Zines
Nothing Was The Cause of Their Deaths
All across the United States, mass incarceration is taking the lives and livelihood of individuals and families. Legally innocent people are dying in government custody at an alarming rate. In 2022, 27 people died in Harris County jails. Inspired by a year-long residency with Civil Rights Corps – where award-winning writer KB Brookins met with lawyers, community organizers, and artists working on ending the Harris County jail crisis. Nothing Was the Cause of Their Deaths examines the jail system for what it is, bringing special attention to the atrocities that have been normalized in Harris County using research and the craft of poetry. Nothing Was the Cause of Their Deaths is a indictment of corrupt jail systems, as well as a homage to those demanding justice for themselves and their communities in Harris County and around the nation. This zine was released in June 2023.
Copies of Nothing Was the Cause of Their Deaths are available via the links below, and through either the Texas After Violence Project or the Houston Abolitionist Collective.
Cover by Jazz Bell
A New Relationship to Pain
A 17-page zine of poems on transitioning during the global COVID-19 pandemic by KB Brookins, initially released through LibroMobile in 2021. This zine an early glimpse into pieces that would eventually make up KB’s books, How To Identify Yourself with a Wound and Freedom House.
Remaining physical copies of this zine are available to check out at the University of Texas at Austin’s Black Queer Studies Collection
Cover by @drunkbruja
In Another Life
A collaborative, 16-page zine between KB Brookins and Bei Jie Si (also known as Jazz Bell) that was initially released through a 50-copy run in 2019. This zine details poems and images centering Blackness, sapphic longing, and gentrification. This zine an early glimpse into pieces that would eventually make up KB’s books, How To Identify Yourself with a Wound and Freedom House.
Cover by Jazz Bell