{"id":111035,"date":"2026-02-11T12:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T12:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111035\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T12:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T12:16:09","slug":"she-made-her-first-zine-30-years-ago-and-is-now-teaching-others-the-lost-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111035\/","title":{"rendered":"She made her first zine 30 years ago and is now teaching others the lost art"},"content":{"rendered":"

An upcoming zine-making<\/a> workshop at Northampton Community College<\/a> will be led by Taryn Hipp<\/a>, a Bethlehem<\/a> resident whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 spans life skills counseling and farming. <\/p>\n

Zine-maker-turned-counselor-turned-farmer may be an unusual set of hyphens, but it only begins to capture the many layers of Hipp\u2019s life and work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in Bucks County in the \u201990s being a problem child,\u201d Hipp says with a laugh. <\/p>\n

She was also a writer and zine-maker at the time. Zines are self-published magazines popular in punk rock and counterculture communities that got their start in the pre-internet days. For young people like Hipp at the time, zines were a way to write about life, fandom, or whatever they felt a need to express. Usually handmade in small batches, zines were photocopied and distributed for fun, not profit. Hipp stuck with it, finding zine-making a creative outlet during a period when she felt a little lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my twenties I was working at a record store and making zines and hanging out, and I didn\u2019t have any idea what I wanted to do with my life,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Turning 30, and finding sobriety, marked the start of a new chapter. \u201cI started college in my thirties,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Inspired by her grandmother\u2019s career, she studied psychology and found it to be a perfect fit. Her grandmother, the woman she called \u201cMom-Mom,\u201d also went to college later in life, got a degree in psychology, worked in special education, and inspired Hipp deeply. \u201cMom-Mom was my best friend and guiding light,\u201d she says. \u201cSeeing how she treated everyone with such caring was inspiring. I was trying to follow in her footsteps. I found her to be as close to a saint as you can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipp studied psychology in college and quickly found herself drawn to the field. While completing her degree, she moved to the Lehigh Valley to accept a position at Valley Youth House. There, she worked as a life skills counselor and found deep meaning in supporting teenagers with a wide range of challenges and traumatic pasts. Her world was soon upended by the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of her grandmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an \u2018essential worker,\u2019 it was a brutal time working through the pandemic,\u201d she says. \u201cThen Mom-Mom died in April of 2021, and that kind of sent my train off the tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

She started to feel overwhelmed at work. \u201cI was like, maybe there is something wrong with me,\u201d she says. \u201cI realized I was just burned out. It happened quickly. I was falling apart emotionally and it didn\u2019t feel fair to the teens I was working with. You have to be 100% with those kids. You can\u2019t phone it in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She put in her resignation despite not having another job lined up. Gardening had been an escape and a respite during lockdown \u2013 she even had started a YouTube channel documenting her time digging in the dirt. \u201cI was vlogging my gardening and growing experience,\u201d she says. She called the YouTube channel \u201cGnar Garden,\u201d<\/a> drawing inspiration from the BMX scene that she became part of when she moved to the Lehigh Valley. \u201cIn the BMX world you hear the word \u2018gnarly\u2019 or \u2018gnar\u2019 all the time,\u201d Hipp says. \u201cEverything is gnarly.\u201d She had no idea this hobby would launch the next phase of her unconventional professional life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I needed a job so I started googling random words plus career,\u201d she says. \u201cI knew I liked being outside so I would google stuff like \u2018outside plus career\u2019 or \u2018gardening plus career.\u2019\u201d Eventually she got a hit: there was an opening for a seasonal farmhand at Rodale St. Luke\u2019s Organic Farm at Anderson Campus. She applied and, despite having no farming experience or manual labor experience, was hired. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so beautiful and everyone I met was so cool. I was like \u2018this is what I want to do.\u2019 Every day I was so convinced it was the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipp spent three years working at the Anderson Campus farm, which supplies vegetables to the hospital\u2019s kitchens and employees. \u201cI just knew I wanted to farm,\u201d she says. Her time there allowed her to become more immersed in the Lehigh Valley\u2019s agricultural community and to make important connections.<\/p>\n

Through those connections, she learned about the Farm Business Incubator program at The Seed Farm in Emmaus<\/a>. Hipp developed a business plan, applied, revised, applied again, and was accepted into the program, receiving access to land for the 2025 growing season. <\/p>\n

The incubator allows new farmers to lease land at a subsidized rate and provides shared resources including a barn, tools, a greenhouse, tractors, and other equipment. She named her business appropriately: the Gnar Garden.<\/p>\n

After a successful 2025 season, the Gnar Garden will return to the Emmaus location in 2026, selling a variety of vegetables through CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares and at area farmers\u2019 markets. During the winter months, Hipp budgets, draws up her farm plan, markets the business. She also, as it turns out, will be teaching a zine-making workshop at NCC.<\/p>\n

The connection with NCC came through the school\u2019s East 40 Garden, a community garden and part of the growing Lehigh Valley\u2019s agricultural scene. East 40 coordinator Katelynn Frey, a former co-worker of Hipp\u2019s at the Rodale farm, helped connect the dots.<\/p>\n

\u201cKatelynn knew I was working on a zine about my experience becoming a farmer,\u201d Hipp says. When the topic of zines came up among her colleagues at NCC, she told them about Hipp\u2019s project and they were interested. \u201cThey asked me to teach a zine-making workshop, which is something I had never done before,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to connect farming with her creative life, and her passion for working with young people, was irresistible. 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the first zine she ever made, and she can\u2019t think of a better way to celebrate than by teaching the art form to others<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like the opposite of a gatekeeper,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I like something, I want everyone to know about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to go?<\/p>\n

The East 40 and the Art Department of Northampton Community College present A Zine Making-Workshop at 6 p.m., Feb. 12. In this hands-on workshop, participants will uncover the history of zine-making and have the opportunity to make their own zine! Every student will also receive a copy of \u201cStolen Sharpie Revolution\u201d by Alex Wrekk. The cost to attend is $25 and more information is available on NCC\u2019s sign-up page for the event<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An upcoming zine-making workshop at Northampton Community College will be led by Taryn Hipp, a Bethlehem resident whose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-111035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}