Xyra Harper, Capitol Crisis, Issue 1, November 1980 Courtesy D.C. punk and indie fanzine collection

The mission at the D.C. punk and indie fanzine collection (DCPIFC) at the University of Maryland–College Park’s (UMCP) Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library is to collect, preserve, and share self-published materials about the punk and indie music scene in the Washington, DC area from the 1970s through the present day.

The collection began with a forward-thinking employee, John Davis, now curator of Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland. He was inspired by the founding of the Riot Grrrl Collection, which began documenting the early 1990s decentralized feminist punk movement at New York University (NYU) in 2009. Lisa Darms, senior archivist at NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections at the time, went on to publish The Riot Grrrl Collection, based on materials in the archives, in 2013. Davis also knew of other zine archives at Duke University and Iowa State University.

“I just really admired the work they were doing. I was excited and inspired by it,” Davis noted. He had just completed graduate school in 2013 and started at UMCP libraries as a temporary worker, and proposed establishing a punk and indie fanzine collection to Vincent Novara, curator of Special Collections in Performing Arts at the time. Not only did it help that other institutions had their own zine collections, but Novara understood the value of these materials. He himself was a musician and had been part of the 1990s punk music scene in DC.

Novara gave Davis the go-ahead to start the collection. The first donation was Davis’s own personal trove of DC punk and indie zines. Like Novara, Davis had also been part of the scene; he was the former drummer for the punk band Q And Not U and other bands: Georgie James, Title Tracks, Corm, the Elusive, and Paint Branch. He started making his own fanzines in the 1990s when he was in high school, put out and distributed records, and amassed his own collection of zines, flyers, and other related ephemera.

To grow the burgeoning collection, Davis reached out to members of the community via social media and asked them to consider donating their materials. In 2013, it was relatively unheard of to collect items related to punk culture for archives (aside from a few enterprising university special collections). In response to Davis’s query, people were enthusiastic about finding a home for their materials to be preserved and accessed by students and researchers. Unfortunately, in the past five to seven years donations have slowed as the collectors’ market for punk and indie memorabilia has skyrocketed.

While the acquisition of new zines may have slowed, the 25 other punk-related collections at Special Collections in the Performing Arts—which include photography, flyers, recordings, and correspondence—have grown. But the bulk of the fanzine material is housed under the DCPIFC.

DIY PUBLISHING

Michael Layne Heath, Vintage Violence fanzine, Issue 1, March 1977 Courtesy D.C. punk and indie fanzine collection

Fanzines are “small-run amateur periodicals created by fans, for other fans, and they can be for any number of fan communities,” Davis explained. They initially emerged in the 1930s and ’40s for fans of science fiction and comics, and grew to include rock ‘n’ roll zines in the 1960s and punk zines in the 1970s. For the burgeoning punk culture, it was the way fans could communicate with one another in the decades before the internet, especially since mainstream media were not writing frequently—or only writing very sensationalistic articles—about the punk scene.

“I was just concerned that these materials were being lost,” Davis said. “The numbers were dwindling.” He was worried that people’s collections might get ruined in a flood, lost in a move, or thrown out. These fanzines were self-published, often by teenagers. They typically had limited print runs, as few as 10 or as many as 200 issues, and were often distributed by hand by their creators at concerts, record shops, school hallways, and cafeterias.

“It was a grassroots thing,” Davis explained. “Professionalism, in the case of punk fanzines, wasn’t that important.” In the late 1980s and ’90s some creators started using desktop publishing software to make more professional-looking zines, but many elected to hand-draw and photocopy their publications.

The majority of fanzines in the collection are from 1981–98, with a focus on the DC area, including the District of Columbia itself, Northern Virginia, and parts of Maryland. Within the collection there are zines by local creators and zines about the DC music scene.

The earliest items in the collection are It’s Only a Movie, published in 1976, and Vintage Violence, printed in early 1977. The zines’ creators, Norm DeValliere and Michael Layne Heath, respectively, lived in the DC area and corresponded with each other through the mail. At that point there were not many live punk shows in the area; most of their exposure to the music was through the radio.

Riot Grrl zines from the early 1990s are also housed in the collection. The movement started in Washington State, with women who wanted to take the DIY and political spirit of punk and fuse it with their feminist visions. Two feminist punk bands heralded the start of the Riot Grrls, Bikini Kill (established in 1990) and Bratmobile (1991).

The Riot Grrl movement soon spread to DC thanks to Molly Neuman, one of the members of Bratmobile, who was originally from DC before attending the University of Oregon and later transferring to Evergreen College in Olympia, WA. Neuman and other Riot Grrls helped foster the growth of the Riot Grrl spirit in the DC area. (For more detailed info, see this essay about the scene in 1991.)

UMCP’s Riot Grrl zines include Bikini Kill issue 2 and Fake issue 0; the Amy Heneveld collection, which includes several zines under the Riot Grrl name along with Riot Grrl fliers and newsletters; and the Sharon Cheslow punk flyers collection, with promotional materials related to Riot Grrl bands.

SPREADING THE WORD

Amanda Huron , Cristina Calle, Andrea Blatchford, Natalie Avery, Brickthrower Issue 3 Cover, 1997 Courtesy of Ian MacKaye digital collection of punk fanzines

Accessibility is a significant part of the DCPIFC. Davis did not want the zines to gather dust in a box or sit under glass; he wanted these materials available to anyone interested in looking at them. But searching the collections was not easy. Davis decided to create a hub for the digitized materials allowing people to access the entire zine, as well as learn more about the context of what was going on in DC and national politics at the time. That way students, researchers, and the public could browse the collection, including zines, ephemera, photos, and oral histories, by year and formats (zine, flyer, photograph, or oral history).

Davis began building the digital hub “Persistent Vision” during the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, and it went live in fall 2022. The hub is still growing as more punk-related materials and essays are added to the website. Users can read through entire issues and look at old photos and flyers, as well as listen to relevant oral histories.

The name “Persistent Vision” comes from a song by the DC band Rites of Spring. “Using that song name appealed to me because it reflects the innovative tradition and enduring nature of the DC punk scene,” said Davis, “while referring back to some of the best music to come out of the community.”

The Ian MacKaye digital collection of punk fanzines is another related UMCP collection. Ian MacKaye is a former member of the band Fugazi and co-owner of Dischord Records who collected fanzines from 1978 to 2020. Davis had approached MacKaye about donating his collection, but MacKaye was only ready to part with copies that he had in triplicate or more.

Davis recommended that Special Collections in Performing Arts collaborate with MacKaye to inventory, index, digitize, and rehouse his zines so people could access them. Davis worked on the project for several years, starting in 2014 or 2015, cataloging and digitizing the materials at MacKaye’s office at Dischord Records. Davis digitized 1,500 zines, which can be accessed through the Special Collections website.

With the MacKaye collection and the DC punk and indie fanzine collections, Davis felt obligated to contact fanzine creators to ask their permission to make their work available online. He was able to contact many creators, but not everyone—some used pseudonyms, only used a first name, or had a very common name. While most people agreed, a few did not, and Davis would immediately take the material offline.

While zine-making declined in popularity in the 2000s due to the popularity of the internet and the ease of connecting with other people digitally, Davis noted that there has been a resurgence of zines in the past 10–15 years. “People realized there’s a unique element to fanzines that they wanted to reconnect with,” he said.

Several UMD classes from the School of Music, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS); American Studies; English; Art; and Honors Humanities have visited the collections. “UMD’s campus radio station, WMUC, routinely has a group of students visit us annually to go through the punk collections to get inspiration for the zine that they create for the station,” said Davis.

Many students had never seen fanzines before, Davis pointed out, but are interested in exploring the collections and making their own. While he has not hosted fanzine-making events, zine clubs and other student groups have held workshops. “I view us as a space to make these materials accessible and hopefully inspire someone to figure it out and make their own,” Davis said.

Davis is also working to collect zines from the 21st century. While he believes that the collection is fairly representative of the diversity of voices in DC punk, an oral history project created in conjunction with the fanzines makes it clear that gatekeepers sometimes shut out people in the supposedly inclusive scene. Davis wants to ensure that the same voices are not the only ones heard.

He did his part to contribute to punk zine scholarship in 2025, with the publication of Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, D.C. , where he explores how zines impacted the punk and indie music scene in the area. Davis also authored a chapter on DC punk for Intellect Books’ Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Volume 2 .

Those interested in accessing the materials should check online for full zine issues along with other punk ephemera. They can also come to the Performing Arts Library’s Special Collections Reading Room to access the materials—ideally byappointment, which helps staff find the materials in advance, although walk-ins to the archives are permitted from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through Friday.