The Midwest’s DIY Publishing Fest!
KC Zine Con is… (more than) the Midwest’s DIY Publishing fest!
Join the Zine Con Discord to stay up to date on local zine happenings, and for news about the fest. KC Zine Con #10 (!!!) will be held on October 11 and 12, 2025!
Zines are self-published DIY publications, typically made using a copy machine. Founded in 2014 by the Kansas City Zine Collective, Kansas City Zine Con is a one-day convention/festival held annually in Midtown Kansas City, Missouri, where participants exhibit, sell, and trade their independently published zines, comix, books, newspapers, anthologies, tracts, pamphlets, and DIY radical readables of many forms. Since 2015, we’ve been hosting some of the midwest’s coolest zinesters at our annual convention.
At KC Zine Con, anyone can come and wander the tables, chat with the incredible artists, learn at workshops and panels, make a whole host of new friends, and get tons of zines! In addition to the annual festival, KCZC facilitates writing, collage, and zine-making workshops in the community and has partnered with organizations such as the Kansas City Public Library, Girl Scouts, Imagine That!, and the Johnson County Public Library. As an entirely volunteer-run organization, KCZC exists to build and foster a DIY community of zine-makers and uplift underrepresented voices in our community. The majority of our tablers and organizers are LGBTQIA or queer, and we are driven by a vision of creating KCZC as a safer space for our community and people.
“The vibe was just right: more than a thousand friendly weirdos gathered to peruse chapbooks, comics, tote bags, screen prints, T-shirts, buttons, pottery, poetry collections, and old-school zines made of photocopied and stapled pages. To attend Zine Con is to feel a part of a beautiful artistic community beginning to break through.” – The Pitch “Best of Kansas City” 2017
In addition to the annual fest, we also hold workshops in the community. We’re an entirely volunteer-run organization, and do what we do out of a love for zine culture.
