Adam Rathe started writing zines as a teenager near Washington, D.C. Though he’s gone on to work at a number of not-Xeroxed newspapers and magazines, he still thinks they should all be available for $1 + stamp or a trade.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the forthcoming The Queen of the Night. He is the editor of Hot Asian Singles, a contributing writer at The Morning News and blogs at Koreanish.

Alexis Saarela is a television enthusiast and improv comedian who performs at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, The Magnet Theater, and The People’s Improv Theater, as well as at festivals around the country including the Philadelphia Improv Festival and the Women in Comedy Festival. She spends her days working in science fiction publishing.

Anthony Pappalardo is the coauthor of Live…Suburbia, just published by powerHouse, and of Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music. He also wrote for Slap magazine from 1997 to 2002. Pappalardo’s writing has been published in Alternative Press, Mass Appeal, and Magnet. He currently records music as the Italian Horn and lives in New York City.

Chip Rowe published Chip’s Closet Cleaner (1989-1996) and edited The Book of Zines: Readings From the Fringe.

Choire Sicha published My Memory and Who Am I or Addicted to Love and other zines under the nom de zine The Patty Hearst Memorial Public Art Collective in the very early ’90s. A bit more than 10 years later he had his first newspaper byline. A bit fewer than 20 years later, he sold his first book to HarperCollins.

Courtney E. Smith is the author of Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time. She worked for 8 years in the music programming department of MTV, developing bands like Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins, and Vampire Weekend.

Dave Harper is a curator at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he oversees visual arts programming, and also works as a freelance advisor, curator, and writer. Recent projects include a series of exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and serving as the first curatorial fellow for the noted arts blog Art Fag City. He blogs at Nobody’s Diary and still really loves Team Dresch.

Douglas Murray created many zines and was in many bands in the ’90s. Very few made it past a conversation. The few that did never lasted longer than one appearance.

Drew Katchen is a web producer, blogger, and photographer for msnbc.com and a sometimes-contributor to WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show. He’s responsible for such estimable publications as Journal of the Bleeding Man and Soil Lip. In high school he also contributed to Mud Puddle, and in college he collaborated on a one-sheet called Fuck Straight Edge.

Elisabeth Donnelly currently resides in upstate New York, where she is working on the great American superhero novel. She spends her spare time straddling the border of Massachusetts and New York, interviewing MacArthur grant winners, and planning her future life in a shack by the ocean.

Gillian Reagan is public editor at Capital New York. She didn’t know what zines were when she made her first one.

Jessanne Collins published Eater’s Digest, a short-lived but prescient publication for the locavore elementary school set, in 1987, followed by Standard (1994-1996), All the Rage (1997), and Zero Degrees (1998-2000), after which the next saddle-stitch title she edited was Playgirl (2007-2008). (Long story.)

Jim Romenesko published Obscure Publications—a zine about zines—for about a decade. He also published a book of morgue reports called Death Log; former columnist Bob Greene said it “may be the year’s most gruesome and unusual book.” He’s now preparing to launch JimRomenesko.com.

Joe Pompeo is a reporter who covers media (including zines!) for Capital New York. Before that he reported for Yahoo! News, Business Insider, and the New York Observer. His first zine, Apple Brown Betty, hit the distro circuit in 1996.

John Yee grew up in Tacoma, Washington, where he played in the punk band Slingshot and wrote a zine called fude. He is senior web designer for Marvel Entertainment in NYC.

Maria Gargiulo is an editor who finally lives in Seattle. She still visits the suburbs every weekend to see her big Italian family.

Matthew Lawrence is a writer, curator, magazine publisher, and underemployed dogwalker in Providence, Rhode Island. He copublishes Headmaster, the biannual art magazine for man-lovers, and runs the literary events organization Not About The Buildings. His website is gloomypharmacy.com.

Marisa Meltzer is a writer in Brooklyn.

Mimi Zeiger is editor and publisher of loud paper, a zine and blog dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse. Maximum mouthy, she contributed the essay “On Content, Fandom and How James Dean, Jarvis Cocker, and James Murphy Changed Architectural Publishing” to the Archizines exhibition catalogue. It’s all true.

Noah Michelson is an editor for The Huffington Post. He holds an MFA from New York University and has published poems and other work in publications like The New Republic, Details, Out, and The Best American Erotic Poetry from 1800 to the Present. He’s a sucker for a good ghost story.

Ryan Parks is a boatbuilder in Boston. He started a zine called Movement that he never finished, was an editorial assistant at Akashic Books, and played guitar in a band called Batting Cage.

Sarah Malone’s writing has appeared in The Awl, Open City, The Good Men Project, The Common, and elsewhere. She lives online at sarahwrotethat.com

Sheila McClear is a reporter at the New York Post and the author of the memoir The Last of the Live Nude Girls. Her zine was called Old Weird America.

Zach Baron used to be punk.