Updates to my zines

I tabled at the Portland Zine Symposium earlier this month. The event went well, and also provided me with an excuse to update several of my zines. They’re listed below, as well as a two new zine I’ve made recently. One is based on an article I wrote a few years ago about unreinforced masonry buildings in Portland and the other is a version of the mini-zine I made for the PDX Jewish Zine Fest popup I hosted in August.

Jewish zines

While I published Towards a New Tu B’Shvat less than a year ago, I’ve found a few errors since then. I also wanted to tweak the information architecture a bit. So I cleaned up those typos and made some changes to the design. I’ve updated the files available here (which includes a PDF for printing, a PDF for screens, and an EPUB).

My set of eight Hanukkah zines needed updating even more, given that I wrote them in 2018. Hanukkah at the White House has the most changes, because the White House has hosted several Hanukkah parties in the past four years. I’ve updated the files available here.

I also now have a one-page zine of resources for folks interested in Jewish zine in Portland, Oregon. The file is available to print or share.

Political zines

I’ve also updated two zines that I routinely share around election time: this one-page zine covering registering to vote in Oregon (including how to deal with common concerns) and this one-page zine on how to claim the Oregon political contribution tax credit (and get $50 off your tax bill).

A new zine, sort of

A few years ago, I wrote an article about unreinforced masonry buildings here in Portland, Oregon. That might sound like an extremely niche topic, but URM buildings are a major risk factor for earthquakes — folks living and working in these buildings face higher risks. In the time since I wrote my original article, the City of Portland has actually managed to go from doing as little as possible to doing absolutely nothing about these buildings. I updated material from my original article to create this zine.

This zine covers the risks, how to recognize URM buildings, and what we can do about them. This new zine is available to download and share in multiple formats, and if you live or work in a URM building, you have my blessing to run off copies for everyone in your building. Laundry rooms are a great place to leave reading material for your neighbors.

A Hanukkah zine update, in time for Hanukkah

A couple of years ago, I made a collection of zines for Hanukkah as a way to talk about what the holiday commemorates and how it fits into the American winter holiday season. Those zines are available on Gumroad (embedded below the post) as printable files for whatever price you’re able to pay.

Miranda Sullivan, New Voices’ columnist covering Jewish zines, wrote a kind review of my zines: Start Preparing Early for An Anti-Nationalist Hanukkah: A Zine Review. Here’s a snippet from Miranda’s review:

For the most part, Bram presents a collection that prompts the reader to create their own modern commentary rather than presenting a monolithic view of the holiday. After reading these zines, to me it’s clear that Hanukkah is being used by today’s American politicians to punch a hole in their “I’m not discriminatory I have (fill in the blank) friends!” card. It also made me think about the close relationship between Zionist settler-colonialism and the United States’ military industrial complex.

Miranda Sullivan

Having this review in New Voices means a lot to me, because one of the first pieces I ever wrote about my Jewish experiences was for New Voices. The publication is written by college students and way back in the day, when I was still in college, I wrote an article about Jewish life at the University of Tulsa.

That article doesn’t appear on the New Voices website these days (which is for the best; I have both progressed as a writer and in my ability to think critically about religion and education). If you really want to see how much my writing has improved, I suppose you can look at this copy on the Wayback Machine.

Honestly, though, you’d be better off checking out Miranda’s other columns on Jewish zines, especially the review of The Jewish American Princess Zine, which dives deep into the racial politics of the Jewish American Princess stereotype.

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