Just Like a Human! 18 stories about animals

Monster Emporium Press made a book featuring ants! cats! dogs! slugs! snails! fishes! lions! cockroaches! gazelles! foxes! wasps! and many more in/glorious creatures.

Stories by Michael Reid and Mira Mattar, illustrations by Kathryn Corlett.

If you wanna buy it contact us here or email hive@monsteremporiumpress.co.uk

It's only a fiver (+postage) and it's like, totes amazing.

There are a few copies at the ICA at the moment and hopefully more places soon...

Updates! News! Appearances!

We have been busy Monsters and here's what we've been busy with:

Firstly we're making an illustrated book of short and extremely short stories about animals. Mike and I are writing the pieces and the very talented Ms Corlett is illustrating them. Take a peek at some of her work here and read a story that'll be featured in the book here. Hopefully it will be out in April.

Secondly, we'll be at Winchester School of Art's New Art of Making Books conference on Wednesday 20th March. The title is a reference to Mexican writer Ulises Carrión's 1975 text of the same name wherein he muses and riffs around ideas of what a book is, what a text is and how to make new an old art.

An extract is below and the full text can be found here:

A book may be the accidental container of a text, the structure of which is irrelevant to the book: these are the books of bookshops and libraries.
A book can also exist as an autonomous and self-sufficient form, including perhaps a text that emphasizes that form, a text that is an organic part of that form: here begins the new art of making books.

In the old art the writer judges himself as being not responsible for the real book. He writes the text.
The rest is done by the servants, the artisans, the workers, the others.
In the new art writing a text is only the first link in the chain going from the writer to the reader. In the new art the writer assumes the responsibility for the whole process.

In the old art the writer writes texts.
In the new art the writer makes books.
To make a book is to actualize its ideal space-time sequence by means of the creation of a parallel sequence of signs, be it linguistic or other.

Ulises Carrión

Finally, we'll be at DIY Cultures, a zine and artists' book fair at Rich Mix in London on Sunday 7 April - but more on that nearer the time!

International Alternative Press Fair 2

Oh my gosh we are *so* good at updating our blog aren't we?!

Here is a review of last weekend's IAPF2.

It was awesome, here are some low quality photos or our stall and our friend Emix Regulus' stall...

Check out all this awesome shit!

Wow

New Joss Whedon zine, an uncritical appraisal...

Our ever growing collection of tiny short stories, poems, songs and picture books

Microcosmic orbits rule

Zine fest!

This Saturday at The Amersham Arms!
It's going to be great...
Go here for all the info!

South East London Zine Fest

Hey there avid readers!

So, Monster Emporium Press are back in the game and busy planning the first ever South East London Zine Festival! WHOOP! We're working on it with Jimi Gherkin of Alternative Press fame, Peter Willis of London Zine Symposium fame and a whole gang of zine and small press enthusiasts. It's going to be RAD, website is here. Go, apply, be merry!

Here is the first flyer designed by the talented Ellena Donlon...

The Monsters are also back in the 'office' (or: Kathryn's living room) planning some new books of poetry, lyrics and pictures. Watch this space...

Dates for your diaries! aka lots of fun stuff coming up...

Hey there Monster lovers, so here are a bunch of dates you *may* want to note down. How else will you get your fix of MEP goodness? Exactly. So...

We will be of course at the International Alternative Press Fair this weekend! It's going be very exciting and is the first time Alt Press are going international. It's a mere £2 to get in and it takes place at Conway Hall (25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL) from 10am - 4pm on both Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 May.

There may even be cake...

ALSO We will be at the Sassoon Gallery on Sunday 5 June as part of their show, Holy Sh!t: The Visions of the Walworth Jumpers which sounds awesome and is in Peckham (yes! South London 4 eva).

AND there is a zine festival at the Women's Library (East London) on Saturday 25 June which looks pretty exciting...we're not organised enough to have applied for this yet so we will confirm closer to the date. But still...

FINALLY (and similarly we have yet to apply but sounds very interesting...) on 22-24 July there's a slightly more literary/academic event taking place at Galerie 8 (Hackney) where many Chris Marker films will be shown and there will be all sorts of artists' book and self-published goodness.

WOAH!

International Alternative Press Fair // THIS WEEKEND!!!

Its gonna be the bomb! Conway Hall, Euston. Here is a link. Come say hi!

‘Mission is what matters’

We’re planning a new fanzine, taking a different object of obsession / adoration each issue. The first issue will be dedicated to JOSS WHEDON, creator of more good things than I can list without making this sentence too long.

Open submissions. We’d like fan fiction, articles, drawings, blurred stalkery pictures of the man himself or affiliates, etc. etc. Deadline: 20th June. No money made will go to any individuals, just back in the pot for more zines. Contributors will get a free copy.

Images should be .jpg, minimum 300dpi, maximum 10mb file, suitable for B&W printing. Documents should be .doc (please, no .docx files), maximum 1500 words.

Please send subs to hive@monsteremporiumpress.co.uk

Good morning USA! (well afternoon...) & NEWS!

Most of our stock is now available at Baltimore's amazing Atomic Books! Yeah! You can also buy online.

We've finally finished Girls Who Fight 3 and it'll be on sale at the London Zine Symposium tomorrow.

Plus we've got a new book for our fiction series by the enigmatic M. Nakamara which will also be available tomorrow.

After that we'll be restocking at the usual places, (and hopefully some new ones...).

Watch this space!

London Zine Symposium & Girls Who Fight 3

Final touches happening to Girls Who Fight today, proofing and then printing tomorrow - tis looking mighty fine - thanks again to all our contributors! Remember its going to be on sale on the 17th April at the London Zine Symposium, you can get a sneak peak of this issues cover design over at official GWF artist Mimi Leung's blog. But remember to head on down to Brick Lane on the 17th to grab yourself a copy of the real thing!

London Zine Symposium 2011

Zines, comix, art and radical culture

Sunday 17th April 2011 12-6pm,
Entry: Free/donation
The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street, London E1 5LJ

Update!

Yo!
We've been super busy putting together Girls Who Fight 3 and are once again excited and impressed by the quality of submissions!

We hope to have the 'zine ready by the London Zine Symposium on 17 April 2010. You should come! All of you. AND we'll be at the first International Alternative Press Fair on 27-19 May 2010. This is going to be a massive and hopefully super fun event with bands and zines and cakes galore. Be there!

MEP at For Books' Sake

The lovely Jane Bradley has written a piece about us for her website.  Check it out!

News: Tom Moore & Housmans

Our very own Tom Moore - artist behind Politicians - has made a new book extolling the many virtues of Jayne Mansfield. It is for sale at Crystal Palace's wonderful Bookseller Crow and available for free download over at his blog. Swoon.

And, Girls Who Fight 1 & 2 are now available at Housmans for a mere £3! Plus don't forget we need your submissions for Girls Who Fight 3. Go go go!

Girls Who Fight 3: More info!

Following on from the previous post we just wanted to say: please send a max of 6 images and writing of no longer than 1500 words.

Deadline is still 1st March 2011.

Send entries to hive@monsteremporiumpress.co.uk

Girls Who Fight: Issue 3. Call for submissions.

Following the success of Girls Who Fight issues 1 and 2, Monster Emporium Press are now preparing for GWF3 and we need YOU! Girls Who Fight started as a group of friends gathering without boys, just to see what happened. And it turned out we had a lot to say that we weren't necessarily saying. A zine workshop run by Plan B magazine's Frances May Morgan and Everett True spurred us on to put these things on paper.

Now we need your contributions. We want: fiction, non-fiction, illustration, poetry, recipes, photographs, jokes, games, polemics - you name it as long as it's of a high quality.

We are not looking explicitly for feminist content but of course wouldn't turn it away.

The deadline is 1^st March 2011 and we're looking for contributions from girls only please.

Also please bear in mind we may not have the facilities to print the whole zine in colour so make sure your work will transpose well to grayscale.

If you haven't seen our previous zines you can download them here.

Just to keep you in the loop; Girls Who Fight issues 1 and 2 are on sale in bookshops across London (we're planning for lots more!), online and at most zine/self publishing fairs in London and Brighton. So far they've featured Nina Power, Mimi Leung and Katherine Hardy.

Please send entries to hive@monsteremporiumpress.co.uk
If you want to send printed material (images only please) just email and we'll tell you where to send it! 

Handmade & Bound: Art & Zine fair

THIS SUNDAY!
We will be selling our zines and books plus posters and maybe some other stuff!
All details on flyer...

Two new reviews of 'Fanzines'

Here and here.

In fact, while I'm on the topic if you haven't seen DIY or DIE, do it now!

MEP in Thames and Hudson book

All three monsters went to the launch of Teal Trigg's new book Fanzines at LCC yesterday. Our Girls Who Fight (issue 1) is included in the future of 'zines section and we're very proud!

The Pop Up Zine library featured some original copies of the legendary Sniffin' Glue alongside literary magazines like Pen Pusher, our own little They Did (issue 3), Pink Mince, Smoke and many, many more.

Plus Teal is guest posting over at It's Nice That this week...

Free wine and a fist in the air!

They Did 3

Open publication - Free publishing - More zine

Literary Magazines in the Independent

Featuring Ambit and Stingray, two of our friends from Work in Progress.