and CRIP FUTURES / QUEER MARKET, and has exhibited internationally across Asia, Europe, and North America.

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​FORTUNE presents: PRINT TIME AFTER TIME, a weekend-long gathering around print — its methods, its practices, its manifold lives, afterlives, and half-lives. Focusing on publishers and printshops with liberatory work models; print projects led by queer, trans, BIPOC artists; both local standbys and traveling acts — PRINT TIME AFTER TIME offers workshops and panels, and closes with a book fair featuring collectively operated print projects and presses.

​We hope to ask: How can print learn from, and leverage, its archives? Why do analog print forms continue to matter, in all the material and labor of their assembly? How can print continue to meet its publics, with intention? What can self-publishing as a collective practice teach us, time after time?

​For more PRINT TIME AFTER TIME events, view our calendar here.

​PRINT TIME AFTER TIME will take place at Icebox Mall, and is one of myriad projects produced during Collective Futures (October 2–November 15, 2026).