The Shape of a Story

Welcome to Zine Machine! We’re a self-publishing group of rebels spreading the word on things we think you should know. Obscure cat breeds? Survival tips for a zombie apocalypse? Favorite board games? All must-read zines.

In this workshop, we only have one rule: we’re all analog all the time. Think collage, hand-drawn images, markers, and glue. Once you lay out your first edition, we’ll use the time-honored way of mass-producing your Zine: the photocopier. Zines may sound like a simple idea, but they have started revolutions and educated the masses. Be loud, be crafty, and tell the world what it needs to know!

When you daydream, does your pen run free? In The Shape of a Story, those in-the-moment doodles and random drawings can be the start of something epic. Here, your abstract blobs, kitty-unicorn-whale hybrids, and silly faces, go into a visual storytelling laboratory that we build together. We’ll transform accidental shapes into creatures, creatures into characters, characters into worlds, and worlds into absolutely original stories.

Writing and illustration don’t have to live in separate worlds! When we put them together, our creativity goes off the charts. Join us in The Shape of a Story and totally transform. So storytelling scientists, what will come out of your creative lab?

When we think of storytelling through time, what usually comes to mind is oral history and the written word, but storytelling through arts and crafts has made just as big an impact! 

Crafting Stories is a storytelling class made tactical! We’ll explore all different kinds of handicrafts throughout history, like bookbinding, weaving, paper sculptures, and clay modeling, to tell tales that spring to life. In the end, these storytellers will have molded a whole world with their hands and have a story to go along with it, all the while learning some really special and useful skills along the way. Artmakers and writers, unite! Every young person is a visual storyteller — Crafting Stories will give them all new skills to share their wonderful imaginations with us all.