Behind the zines: The ghosts of Times Square - Kel Karpinski

Behind the Zines is our weekly series of zine readings by queer zine makers, and our latest episode featuring Kel Karpinski reading The Ghosts of Times Square is out today!

You may know Kel Karpinski from the Queer Sailors Zines series which is also found in the Queer Zine Library collection. Today they are reading from their zine The Ghosts of Times Square, a fascinating zine charting the representation of Times Square in film. With the disneyfication and corporatisation of current day Times Square, the zine turns to film to trace glimpses in movies. The zine focuses on the lost porn theares, the hustlers and sex work of a previous Times Square, mapping the traces of queer narratives left behind.

Kel R. Karpinski is the creator of Queer Sailors zines. They work as a Librarian and Assistant Professor at CUNY - City Tech in Brooklyn where they do research on masculinity, desire, performance and all things queer, especially as it relates to sailors, hustlers and Times Square. Kel is also co-organizer of the NY Queer Zine Fair.

You can find them and their zines online at hellotheresailor.etsy.com, @kel_karpinski on Twitter and @ask_me_again on Instagram. You can find more of their research - Performing Desire in Times Square: Sailors, Hustlers and Masculinity here: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etd...