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  • Home
  • CZF 2023
  • About
    • Past Festivals
    • CZF Organizers
    • Safer Spaces Policy
  • CZF Workshops
  • Youth Poster Contest
  • Contact
  • CZF Zinester Directory
  • Join our Newsletter
Chicago Zine Fest
  • Home
  • CZF 2023
  • About
    • Past Festivals
    • CZF Organizers
    • Safer Spaces Policy
  • CZF Workshops
  • Youth Poster Contest
  • Contact
  • CZF Zinester Directory
  • Join our Newsletter

Our Annual Youth Poster Contest

What is our Youth Poster Contest?

Chicago Zine Fest is dedicated to educating and inspiring the next generation of Chicago Zinesters.  After all, most of us CZF Organizers began creating Zines when we were kids. It is an important goal of CZF to make sure the Zine Scene of Chicago will continue to grow and prosper for years to come.  One of the best things about Zines, is that anyone can make them, even kids!

Over the past few years at CZF we have made excellent progress on expanding our youth programming and outreach, both at our exhibition and throughout the entire year.  One great success of this is our youth poster contest.  

In honor of our ten year anniversary as a festival, in 2019 we launched our official Chicago Zine Fest Youth Poster Contest for Chicago area high school students. 
Any Chicago Area high school student with an interest in creating zines, comics, and graphic novels can enter!  Students are asked to create a poster to advertise the year’s festivities. We look for posters that focus on aspects of the city of Chicago, with diversity in representation, and Zine-making elements.  Sometimes the Contest even has a theme, like Sci-Fi or Fantasy! The poster can be created digitally or by hand, and is always sized 17in (tall) x 11in (wide).  

What does the winner receive?

  • A FREE table at CZF 2020 to display your zines and artwork!
  • A printed copy of your poster along with a signed copy of our official festival poster!
  • Your poster will be used to advertise our festival at schools, colleges, and libraries all over the city, as well as on our social media!
  • The opportunity to be a speaker in our emerging artists panel on the exhibition day of our 2020 Festival, May 16th!
  • You will be interviewed by a real reporter and your interview and artwork will be featured on our website and social media!

Past Contests & Winners

2020
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Anyah Thompson - Brooks College Prep High School, Class of 2022

2019
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Ri Davenport of Lindblom Math and Science Academy

Bio: I consider myself a radical, queer, trans teen artist. I enjoy making pieces that deal with the LGBT community and my own queer experiences. I’ve been drawing for years and made digital art my go to medium for making art. I enjoy silly doodles of beautiful but more serious subjects that tackle struggles I feel with myself and my environment. However, aside from art I enjoy heavily story and lore driven video games, but also cooperative games I can play with my friends. 

Where is he now? Ri is now attending the Illustration Program at Columbia College and is also one of our official CZF College Liaisons!

Poster Description: Chicago is a rich city full of diversity that is, often times, not really explored or discussed when I hear Chicago spoken about. To outsiders, Chicagoans are lumped together yet still divided. There’s downtown and then there’s gun violence. I don’t see it that way. The richness of the city runs deep and in ways that such different people come together and forget their differences is through none other than food. Here, very staple Chicago dishes are together and enjoying zine making. Regardless of where you come from, where your parents came from, what time you were born, whether south, north, east, or west, we all can sit down and enjoy a deep dish, hot dog, and Italian beef. That is just one reason why I decided to have these foods sit together on a beach. Another is because the very idea of it was so cute that it needed to become a reality.

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