Sarah’s Zines is a small press based in Ottawa. We specialize in zines focusing on poetry and music. We publish:

• single poems and poetry collections

• playlist zines

• essays and opinions

Sarah’s Zines was founded in 2024 by Sarah Corbett, whose goal was to connect with people through writing. We aim to produce quality, well researched writing that sparks discussion. We value arts education, critical thinking, interdisciplinary art, and collaboration. We envision inspiring community between artists of all age and disciplines as well as inspire empathy and confidence to all our readers.

Oh, and what the heck is a zine anyways?

Zines have been around for decades, existing outside of the mainstream culture. Zine is pronounced like the end of the word “magazine”. However, zines embody opposing values to those of the magazine. Zines are DIY and amateur small booklets that are almost like pamphlets. They are self-published messages meant for niche communities.

Why make a zine?

Self-publishing and zines are a way to cut out all the middle men in the publishing industry. Lots of those middle men do tasks that are valuable and time consuming (like editing, marketing, printing and binding, etc.) however, there are other middle men who essentially gatekeep (aka. censorship, curation). These “gatekeepers” have the power to not let certain groups of people into the publishing business. This is why people self-publish and make zines. We don’t want to waste time with applications, proposals, and rejections. We just want to share our message. Not all zines are self-published and not all self-publishing is zines.