The topics rage from septic tanks to how a novice could properly butcher a cow, but that's the fun of zines.

Friday, the Salt Lake City Main Library hosted an alternative press (zine) festival to highlight the creative works of Salt Lake and provide a forum for newbies to enter into the art and get people talking.

Clinton Watson, selector for the Alternative Press Collection for the Salt Lake City Public Library, said zines are a powerful forum to start encouraging creative responses to local topics.

"Zines, as much as any publication or genre, are a great form of communication for a subculture," Watson said. "When people typically make a zine, authors leave their personal contact information, and it gets people talking."

The Salt Lake City Library hosts the largest collection of zines in the nation's public library system, Watson said. And he is hoping the collection can continue to grow. Festival workshops aimed to help participants learn how to bind books and create zines of their own.

Mason Pratt, a contributor to the "Savor the Steps" zine and a student at West High School, said the festival provided all the "do-it-yourself" instruction necessary to begin producing a publication. But for now, Pratt said, he'd just like to remain a contributor.

"The work is really fun. It's nice to see a bunch of people collaborate and get a finished product," Pratt said. "I don't know much about the genre, but it's great to meet people who share their work without any idea of profit."

During the event, zinesters, representatives from alternative publications and the public were mingling in the main library lobby. Local artists at the festival included "The Mormon Worker," "Savor the Steps," "Enormous Rooms" and "The Leviathan."

Watson said the library accepts submissions from most authors looking to add their work to the collection. Currently the collection includes zines from across the United States, Australia and many countries in Europe.

Alex Wrekk, the author of the zine "Brain Scan," was an attendee. She said she has been creating and producing zines for 15 years and has reached a point where she must create them.

Wrekk started creating zines as a teenager to reach outside of Utah by sharing her zines with other zinesters in a pen pal format.

"Zines are a way to share and hopefully write in a way other people can understand," Wrekk said. "The media is so centralized, but zines break that and let people tell their stories."

For Wrekk and other writers at the festival, zines are a way for people to connect with other communities and strengthen their own. Yet, Wrekk had a difficult time defining the essence of zine.

"It's hard to pin down what a zine is. It is such a personal thing that there is no established category," Wrekk said.

For more information or to start you own zine, visit the Salt Lake City Library Alternative Press at altpress .slcpl.org or e-mail Clinton Watson at cwatson@slcpl.org.

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E-mail: cnorleln@desnews.com