Dann Lennard
Dann Lennard is a 20+ year veteran of the zine scene, beginning his association in the late 1980s through the pro wrestling zine sub-culture known as "sheets".
While living in rural South Australia and working as a newspaper journalist, Dann subscribed to a number of zines including the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (began 1983 and still running today as a weekly publication) and Pro Wrestling Torch, along with several smaller sheets.
One of these publications was Rod's Reflector, one of many zines produced by Rodney Leighton from Canada. Dann eventually began contributing articles and illustrations to this sheet and other non-wrestling zines published by Rod. In addition, he contributed to several Australian-produced sheets such as Camel Clutch and the fondly remembered Piledriver.
At the same time, Dann came into contact with the blossoming zine scene in general and bought other publications (mainly from overseas) such as the garage music zine Cryptic Tymes, the Traci Lords fan newsletter Nora K., and long-running music publication Roctober.
In 1992, he decided to launch his own zine, Betty Paginated, a photo-heavy perzine that also focused heavily on pop culture.
Trading with other zine publishers led to many friendships, a ton of fantastic mail and, eventually, a job offer to work for mainstream magazine PEOPLE. He moved to Sydney in 1997 and has lived there ever since. He continues to work at PEOPLE.
He also contributed articles over the years to several zines including Sprak! and Bizarrism.
Dann published 30 issues of Betty Paginated - or BP for short - plus several one-shots before he called it quits in 2007 for personal reasons. By that point, BP was an annual affair with colour covers and sometimes running up to 72 A4 pages in size.
However, the lure of zine publishing never left him and he produced several smaller publications, including BPJr #1 & #2.
Dann brought BP out of retirement in 2010, publishing issue 31 in May. He is also working on several other zine projects including a line of minicomix.
Dann has never made a cent from his work - in fact, he's lost tens of thousands of dollars during the past two decades. It doesn't bother him one bit.
