In which we talk about Dundee Zine Fest 2026, April Fools, judging the Scottish Schools Young Writer of the Year competition, and Blood Cultures DJ Mixes.

---

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. There is a part of me, the part that’s still watching ‘what to do in Barcelona’ TikToks a little longer than someone who’s just back from Barcelona should be, that wishes I was in Barcelona for easter, but that might just be because I want to be in Barcelona all the time.

I’ve become one of those people who has made it their entire personality but at least I haven’t started learning Catalan on Duolingo. Who even uses Duolingo any more? I think their user base has been dwindling since they went ‘AI first’ as a company.

Talking about AI first; I went AI first recently. No wait, let me explain. It was an April Fools

@joshmoirart

I’m changing direction, from now on I’m only going south

♬ original sound – JoshMoirArt

I started out honestly hoping to play it straight but the further I got into the script the less I was able to, and I just ended up letting my complete hatred for AI to spill over.

You can rest easy though, because it didn’t take long to come clean, and I blamed the whole sorry situation on being deepfaked, in case anyone was convinced I was suddenly pro-AI and not viscerally, ethically and morally completely opposed to it like I am.

I’m not here to bend your ear about AI, I’d much rather bend your ear about some cool stuff I’ve been up to recently.

Dundee Zine Fest

It was time for Dundee Zine Fest again, and this time, it was a spring edition, which I massively and intensely preferred to the previous iteration when it was in the dead of winter and immediately before Christmas Market Madness. This one was less like an event on the precipice of something intense. I’m sure I detected a lot less wide eyed desperation that Christmas goes well, and more of a wide eyed frenzy because we all love Zines a lot.

The day was great. I don’t get anxious about events like this any more, and I just look forward to a day of having good chats and interactions with people.

I was repping some new stuff of mines, like ‘Cringe’ a new poetry zine of my poetry I’ve put together, and a ‘best of’ collection of Speakeasy Zines, and the Speakeasy Zines were also there in full display, I had printed copies of all of them, and had some really good and interesting chats with people about The Speakeasy, and my work over there.

https://www.tiktok.com/@joshmoirart/video/7616779726484491542?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7614849431889528323

I also had a visit from my brother and sister-in-law, who managed to be there for a short period of time, but manage to create a huge amount of mischief while they were there looking around.

At one point they wanted a go on having a look from the ‘other side of the table’ and managed to almost knock down and take out not only my tablemate, but the person around the other side of the table from me.

Thankfully everything was fine and they didn’t damage anything, which is why we were able to laugh more about it, but I think it stopped any interest in running a stall from them.

I also had some zines from my friend Jared Schiller, especially I’m Not Buying It, his Watchdog Fanzine which I contributed a comic to. Jared wasn’t able to make it to DZF, but I was flying the flag for him and his amazing work regardless.

You can buy a copy of ‘I’m Not Buying It’ Here, which I can’t recommend enough because it’s one of the best things I did last year.

Beyond that I had a great day. I caught up, albeit briefly, with some of my favourite zine creators like Jake Parappa Hainey, who has a new Zine called Blobby Horror I am obsessed with. It’s exactly the kind of creepy nostalgic horror that I love, so I was excited to get a copy of that. 

Ele Roscoe was there with their badges and brooches that I have to restrain myself from buying more of whever I see them. My fake leather jacket is covered in them, and I’ve bought a couple for people as gifts because I think they’re simultaneously the coolest and the cutest things ever, which is a hard line to walk.

The folks (volks?) from Volk Gallery were there too, so I had a fun time doing a bit of lucky dip, and then also just buying everything I wanted anyway. Between purchases and trades I came home with quite a haul.

I was glad to get home because after that I had to submit my judging and comments for the Scottish School’s Young Writer of the Year. I was having an absolute nightmare trying to judge them. It was an incredibly strong crop of papers this year. I have no idea how the panel managed to whittle it down to the shortlist they had, because any one of the papers could have easily been the winner, which makes my job difficult, even if it is exciting to see that, yet again, there’s an incredibly diverse and inspiring pool of writing talent in Scotland’s Schools.

Regardless, I got my scores together and finished writing comments for the papers, and they did not make it easy for me! If you’re interested in the winners, and also the papers in general, you can read more about the Scottish School’s Young Writer of the Year Competition here. There were unfortunately no winning papers from Dundee this year, but we have come close in the past!

What have you been listening to this week?

This recommendation came to me through the TikTok algorithm and from the first couple of seconds I was trapped. That opening has to be one of the strongest to any DJ Mix I think I’ve ever heard, and having Yes Sir, I Can Boogie by Baccara that early in the mix has me Hooked. I am Scottish after all.

Question of the Week Time

This might be a bit blobby-coded but:

Is there anything from your childhood that, in hindsight, seems completely terrifying?

That’s all from me this week; have a great week and I’ll see you all next week for another update!

J x