Mischief, care, and heterotopia: reflections on the potentials of zines in geography’s spaces

In 2024, the Geography Zine Organizing Network (GEOZONe) was formed to collect, archive, and distribute zines engaging geographic thought and activism within and beyond the boundaries of disciplinary geography. Zines – self-published booklets emerging from subcultural and activist communities – have much to offer cultural geography as a medium of geographic theory, communication, and praxis. In this brief article, we describe how zines have been taken up in the academy and in geography in particular and how GEOZONe has participated in and built upon these engagements. In particular, we describe zine fairs hosted by GEOZONe in disciplinary spaces throughout 2025, including the annual meetings of the American Association of Geographers and Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers. We recount how we brought together a decentralized network of scholars from across the globe to create and participate in alternative spaces at the conferences and share lessons learned from these activities. We advocate for zine fairs as a promising opportunity to amplify spaces of creative and critical knowledge production in our field, while also noting some of the limitations of engaging zines in disciplinary spaces.