 By Gib Manrique
Gib Manrique (he/they) is a writer, poet, and journalist occupying a space in the Arts District of Downtown Phoenix. He has written for several student news publications and independently published his own work. He also refers to himself as transgendermexican4000, as a lot of his work is related to those identities within his life.
You can follow him on his social media with @gib.nky and listen to his comedic queer history podcast on Spotify titled “That’s Gay!” Gib is an intern with Wasted Ink Zine Distro and will be writing monthly for our blog through 2025 and into 2026.
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 Zines really do make the best gifts for people because they're so specialized and personal! When you pick up zines from Wasted Ink, you're directly supporting hundreds of zine makers and Phoenix's only zine shop! We put together a cute lil gift guide to help you pick out neat zines for your loved ones and maybe a few for you too!
AKA a new outlook on life and appreciation for communityBY Gib Manrique  Photo by Jose Romero of live screen printing at PHX Zine Fest, October 26, 2025. Hello, everyone. My name is Gib Manrique, and I had literally never even interacted with a zine before August. This is an interesting point because I am currently an intern at Wasted Ink Zine Distro, and was one of many volunteers helping around this year’s PHX Zine Fest. With these kinds of shiny credentials, one can assume I had been a part of the zine community for years. I, obviously, have not.
I am a student at Arizona State University, majoring in Journalism and Mass Communications, which is a very interesting major at a very interesting time in society right now. It seems like the idea of journalism and the standards set by my school’s namesake, Walter Cronkite, have been lost to the bloody canines of capitalism, and grinded into pieces by the 24-hour news cycle. This is all been perpetuated of course, by the issues within our government, such as what occurred on October 15th, when dozens of reporters left the White House following the “government-imposed restrictions on their work,” according to the Associated Press. With the way the world is looking, unless I want to sell my soul to become some rightwing grifter reporting intern, or start creating AI-generated fantasy novels, I am screwed. So, what does this have to do with PHX Zine Fest? Well, I think PZF is the perfect example of what journalism is meant to be and the way journalists should strive to work. A look into Wasted Ink's monthly event exploring old fashioned tools, with new fashioned thinkingBY Gib Manrique  Oh, typewriters. What a curious look into writings of the past, and a wonderful companion in any book or coffee shop.
Now, I am not sure how many people reading this have ever even written something with a typewriter before. I have only done it twice, once at a zine making event promoting harvesting rainwater, and then again at a display at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. These are two very likely places for typewriters to be. An exploration into the complexities of grief, and the community because of it |
