For all our U.S. friends in the Pacific Northwest, here’s an event for you.

After a successful Indiegogo campaign to get the store off the ground, zinesters and Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine podcast co-hosts Alex Wrekk and Derek Neuland are opening their Portland Button Works storefront in Portland on Sunday, May 20th. The store will offer custom made buttons and bottle openers as well as zines, books and comics.

The store is located at 1322 N. Killingsworth and will be open seven days a week from 10am-8pm. The first 10 customers to the store on Sunday will receive a “super awesome gift bag full of surprises!”

MONTREAL

May 17th – 20th Montreal Underground Film Festival, various locations

This annual festival celebrates its 7th year promoting low-budget filmmakers, in experimental or avant-garde filmmaking.

Saturday May 19th – Sunday May 20th, 10am-5pm, Montreal Anarchist Bookfair 2012, CEDA, 2515 rue Delisle, and Georges-Vanier Cultural Centre, 2450 rue Workman, Free

The Anarchist Book fair — part of the Anarchist Festival in Montreal — takes place in two buildings and hosts screenings of alternative films and documentaries, workshops and presentations. There is also free childcare available via the Kid Zone. Donations are encouraged.

TORONTO

Tuesday May 15th 8pm, Art Bar Poetry Reading Series, Paupers Pub (2nd fl), 539 Bloor St. W, Free

Every week Art Bar meets to hold poetry readings. This week’s gathering will feature Jonathan Eskedjian, Sam Turner, and  Allison LaSorda.

Tuesday May 15th 7pm, Insomniac Press 2012 Spring Launch Party, Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W.

Join Insomniac Press as it celebrates the launch of its Spring 2012 literary titles. The event will feature new poetry books from Marcus McCann (The Hard Return) and Natalie Zina Walschots (Doom), and fiction from Jamie Popowich (Metraville), Liz Bugg (Oranges and Lemons), and Julie McIsaac (Entry Level).

Wednesday May 16th 7pm, Short Story Shindig, Type Books, 883 Queen St. W., Free

Coach House Books, House of Anansi, and Vehicule Press invite you to a Short Story Shindig at Type Books. Attendees will hear excerpts of three of this spring’s freshest new voices — Heather Birrell, reading from her hotly anticipated new collection Mad Hope; Daniel Griffin, reading from his dazzling debut collection Stopping for Strangers; and Carrie Snyder, reading from her acclaimed new book, The Juliet Stories. Host Kerry Clare (49th Shelf) will MC and lead a short discussion of short fiction following the readings.

Thursday May 17th 10pm, InsideOut Opening Gala, OCADU, 100 McCaul Street, 2nd fl Great Hall, $10

The kick-off for the 11-day InsideOut LGBT Film Festival will be held at OCADU, featuring performances by Yura (Viva Cabaret) and DJ Shane Percey of Grapefruit and Pop✮Machine.

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After gaining a little inspiration from the Chicago Zine Fest, Zine Crush hit the Internet calling on zinesters to submit blurbs about their infatuations with other zinesters. The creator of this site made it as “a place where other people can confess (with however much anonymity they choose) to their own Zine Crushes” but is ultimately hoping to turn these confessions into a zine. This warms our ziney hearts.

Echo Publishing is gathering information about zinesters and the motivation behind their work for a short research paper. Help them out by filling out this quick survey!

And this one’s from last week, but since we missed our round-up last week we couldn’t resist. This a super posi flash game based on the ’80s/’90s sitcom Perfect Strangers. It is a bright spot in the corner of the Internet just for you. We suggest you take a chance on this one. If you’re feeling a little low, let Balki boost your confidence.

If you weren’t previously in the mood to take off on a bicycle trip, after reading this zine you will be. The Motivist is an ongoing travel zine documenting the adventures of Alan Barbour and Sarah Evans as they “examine the geographic and provincial, exploring and mapping our world.” This issue finds them cycling through Quebec, from Tadoussac to rainy Saint-Andre, L’Islet-sur-Mer and on down to the bike-friendly Quebec City. To read it, you must first unfold it like a roadmap, revealing two large double-sided pages chock full of photos, drawings and a giant illustration of the dunes and cliffs surrounding Tadoussac Bay accompanied by instructions on how best to enjoy them. These are directions of course, not just on exploring what they do, but more generally on how to enjoy your own space, wherever it may be. Perusing this zine is a delight. Part travel diary, part guide and part essay, Evans and Barbour pack in everything from thoughts on souvenirs and anecdotes about cities to ruminations on the plight of beluga whales.
Reading their list of junk shops or marche-aux-puces to check out on the Cote-du-Sud, I’m reminded of my favourite place to spend a rainy weekend afternoon here in Nova Scotia. That would seem, after all, what The Motivist is after — motivating us to examine and cultivate a love of travel and adventure, even in our own backyards. This yellowed paper treasure trove is exactly the thing to spur you on to great discoveries. The first thing you will need is a subscription… and then maybe a bike. (Lindsay Rainingbird)

Perzine, volume two, issue two, Sarah Evans and Alan Barbour, 2649 Fuller Terrace, Halifax NS, B3K 3V8, $25 for a year’s subscription

Across Canada

Saturday May 5th – Sunday May 13th, MAYWORKS Festival of Working People and the Arts, various locations

A multidisciplinary arts festival celebrating the working class, bringing together their marginalized cultural activities to the centre stage, showcasing high quality art and artists that are politically and socially engaged, giving them a venue they might otherwise not have.

Winnipeg

Tuesday May 8th, Cabaret!, Winnipeg Poetry Slam, Pop Soda’s Coffeehouse, 625 Portage Ave.

A monthly open mic for performance art, music, comedy, poetry, video art, whatever.

Toronto

Monday May 7th doors 7:40pm, event starts at 8pm sharp, Trampoline Hall, The Garrison, 1197 Dundas St. W, $5 at the door

Trampoline Hall is an alternative lecture series featuring talks by people who are not experts on their chosen topic.  This month’s Trampoline Hall features talks by Jordan Lewis on “The art of sneaking into movies,” Yuula Benivolski with a talk called “I told you guys I was hardcore” and Damian Rogers whose lecture is entitled “Fuck the now: We need the past and future.

Tuesday May 8th 7:30pm, Cloaca Book Launch, Gladstone Hotel, Main Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street W, $5 or FREE with purchase of a book

As part of This is Not A Reading Series, Andrew Hood and Quill & Quire Review Editor Steven Beattie discuss the process and content of Hood’s new short story collection,  The Cloaca. There will be live music by Gregory Pepper and His Problems. …

I’ve spent the majority of this week at Hot Docs watching films about artists and makers and their drive to create.

Indie Game: The Movie followed game developers who pushed themselves to the brink of exhaustion and depression to create games that are an extension of themselves — reflecting their deepest thoughts and feelings. She Said Boom (which I will write more about in the weeks to come) looks back at the creative music and zine scenes in 1980s Toronto through the band Fifth Column. And, in its own way, We Are Legion and its reflection on the history of hacktivism and the group Anonymous illuminates issues of freedom of expression through another kind of creation that exists, in part, through computer screens. But of all the films I saw this past week, Beauty is Embarrassing (the story of artist Wayne White) was the most inspiring.

Wayne White is an American artist who came up in the 1980s, most famously creating puppets and set pieces for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Beyond the high profile work he has created for Playhouse and Beakman’s World as well as music videos for Peter Gabriel and Smashing Pumpkins, White made a more significant mark on the world through the humour and contagious enthusiasm he injects into all of his work. He challenges the pretensions of art critics and the established conventions of high-art with his giant sculpture/puppets and his cartoony artwork, the most recent of which is his series of word paintings that consist of witty text superimposed over more traditional paintings of scenery.

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