The East Village Inky
The East Village Inky is entirely hand written and illustrated by Ayun Halliday, and published in New York, U.S.A since 1998 to this day.
The title comes from Halliday's nickname for her daughter India. The zine is handwritten and hand illustrated in a consistently light, humorous tone. Halliday's son, Milo, and husband, playwright Greg Kotis (author of Urinetown) also make frequent appearances. What started as a chronicle of family life in New York City has evolved as the children have grown older.
Other early topics have included the summer camp where Halliday worked, recipes, film & book reviews, foreign travel, art freak events in NYC, and Ex Circulation Manager Jambo (Halliday's cat, whose death occasioned Special Tribute Issue 29)
The zine is still published today. From the year 2020 onwards each issue centered around a particular theme, most recently Sports (#63), Mail (#64), Kitchen (#65), NYC Museums (#66) and Kurt Vonnegut Centennial (#67). The last issue release to date (#69) in November 2023 was the Fashion issue.
Halliday was the editor of The Zinester's Guide to NYC (Microcosm, 2010)
In addition, Ayun Halliday is the author of: The Big Rumpus No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late Job Hopper Dirty Sugar Cookies Always Lots Of Heinies At The Zoo Peanut Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto Creative, Not Famous Activity Book
The East Village Inky was one of the zines featured on the 2003 and 2005 tours of North America by Mobilivre-Bookmobile, a traveling library in a trailer of independent publications. As well, the zine was featured in volume six and volume nine of Zine Yearbook. Some of the books in which it has been mentioned are Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, Below Critical Radar, Fanzines and DIY: The Rise Of Lo-Fi Culture, which features an interview with Ayun Halliday.
In zine library collections
The East Village Inky is included in the West Coast Zine Collection at San Diego State University, the New York Public Library's zine collection, Barnard College's Zine Library, Ohio State University's Rare Books Library, ABC No Rio's Zine Library and the Sallie Bingham Center's Collection at Duke University.
