I was trying to think of a reason to send Vanessa Berry a proper letter pretty much the whole way through her book Strawberry Hills Forever (published by Local Consumption).

(from Vanessa Berry’s flickr account)

The world in Vanessa’s writing is so familiar, and as I read I kept wondering how many degrees of separation between us. Who knows. It is so autobiographical that searching online felt like stalking - there’s more detail than most diaries, at times I found it a little voyeuristic - a zine doyen, a self-publishing magnate, she’s made 100 and something zines (so far), several blogs, flickr pages.

It’s shocking and strangely comforting to read memoir - seriously - of such recent past. Each chapter is infused with a perpetual sense of wonder at the small things: goth make-up, that milk bar on Parramatta Road (Olympia), walking around all weekend in a rabbit outfit, nights out seeing ’90s bands - it’s all details - op shops and second hand record discoveries, do it yourself zines, train trips across Sydney, personal obsessions, furtive moments, tapes, handwritten addresses. It’s like a mixed anthology of her writing to date given many chapters previously published in zines such as Laughter and the Sound of Teacups, in which she documented the 23rd of every month in exhaustive, sharply observed detail.

Vanessa first discovered zines outside Waterfront records in Sydney. Like so many great pop songs, every now and again she observes something you would have thought unremarkable, but in the telling it’s suddenly so much more.