Basketcase
Melinda Smith published more than twenty issues of her personal zine The Basketcase from 1995 through 2000.
Content in the zine ranged from diary entries to interviews with friends and relatives, music reviews (lots of Tori Amos and hair metal), fiction, photos, cartoons and drawings, crochet patterns, plus contributions by friends and other zinesters. In one issue, she included hand-sewn and hand-painted glow in the dark fingerpuppets. Another issue was published as an audio tape.
In the kind of fairy tale that could only be brought about through zines, Melinda's pen-pal Rob Northrup, author of Punk Pals Unwashed zine, took a jaunt to Houston, TX in 1997 to meet and then move in with her. They contributed articles to each other's zines for a while, put out one combined issue of The Basketcase/PPU, and got married on Halloween of that year.
Melinda gradually stopped publishing her print zine after getting web access in 2000, where she started a Basketcase website. She has gradually stopped updating the website and focused on creating video blogs on Youtube.
Melinda is publishing a paperback compilation of "The Basketcase", issues 1-19, expected to be released Summer 2007.
