The Zine Club is a new creative outlet established to showcase the talent of Burlingame students. Founded at the beginning of this school year, Catcher Zine — zine pronounced “zeen” as a shortening of the word magazine — hopes to be an informal platform that can help promote and develop artists and creatives at Burlingame. They produced their first zine, this semester and hope to release an issue bi-anually near the end of each semester.

“I started it because I realized there was no outlet for art outside of the classroom at BHS,” junior and executive editor of Catcher Zine, Lexi Goldstein said.

The Zine Club isn’t highly selective in its process of deciding what will be published, instead striving to respect the creative license and vision of individual students. Goldstein’s goal in founding the club is to shine a light on the often underappreciated talent in the arts in the community. The editors of the club choose and organize visual and written art submitted by students throughout the semester, then release it all together in a single issue of Catcher.

“In the Bay Area there is a lot of attention on STEM careers and technology,” Goldstein said. “I think it’s really important that the community is aware that there is just as much talent in the arts.”

Students that contributed also felt it helps form a sense of community, even in a time when they feel more disconnected from one another than ever.

“I feel a lot of disconnect from the school at home,” junior Molly Abramson, who contributed to the first issue of Catcher, said, “I had a lot of stuff I’d made on my own, and I thought it was a pretty cool idea to create the zine, especially when we’re all home”.

The club itself consists of 13 members who work as editors and contributors for the zine. This semester the Zine Club will produce an issue of Catcher following the theme “transition,” and the editors encourage students to interpret the theme in any way they see fit.

“This is a big period of transition, transition of power, social justice movements, distance learning and a change between 2020 and 2021, that we want to highlight,” Goldstein said.

Students still have time to submit works to the club at [email protected] if they’re interested in contributing to this semester’s issue. The club aims to get more students involved in the publication moving forward and hopes to be a place students can showcase their creative talents for the foreseeable future.

Lexi Goldstein, the executive editor of the Zine Club is also a copy editor for The Burlingame B.

*Correction: An earlier version of the story was incorrect, and has since been revised.