Shaun Slifer & Ally Reeves
Ross Winn: Digging Up a Tennessee Anarchist
$4

Several years ago, at the nudging of Robert Helms at a bowling alley in Ohio, the beginnings of my spiral into an obsession with obscure history was born. Bob turned me and my cohort Ally Reeves on to the idea of trying to track down the gravestone of an obscure, turn-of-the-last-century anarchist publisher who had operated in the second half of his life from a home in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee: Ross Winn. We lived in Nashville at the time, which is just West of Mt. Juliet, and eventually we started a little digging around...

That digging blossomed into a full-on obsession (at least, for me), and a few years later, after transplanting to Pittsburgh, we finished a zine which documented everything we knew about Ross Winn at that time, including the story of our journey. Before we started all of this, only a couple of details about Ross' life were known and no photographs were available - now the available research we have is all over the internet, with particular help from our friend Ryan Kaldari and a lot of special attention from Julie Herrada at the Labadie Collection and the existing relatives of Ross' that we were able to find.

It's safe to say that this zine marks a turning point in my work - and even though the zine itself is already a bit dated (we finished it in 2005 and it's missing a couple of newer findings, not to mention that fact that I cringe a bit upon reading something I penned just six years ago), I thought it worth assembling a small edition again, just to get a few more of these original zines out into the world. It isn't easy to find info about anarchists in the American Southeast! Ross was no angel, but I still feel that it's important that his story get told.

Innards include a forward by Philadelphia-based historian Robert Helms, an essay by Fifth Estate editor Sunfrog Bonobo, and a couple of old-school illustrations by Justseeds member Erik Ruin. Cover design by Mumbai/Tennessee/Pittsburgh artist Ally Reeves.

44 page zine
two color screenprinted cover
6.75"x3.5"