Gray Flag #1 zine by Chris Auman
Gray Flag is a pocket-sized zine that collects journal entries I wrote for various writing classes in the early 1990s, recounting incidents that happened at work or in bars in Chicago.
Learn more about about this zine.
Specs.
4.125″ x 5.875″ 28 pages, color cover, b&w throughout, stapled, 100 lb paper, 110 lb
The Introduction to Gray Flag #1
If a black flag is the symbol of anarchy and a white flag signals surrender, somewhere in the middle the gray flag waves.
I turned 50 in April of this year. What does that mean? Does it mean anything? I’ve been trying to figure it out. I don’t look back now any more than I ever did, but I do look back.
Gray Flag is about looking back. It’s about finding that stuff written in notebooks years and years ago and trying to make sense of it. Am I the same person I was then? How have I changed? Have I learned anything?
Here is Gray Flag #1. It consists of journal entries I wrote while a student in the creative writing program at Columbia College in the early 1990s. — September 2020
Zine Review
If you haven’t had too much to drink and ended up in a mosh pit, were you ever truly in your early twenties? Anyone who has gone on drunken adventures and loves music will relate to Chris Auman’s collection of stories and drawings, which are excerpts from journals he kept while attending the Story Workshop writing program at Columbia College in the early ’90s.
Some of these anecdotes are more mundane than others, but they capture the essence of being a young adult and making questionable choices: “After we left, Bob and I ended up swimming across a flooded stream to his house. We thought we could wade across and maybe get our feet wet. I was neck-deep though and we got completely soaked […] That was one of the stupidest things I’d done in a long time. It was fun though. It felt like being twelve again, only wasted.”
Though this zine collects stories that are now almost 20 years old, it turns out that going to shows, working shitty jobs, drinking at band practice, etc., are timeless activities. I enjoyed this zine and look forward to reading more of Auman’s work.—Maxime Brunet, Broken Pencil
