Behind the zines: Hold me Keira Knightley - Melissa

Behind the Zines is our weekly series of queer zine readings. This week’s episode features a reading from Hold me Keira Knightley by Melissa, also featuring a poem by Alice Godliman

We love fanzines! They are a way tfor people to express their love for art and music and pop culture and people, and queer fanzines in particular are a way of reclaiming pop culture for ourselves.

Hold me Keira Knightley: a zine about loving period dramas (when yr also queer and/or POC) is a zine exploring Melissa's love of period dramas in film and television. The zine explores internalised racism and classism, queer crushes, and Keira Knightley. The zine compares the BBC drama Gentleman Jack with historical facts about Anne Lister and celebrates queer representation in historical period dramas, featuring a sonnet by Alice. The zine also gives a rundown of representation of race with depictions of slavery in historical dramas compared with the BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy's The Long Song.

This reading also includes a poem by Alice Godliman

Melissa - pronouns she/her - makes zines about her love for (problematic) pop culture; she is one fifth of Overhere Zine Fest, a collective of queer poc who want to create a platform for poc creatives in the north west. She's currently writing a choose-your-own-adventure zine that may or may not be a total disaster. Follow @melissaeatsokrafries @overherezinefest on instragram

Alice Godliman is a writer, poet, performer and workshop facilitator based in Manchester. Her work often deals with nostalgia, smashing the patriarchy, and loving women, through the lens of mythology or fairytales. She’s performed for International Women’s Day and Reclaim the Night as well as events around London, Manchester and at the Edinburgh Fringe. You can read her work in Dear Damsels, Twist in Time Mag, and the upcoming anthology Trigger Warning by Wide Eyes Publishing. You can find more of her work at @alicegodliman on twitter or instagram