Zines, because they are both visual and textual, messy and experimental, and often meet a personal need rather than being made for a public audience, are the ideal vehicle for describing the in-between, liminal parts of life that we all experience. Lea Cooper is a researcher and zine-maker who has been delving into Wellcome’s zines collection in search of examples of liminality.
![A two-page comic style spread from a zine showing a young woman with a green horned creature sitting next to her in a doctor's surgery, A white-coated doctor stands infront of her as she waits for a diagnosis. In the three successive scenes she gets progressively older until she turnes into a ghost, still asking what her diagnosis is.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/3d217f5b-604a-4147-badd-54da9138e35e_Drawn_poorly_EP_002269_070.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
I started making zines during my training as a mental health peer-support worker when I became frustrated with having to tell my story in a particular way. We use stories to understand experiences of illness, but it can be difficult to tell a story when it doesn’t have a neat resolution. ‘Drawn Poorly’ is a Manchester-based zine that collects experiences of illness and disability. In their third issue, ‘Diagnosis’, different contributors share their experiences of diagnosis, including waiting a long time for a diagnosis or confirmation of a chronic illness. Brittany Black explores what it’s like waiting for a diagnosis that doesn’t come. Frustration and anxiety are expressed through humour in this short comic, which concludes with a punchline where both we, and Brittany’s ghost, are left still asking for a diagnosis.
![An empty medical waiting room with four chairs in a row infront of a wall with a noticeboard, switches and a dispenser for hand sanitiser.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/14670c7c-5480-4319-84dd-b646cd7230a5_Waiting_room_EP_002269_160.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
Waiting is a familiar part of experiencing illness for anyone who has sat in a GP surgery, attended a hospital appointment, or gone to A & E. However, for many people with chronic illnesses, waiting can feel like the main thing they are doing. In this zine, Hollie Woodward captures this through illustrations of a waiting room, accompanied by her thoughts and feelings as she is left there. She uses a single colour, green, to pick out individual features, highlighting the ways that often the same colours run through medical spaces, like NHS blue in the UK. People are mostly absent from the zine’s illustrations, emphasising the in-between spaces that people with chronic illnesses often inhabit.
![A young person leans forward over an arrangement of three lighted candles on a bed of flowers and foliage. The text below the illustration reads "when language runs dry, number 2"](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/2d380614-18ff-4157-ac8d-0e072a3277f2_When_language_runs_dry_EP_002269_118.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
Chronic pain complicates our understanding of health and illness – we expect pain to be a sign of something being wrong, an example of cause and effect, and imagine that once we are better, it will stop hurting. As the title of this zine, ‘When Language Runs Dry’, suggests, chronic pain is an experience that is sometimes hard to communicate. The cover, by Corinne Teed, shows a person in a moment of quiet reflection, bent over three candles on an altar covered with greenery and flowers, in reference perhaps to the importance of rituals in managing moments of transition, like rituals around the end of winter and beginning of spring, and giving structure and meaning to in-between spaces. It echoes a birthday cake – a reminder of how time moves and is marked differently in experiences of chronic pain.
![A two-page spread from a zine with typed text on the left side and a dark artwork on the right side. The image shows a a mottled patterned background with a black silouhette of a multi-arched bridge or viaduct with a large black cat sitting on it. Below this is a modern white cityscape and below that a naked figure with a bat-like face, sits on the floor next to a large desk, looking towards the desk. A speech bubble comes from a shadowy figure crouched under the desk saying "I like anywhere that isn't a proper place. I like inbetweens".](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/e6d24ee8-038d-4461-a082-5dd48900e931_Disgender_EP_002269_109.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
For some transgender or non-binary people, zines offer a space to explore gender transition as a continual state of in-betweenness. Other trans people use zines to document periods of change and transformation, and to make connections between different experiences. ‘Disgender’ connects experiences of being transgender and non-binary and being disabled or chronically ill. The image on the this page captures some of the feel of in-betweenness through a surreal landscape, as well as what it might mean to intentionally inhabit it. As the shadowy character under the desk says: “I like anywhere that isn’t a proper place. I like in-betweens.”
![A two-page spread from the zine 'It's just an account of the worst year of my life' with a hand-drawn pencil illustration of a character like Disney's Snow White on lined notepaper on the left. Next to the drawing in handwriting it says "I'm awfully sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. But you don't know what I've been through. And all because I was afraid. I'm so ashamed of hte fuss I've made." At the bottom of the page is a typed quote from Andrea Gibson about a suicide attempt. The right side page is title 'Making a scene' and is a printed text about the author's experiences.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/b0da4d0c-fdc6-4ee9-8a05-af691b722d02_Just_an_account_EP_002269_099.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
‘It’s just an account of the worst year of my life’ is a perzine, which is a contraction of “personal zine”. Perzines themselves are often described as being ‘in-between’ a diary and a book – not quite private, not quite public. This perzine’s maker, Laura Saunders, uses doodles from her notebooks at the time to reconstruct a year in which she had a breakdown. While it can be difficult to tell a story about chaotic periods of life, like breakdowns or mental health crises, the drawings and notes from this time are used by the zine-maker as an alternative way to communicate the experience.
![Cover of the zine Bleeding Thunder shows a collage illustration of a pair of pale, hairy legs, open with knees bent. Between the legs is a photographic image of the moon with a serpend emerging from the bottom of the moon and a red-capped mushroom emerging from the left sitde and a yellow-frilled mushroom emerging from the right side. Above the legs on the left and right are a leafy frond and butterflies respectively. The background is a red coloured disc on a matt black surface.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/88ef9799-e3cd-4307-9454-a85396694e4b_Bleeding_thunder_EP_002269_001.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
Coming of age is often considered a classic example of a transition from one social position (childhood) to another (adulthood) – and for some people, this is focused around menstruation. ‘Bleeding Thunder: A Zine Exploring Genderqueer Menstruation’ shares experiences of periods that are often excluded from mainstream discussions, which prioritise cisgender people. Its contributors imagine a relationship to menstruation that isn’t grounded in ideas of womanhood or femininity, instead centring and holding space for genderqueer, trans and non-binary bodies and experiences.
![Cover of the zine 'Are you there God? It's me, menopause'. The cover consists of a black and white photocopied image of the cover of the 1970s Judy Blume book 'Are you there God? It's me, Margaret'. The word Margaret has been over written with the word Menopause coloured in pink highlighter and the face of the young girl has been covered with an image of a uterus and fallopian tubes also coloured in highlighter-pink. Added hand-written text says "A compilation zine edited by Jenna Freeman + Kate Haas"](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/f6b47d32-b60f-46e5-b61d-0e87c3704ee5_Are_you_there_god_EP_002269_026.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
Until very recently, the experience of menopause was another period of transition that was made invisible, unacknowledged except by those who experience it themselves. ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause’ is a compilation zine edited by established zine-makers Jenna Freedman and Kate Haas. It provides space for its contributors to explore this experience. The front cover makes use of a common practice in zines – using and subverting images from popular culture. Here, the zine creators have taken a pink glittery pen to the photocopied cover of a classic coming-of-age book from the 1970s.
![A two-page spread from the zine 'Stuck in the middle: an autistic story'. A folded sheet of white paper has the handwritten text "Show you can! *when you can ...." on the left hand side. On the right side the handwriting says "just... not too much. (in case you can't later). Below this writing is a stick figure with two dots for eyes and a straight line for a mouth.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/e71b8577-c421-4e1c-aaed-37d0d5d521ec_Stuck_EP_002269_182.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
For some neurodivergent people, not hitting typical markers of independence or adulthood, or needing additional support, can feel like being stuck. Stories that treat progress as linear often don’t reflect autistic people’s lived experience – as the creator of ‘Stuck in the Middle: an autistic story’ Rin Flumberdank says: “Help isn't linear. Abilities aren't linear. Trust me *IF I SAY I CAN *IF I SAY I CAN'T don't use it against me LATER.” This eight-page zine shows how zines don’t have to be complicated to be effective – they are often made, like this one, with a pen and a single, folded sheet of A4 paper.
![Page from the zine 'Bat Habitat #28'. A drawing of a mobile phone screen divided into four parts showing a Zoom conversation with four people, on in each of the four parts.](https://images.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/1b327328-9907-4fe7-b8e8-994a97a596ea_BatHabitat_EP_002293_020.jpg?w=1338&auto=compress%2Cformat&rect=&q=100)
The feeling of being in-between, of being stuck in an odd, ambiguous or uncertain time, will be familiar to many of us after the Covid-19 lockdowns in the UK and around the world. Many zine-makers explored this period through perzines, which documented their experiences and offered resources to other people. Lockdown zines became so ubiquitous that in the description for this one, its creator Tukru describes it as “that obligatory lockdown zine”. ‘Bat Habitat’ is a long-running perzine series, and this issue captures a small part of the first UK-wide lockdown when the now-familiar Zoom screen was still a novelty, using words, collage and illustrations.
About the author
Lilith (Lea) Cooper
Lea Cooper is a zine-maker and zine librarian at Edinburgh Zine Library and they are currently working on a PhD looking at the zines at Wellcome Collection. Their research interests are liminality and the third space between practice and research. They live on the Fife coast in Scotland.