Solarpunk Zine Making as a Ritual of Grief
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A collection of zines, including works made by Shruthi Budnar and pieces by local artists. photography by nathalie de los santos.
I’m hunched over a folding table at Enabling Arts. Marker ink on my first zine spread is still wet; it mingles with the deep-fried scent drifting off the Jollibee chicken and fries I’ve saved for later. Snip, snip—someone’s scissors keep a heartbeat beside me. On the page, I’ve written: i feel guilty while others suffer in quiet rooms. but grief and joy can live together after Lapu Lapu Day. Zine making, I’m learning, is a space where comfort and agitation coexist.
Solarpunk zine artist, Shruthi budnar. photography by nathalie de los santos.
I first met Shruthi, a radical zine maker and community builder with Rudi Press, at the SFU Writer’s Studio. She was the only person in my workshop who deeply understood the cultural nuances in my writing about Filipino folklore and my parents’ immigration journeys. In the second term, she handed me a zine about coffee and caste, offering an intimate window into the cultural contexts of India that I explored on my bus ride home. She connected caste filters to cultural production, leaving me with an unforgettable line: “Enable: Prevent the escape of volatile compounds. Let them condense to brown sweat and tears.”
Fast forward to April 2025, the evening of the Lapu Lapu Day tragedy. Shruthi was among the first to message me as I returned home from a friend’s wedding. Are you okay? Did you hear about what happened at Lapu Lapu?
I spent that night crying from learning about my friends' lived experiences and those directly affected. The following evening, I stayed up late writing a rushed article for the Globe and Mail about our collective grief, our experiences and the driver who rammed into the crowd, killing eleven people and injuring many others.
Overwhelmed and grieving, I found myself at Tahanan Studio, a Filipino owned and BIPOC-led arts and gathering space. I had a deep desire to support my community, alongside my other Filipino friend Angel. Numb from processing everything, I asked Shruthi, “Could you run a grief zine workshop with Angel?”
This led to CounterPrint, a series of community zine workshops supported by a Neighbourhood Small Grant, with the first being our grief-centred zine workshop at Enabling Arts. Shruthi created a healing charm zine for the Filipino community—originally designed for Palestinian Children’s Day (April 5)—which was warmly received by many of us who were hurting. She gave members of my community this charm as they grieved, and taught us how to make it in our first class. CounterPrint now brings folks together around climate justice and collective care, inviting conversation and creativity rather than despair. I interviewed Shruthi about her radical approach to zine making, her practice, and her community.
photography by nathalie de los santos.
What first drew you to zine making, and why did it feel like the right medium for your politics?
The first time I made zines was at a youth skills program at Frog Hollow with the artist Anjalica Solomon facilitating. They encouraged journaling and collaging, and it became an opportunity to really think deeply about who we were and what we wanted. Later, at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, I turned emotions connected to food and culture into a mini zine. I realized that making zines is a fun way to overcome social anxiety—you always have something relational and meaningful in your pocket to share. If there's a craft table at a party, you'll find me making zines. Zines became a format where I could pour everything in my mind onto one page and wrap it up like a gift.
How did Rudi Press come together, and what is radical publishing?
Radical publishing for us is being silly, playful, not too serious, pushing back against big institutions. Rudi Press came from this study group jokingly called A.S.S., the Abolitionist Secret Society. We were mostly immigrants, queer and trans folks, trying to understand abolition and settler colonialism in BC. One day we found out an agency was trying to pinkwash their way into Dyke March, complicit in the ongoing displacement of Indigenous and Queer folk in the city, so we set up our own table right beside theirs and sold a zine explaining exactly why that agency was so messed up.
We named ourselves Rudi Press because we felt very rude and very depressed, plus it’s named after our favourite dog, Rudi. We did interviews, collage work, scrambling to print copies on a tight timeline, which is a great way to bond. It truly was a radical experience, rooted in community and making decisions together.
At the Lapu Lapu Day grief zine workshop, what surprised you about how people processed loss once you gave them glue sticks and paper?
Going into the Lapu Lapu Day workshop, I knew we were dealing with heavy emotions, but wasn’t sure exactly what participants would bring. It was humbling to see everyone turn up with such care and love. Every single person did something unique with their scrap paper. One participant made origami, invoking an inner child’s playfulness as healing. Some thoughts bled into poetry. As we ate fried chicken and scribbled with crayons, the conversation flowed. Grief becomes communal when people can openly talk, process emotions together, and figure out how to hold each other. The zines became a conduit to hold all the feelings that came up, but also created opportunities to doodle during heavy pauses.
photography by nathalie de los santos.
CounterPrint now centres on climate justice. Where do eco-anxiety and grief overlap for you, and how does the workshop address both?
Eco-anxiety and grief are both existential emotions. Growing up in India, summers meant water shortages, electricity rationing, anxiety rooted in meeting one’s basic needs. In Canada, that anxiety has shifted towards a more intellectualized grief about ecosystem collapse, resource wars and climate disasters like wildfires. The way I see it, the stresses we face around jobs, health and social justice are tied to our inherent desire to nurture healthier ways of relating with our ecosystems.
CounterPrint workshops create spaces where people can pause, name those anxieties clearly, and regain some agency over these overwhelming emotions. Through making zines, we help each other process the ongoing climate emergency, connecting the abstract with our lived experiences. We move from feeling paralyzed by anxiety to having tangible ways to respond, care and commiserate collectively.
Our second workshop was held at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House on June 12, where Shruthi guided participants through the basics of community zine making. Join our upcoming outdoor picnic zine session at Granville Island Picnic Pavilion on June 26, 3:30-8 p.m. Register through Eventbrite, and follow PilipinxPages to find about future sessions.
Nathalie De Los Santos (she/they) is a writer and creative. She is one of the festival organizers of the Filipino-Canadian Book Festival. She created PilipinxPages, a bookstagram featuring Filipinx authors. She has appeared at: the Vancouver Writers Fest 2024, PechaKucha, CBC, LiterAsian (2020), TFC, OMNI TV and others. Her publications are in Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, Globe and Mail, Emerge: An Anthology, SAD Magazine, ROOTed Rhythms, the National Women’s History Museum, Cold Tea Collective, Sampaguita Press, Ricepaper Magazine and more. She hosts the Filipino Fairy Tales, Mythology and Folklore podcast. Find more on her website natdls.com
