That's not my pigeon

Steak Zine is the new issue of Cake Zine. Cake Zine is a literary print magazine exploring art, history, and pop culture through food.

For this pocket-sized special issue, Cake Zine is setting off into carnivorous territory. Serving up 208 pages of non-fiction and fiction exploring the cultural impact of red meat, including:

The last days of Acropolis, Portland’s beloved strip club-steakhouse, by Sophia June

A profile on the women going viral by eating raw meat online by Ella Quittner

A night at a fictionalized steakhouse kaleidoscoped through the roles of maître d’, bartender, server, chef, and guest, by Leah Abrams, Isle McElroy, Lillian Fishman, Stephanie Wambugu, and Hannah Kingsley-Ma

Examinations of the enduring escapism of Outback Steakhouse and Fogo de Chão by Ruby Robina Saha and Adam Dalva

A trip through Nebraska to trace how historic stockyard closures in the late 1990s have affected those serving up beef in the Beef State, by Jamal Dauda

A wistful look back at a romance fueled by ribeye and red leather booths, by Emma Specter

NDA-risking testimony from a lab tech at a plant-based food start up who went from vegetarian to carnivore in the noble name of research, by AUTHOR REDACTED

Tracing the roots and uncertain future of Hong Kong’s sizzling steak by Madeline Leung Coleman

Plus the steak heists prompting retailers to put meat behind lock and key, the body horror of cannibalist cinema, revisiting molecular gastronomy’s embrace of meat glue, the social tensions behind ordering well-done meat, the trauma of growing up on an Australian cattle ranch, and much more.

Making a fanzine is an act of rebellion, even more so if it is published and produced by a woman. The grrrls of today use them to inspire countless young people around the world, to take control of their lives and to create their own culture. These homemade publications are a quick and cheap way to spread their ideas and dismantle the usual stereotypes. Traditionally hand-drawn, photocopied, and stapled together, the format of fanzines are now as diverse as their subject matter, with online platforms and social networks fast becoming the norm. The fanzine is more alive than ever!

Gemma Villegas runs her graphic design studio based from Barcelona. She works in close dialog with commissioners and collaborators on a broad range of projects, including visual identities, exhibitions, publications, and digital platforms, overseeing the creative process during all the phases of a project. Her work is characterized by a fresh and powerful visual language focused on detail with special attention to typography.

This story was written by a Chinese activist/writer about her arrest and detention during the waves of resistance in China in late 2022. To evade censorship, she disguised it as a translation—told through the voice of an Iranian Kurdish woman amid the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising happening at the same time. 

After fleeing China, the author reclaimed the story through footnotes—uncovering hidden meanings and restoring its Chinese context. What first read as an Iranian story became, on re-reading, a coded Chinese narrative. Iran stood as both real and metaphorical—a displaced symbol, through which the interconnected struggles in different movements echoed.

The two waves of reading, months apart, became part of the story’s form. This “non-nonfiction” reveals a paradox: in China, truth must appear as fiction or elsewhere to be told—making the fiction more real than reality itself. 

Two years later, the piece was translated “back” into Persian by an Iranian Kurdish activist. And now, it arrives here, in this zine of tripped, layered languages. 

Author: Wu Qin
English Translation: Aaris WOO and Yixi
Farsi Translation: Somayeh Rostampour
Visual & Layout: Maoyi, If A, Hu Jiamin
Interior illustrations: Hu Jiamin
Published by Tofu Stand (Tofulogy 002)

This collection of 20 poems by young poets Holly Miles and Joseph Dunkerley sheds a glimpse into the bizarre journey of two isolated souls in a time of global crisis. Read along in this 24 page zine as they chart their unique perspectives of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic!

What words made this world of captivity and extinction? If written language is a biological adaptation, how can a text reshape the environment? These are the questions at the heart of Grammar of the Cage, a startling first collection of poetry by Pam Ore. The Compulsive Reader calls Ore "a poet of great promise," and poet Eloise Klein Healy says she has found Ore's book "haunting but necessary...a stunning debut collection."

Grammar of the Cage is clean and heartbreaking as a bone, and yet, as poet Ingrid Wendt writes in her Introduction, "[like] Emily Dickinson, Ore's 'business' is 'to sing.' And sing she does."