By HENRY COLT
Sentinel Staff Writer
The publishers of the Selkie Zine sent out a call for submissions Tuesday for their 10th issue: “The Blue Selkie”.
Readers may wonder: What is a selkie? And what is a zine?
Ellie Schmidt and Annika Ord, a pair of twenty-somethings who co-publish the Selkie Zine as a side-gig, say a zine (pronounced ZEEN) is an informal magazine that’s available for cheap, distributed mostly by hand, and flies in the face of national magazines and their corporate structures.
Ord says a selkie is a seal-woman from Scottish folklore who spends most of her time in the ocean but occasionally comes to shore as a human to carry out certain agendas such as stealing the hearts of fishermen.
“But they’re always called back to the sea,” added Ord.
Selkie Zine publishers Ellie Schmidt and Annika Ord sport Selkie face paintings. (Photo provided)
The Selkie’s Coat
Four years ago, around the time they watched an animated film called “Song of the Sea” (about a family of lighthouse keepers whose female members turn out to be selkies), Ord and Schmidt started snorkeling together.
Ord likened the thick wetsuits worn while snorkeling to a selkie’s coat – a glowing garment that a selkie wears as a seal but sheds in order to become human.
But a selkie can’t survive for long without her coat, so Ord and Schmidt spent a lot of time in the ocean that winter among the baby-blue anemones, pearlescent jellyfish and purple octopi that Schmidt would sometimes photograph.
Then they started calling each other selkies.
Then they started calling their female friends selkies.
Then, after a short-lived moment of “AAAA! That sounds crazy!” they published the first selkie zine: the Rough Selkie. It had nine submissions from Sitka friends and a simple sketch of a selkie on the cover.
“As inclusive as possible”
Since “The Rough Selkie,” Schmidt and Ord have published “The Sweaty Selkie,” “How Do You Love This World,” “The Fresh Selkie,” “The Stormy Selkie,” “The Soft Selkie,” “The Hairy Selkie” and “The Secret Selkie,” using a website that offers do-it-yourself publishing services. Each bound issue has a glossy cover and full-color illustrations.
Though the most recent issues generated submissions from around the country and world – and though Schmidt and Ord even briefly hired a publicist (which they laugh about) – the core values of the Selkie Zine remain: everything gets published, nothing gets edited (unless requested by a submitter), no one gets paid, everyone has fun.
“We don’t want to publish things based on artistic or literary merit,” Schmidt said. “We want it to be more of, like, an open colloquium of people with different voices and different experience or training in writing and art.”
“It’s anti-big publication culture,” said Ord. “We want to be as inclusive as possible.”
Ord says they would like to see submitters work outside established art forms like poetry or drawings. She would like to see recipes, potions, or anything with lots of tape. She said she would even welcome a collection of used Band-Aids.
“Honestly, that would make a great submission!” said Schmidt, of the Band-Aids.
The Selkie List
They say the email chain for the Selkie Zine is called the Selkie List, but recently the Selkie List has become a platform for conversations that seem unrelated to selkies or zines.
Politics has been discussed. So has birth control. Schmidt thinks one email thread contains more information on I.U.D.’s than any website on the internet.
People of all genders who want to join the Selkie List – or submit something for the Blue Selkie – should email Selkiezine@gmail.com.
