Fresh Prints Editor-in-Chief Thomas von Borstel speaks on the new, experimental zine starting up in Tulsa.
Stated to be “The People’s Zine,” “Fresh Prints” is looking for artists of every variety to aid in their call of artistic expression. All mediums are welcome, so long as they can be printed, to show the creativity of the community in a way that is transformative, expressive and most importantly evolutionary. Currently, the “Fresh Prints” zine is composed mainly of TU students from RAW, a reading and writing club held at TU.
This zine is for “TU students who are interested in artistic inquiry through experimental methods,” says Thomas von Borstel, editor-in-chief of the zine. Speaking of Tulsa as a whole, he continued, “We’ve been a part of a literary community that is so supportive, but lacks many publications. We believe that there is more space for publications — especially student-led and run — that can cater to the growing needs of the very young Tulsa lit community.” While “there are incredible avant-garde artists in Tulsa that have to go out of town to get published, so why not start a publication for this community of experimental artists?” With their love of the experimental artist, they hope to gain an readership and writers who are creatively focused and experimentally driven.
One can submit work to “Fresh Prints” via their website form. The submission will be anonymous to the editors who are viewing the work. The editors will then decide which works will go into the zine.
“As soon as we’ve selected those for publications,” said von Borstel, “then our hope is to meet all of the artists who have submitted and build relationships, fellowship and community with them. Additionally, we hope to have a reading associated with the zine, maybe once or twice a year!”
“Fresh Prints” is a medium for those with “a burning passion for your poetry, fiction or visuals, or the growth of art in Tulsa, and believe that art encompasses far more than the traditional and classical notions, and are willing to approach taboos, disregard form, adapt to the postmodern world we live in,” according to von Borstel. As TU students, von Borstel said the publication is a “burgeoning movement in Tulsa that needs a push, and a serious, experimental publication is just another step toward the goal of being a city of premier artists.”
Although they do not want to be an ordinary publication, or even an ordinary zine, they want “to bring the smallness, slowness, closeness of community to being published, not the cold and hard submission process of uploading a piece of work and never meeting the people we work with.”
Von Borstel concluded, “I hope that people who aren’t necessarily involved with the art community join us in the effort. We named this ‘Fresh Prints’ because, one, we like ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ just as much as the next person, and two, we think that art can be something poppy, in which we embrace the normalcy of our communal memories and the discourse of our ordinary daily interactions.” “We don’t need a supposed high art or pretention. We need people, community and genuine expression. We look forward to working with and by the Tulsa and TU community,” he finished.
For more information on Tulsa’s latest zine, visit their website at www.freshprintszine.org.
