Ailsa Craig

A love letter to an island with a shady past, this zine is an unraveling of oral histories, full of hand written notes, photos, little tidbits like newspaper clippings and fun facts about an island you never knew you wanted to know so much about. The island is Ailsa Craig, a tiny granite protrusion off the coast of Scotland. And by tiny, I mean half a mile by three quarters of a mile across. Jickling and Short record the local lore surrounding this piece of rock, from curling stones to murdered priests to claims that Paul and Linda McCartney lived there, to sunken WW2 subs and mass exoduses to Australia. Ailsa Craig reminds me of a good episode of Definitely Not the Opera, where I get sucked into topics I thought I had no interest in, and learn all this random trivia I would never seek out on my own. The authors’ enthusiasm for this island is contagious, making this zine a really fun read. And best of all, it comes with a little piece of the island, sewn up in a little plastic pouch and attached to the binding like a three dimensional bookmark. (Krisztina Kun)

Zine, Hannah Jickling & Coral Short, 84 pgs., $4, [email protected]