To Boldly Go: Fanzines and the Foremothers of Fanworks

Last week, I took a short trip to Seattle to record some voice over with Maggie Nowakowska, whose basement office is, among other geeky delights, a treasure trove of fanzine history.

I had the chance to interview Maggie twice over the course of filming on Looking for Leia, and hear her stories about fanzine communities starting with Star Trek in the late 1960s. Trek fanzines paved the way for Star Wars fanzines, and both franchises inspired hundreds upon hundreds of zines written and edited largely by women. As Maggie put it, there were always a few guys around in fanzine fandom, but this was a woman's world.

Author (and fanzine editor) Jeanine Hennig happened to be visiting that day as well, and as luck would have it, Maggie had a collection of Trek zines in her archives, which they searched through and organized for some b-roll shots.

Here's a little peek at them all laid out

Of course, fan lit is alive and thriving in on-line spaces. But these early analog zines, and the way they were curated and produced, is a rich part of fandom history and a testament to how women have always been a creative, generative presence in both Star Trek and Star Wars fandom.

We're so excited to feature this meaningful collection in LOOKING FOR LEIA.

LLAP (and MTFBWY),
- Annalise