Inaugural Whanganui Zine Festival on as part of La Fiesta

Abby Stewart (left) and Maia-Jeanne (right) are the organisers of Whanganui Zine Fest, set to kick off on Saturday. Photo / Supplied

The inaugural Whanganui Zine Festival - a festival of self-published zines - will be held at Article Cafe.

The event is part of women's festival La Fiesta.

A zine is a hand-made pamphlet or magazine style publication about any topic, fiction or nonfiction.

"A zine is an accessible format, anyone can do it," organiser Maia-Jeanne said.

"Essentially it's a piece of paper folded into pages where you write about things you like.

"It can be about anything, by anyone and for everyone. They can be about anything from parenthood, to art, to politics.

"It's very individual and can be a way for people to communicate outside the mainstream."

A craft table will also be available throughout the festival, so visitors can try to make their own zines as well.

Fellow organiser Abby Stewart said it was great when zines were about something "really niche and really small", such as a character in a movie, or a band that only ever released one album.

"A zine is something anyone can make, about anything," Stewart said.

The format is paper and staple (or thread) based and can often involve cutting out and collaging materials.

Because of this there was an emphasis on "the joy of creating and sharing physical objects", Maia-Jeanne said.

"You could get your images and go to Photoshop and organise it really nicely but the really aesthetic part of zines is physically drawing, gluing, writing or photocopying.

"It's sort of a rebellion against technology."

Both organisers will have some of their own zines available at the festival, alongside zines from 12 other creators from Whanganui and around NZ. Zines will be available to purchase at the festival as well.

The festival runs from 2-5pm at Article Cafe, Drews Ave, Whanganui, with an after-party at Porridge Watson. Entry is free.