Between Crosswalks is my favourite zine I’ve ever made. It was an absolute labour of love and I spent more time on it than I have on any other zine I’ve made (so far). It started out as an exercise in drawing people who pass me on the street. I live in Toronto and there’s a lot of foot traffic of course. Being a surreptitious people watcher, I am always secretly looking and often thinking about the people who pass me by on the street. So I started drawing those people, first as quick sketches and then into fun comic style art. And that got me thinking about what the lives of these people were like and could it be a zine? 

Life stories are something I occasionally wonder about passerby when I’m sitting at a cafe or in the park, like “What a gorgeous outfit, I wonder what her career is like to afford such an amazing coat?” or “Why is that old guy so rushed and grumpy? Does he have a scary appointment to get to?” Some positive thoughts, some negative. And this is how Between Crosswalks came into being. Those fun street sketches combined with imagined life stories. It’s my first foray into a literary zine and it was hard! I’m not a great writer at all. I can barely write a decent poem.

I tried to expand my writing horizons by not just focusing on short stories but on how those stories could be told – like a TV script, a diary entry or a silly poem. For the lovely lady dog walker above, I used The Rashomon Effect – what really did happen on the walk? Everyone has a different perspective. What’s the truth? Trying all of the different story telling methods was hard but so worth it. I’ve been out of school for a gazillion years (literally 40+) so learning something new as a newbie writer was so good for me. 

My daughter took quite a few of the background photos I used too and that was a joy, to have her contribute. I hope that collaboration happens again!

Between Crosswalks is available in the store. It’s a 5″ x7″ zine and 32 pages, including cover.