Emily Alden Foster

HAMMEMORY is a one-of-a-kind zine made for a San Francisco Zine Fest Comics & Zines Marathon. We were given one hour to create a zine. I pre-wrote the text in the morning and made everything else in the allotted hour. I'm not proud of the Miss Piggy drawing, but everything else turned out surprisingly well considering I didn't use any pencils except to label what was supposed to go on each page. 

This zine is all about movies of the 1930s, as watched by viewers in 2015. Some of them hold up really well! Others not so much! Either way they're super interesting to talk about, hence this zine.

Featuring comics / collages / writing about
Baby Face (1933) 
Blondie (1938+) 
Busby Berkeley (the director) 
Dinner at Eight (1933) 
Dracula (1931) 
Fast Workers (1933) 
Mannequin (1937) 
My Man Godfrey (1936) 
Stage Door (1937) 
The Thin Man series (1934+) 
and movies of the 1930s in general.

Contributed by
Emily Alden Foster
Lindsey Simard
Kane Lynch
Tommaso Sciortino
Gabrielle Gamboa

1/4 size
56 pages
b/w interior
shimmering golden cover

I illustrated this zine about feminist hackerspaces. Amy Burek wrote the text, which is based on a paper by Sarah Fox. You can download a free .pdf or get a print copy from Sarah. More info here. 

The world's best and only crossword puzzle / mad lib / coloring book / literary zine. 

Fill in the blanks in the stories and poems mad-lib style with random words, or find the words that were originally in the blanks by working crossword puzzles. Each of the four issues uses the same theme applied to different writing, and with different puzzles and artwork. 

The series features writing and artwork by Bob Dynamite, Keith Ecker, Channing Kennedy, Jessica James Lansdon, Gregg Lewis, Lindsey Simard, Lauralee Sparling, Jacqueline Suskin, Allen Talbert, Barbara Jean Walsh, Rachel Weiner (now McElroy), Jennie Yim, and me. 

All of the puzzles were made by me. 

Get a copy of #3 here or #4 here. 

The Important Business Ladies' Guide to Important Business for Ladies has comics, personal essays, and hilarious jokes all dealing with the general theme of women and work. A collaboration with Jennie Yim and Abigail Young, this zine is about all of our jobs, our worst jobs, our moms and grandmas' jobs, sexual harassment, having it all, and lots more about navigating the world of work as a woman.

56 pages
5.5" x 8.5" 
black and white
cardstock covers

Get a copy here. 

"It's a substantial, funny, and philosophical look into the state of workplace feminism in the early 21st century"

- Paul Constant, Seattle Review of Books

Onomastics is the study of names, and this zine is all about names for things. 

Questions addressed in this zine include: Why are there so many nicknames for hot dogs and so few for french fries? Why call a cat just one thing when it doesn't care if it has a million names? Why use the right word for something when it's so much more fun to make up a nonsensical one? 

Embroidered (and then photocopied) illustrations 
21 pages (one-sided) 
cardstock cover 
hand-stitched binding

Get a copy here. 

In 2011 I spent a week going to museums in Washington D.C.

In 2014, after thinking about it for 2.5 years, I made some drawings and wrote some words about the things I saw and heard and felt while I was there.

Highlights not pictured include Kermit the Frog, a horrifying James Turrell installation, a Nam June Paik exhibit, Julia Child's kitchen, and lots more. Mostly from art museums, some from American History and Natural History museums.

This zine is 5.5"x8.5" 
Cardstock cover, 20 pages, black and white 
22 drawings, 2 photographs, lots of words

Get a copy here. 

This zine is all about mail.

Issue #1 "MarMar Sets an Example" focuses on my grandma, who was an avid mail-sender throughout most of her life. It's also about memory and how memories are passed down and become distorted through photographs. I also talk a little bit about her experience with alzheimer's, how I'm sad that I didn't ask her more things about her life when I had the chance, and special trips to the bank to get $2 bills with my grandpa.

Issue #2 "The Frequency Mailers' Club" is about a group of friends who mailed random nonsense and bedtime stories to one another weekly, and how the mail and the friendships eventually dwindled. 

Each zine comes with two envelopes, handmade from pages of books and calendars, to encourage you to send some mail of your own.

Get a copy of #1 here and #2 here. 

A zine collecting excerpts from eight of the year’s finest book reports about totally real (ok, totally fake) books. The cover of each book is reproduced in glorious full color next to the report. Titles include The Very, Very Handsome Vampire, The Cloud Who Was Afraid, and The Big Hog Collar Competition.

A perfect gift for boosters of our great nation's burgeoning book report industry!

16 pages 
4.25" x 5.5" 
full color illustrations 
cardstock cover (colors vary)

Get a copy here. 

Well, would you? Would you drink a soda made of soda water and orange and dill? What about kumquats and human brains? Fettucine and nutmeg?

Explore your deep-seated feelings about sodas, learn about and create exciting new flavors, and discuss which ones you would be willing to drink. Read it aloud to your friends and force them to choose from the mix-your-own soda flavors page at the back.

This zine is based on a game I invented for long car trips, where each person thinks of an outlandish soda flavor and the other passengers decide whether or not they would drink it. Each page is a hand-crafted masterpiece of soda art - alternating between original paper cutouts and watercolor paintings of craft-brewed imaginary sodas.

Great for kids or adults, especially foodies and unusual beverage enthusiasts!

10 pages 
4.25”x5.5” 
full color

Get a copy here. 

A tiny zine in which two white owls, half a bar of soap, and a blindfolded child with a baseball bat say hello to one another, spiritually, in this absurd photo-comic.

At the end there is a very short (true) story of the mysterious disappearance of one of the owls.

16 pages 
4.25" x 2.75" 
full color 
machine-sewn binding

Get a copy here. 

In the world of the short film Gold Diggers of 1829, Paxinosa Easton is a cartoonishly evil golden retriever. Now the real Paxinosa Easton, a golden retriever born in Pennsylvania in the year 1827, wants to tell his side of the story and clear his name. A tragic tale of ridiculously named puppies getting and losing jobs, dreaming of fame on the vaudeville stage, and facing horrible workplace discrimination because of their species.

Watch Paxinosa's plea for you to hear his side of the story and just try to resist those sad golden retriever eyes.

Illustrated with adorable puppy drawings, among other things.

12 pages 
5.5" x 8.5" 
black and white 
yellow cardstock covers