The Midnight Zine Club
A 1997 Catholic School Rebellion

About this book:

In 1997, the hallways of St. Augustine’s Academy smell of floor wax, hairspray, and quiet desperation. Sixteen-year-old Bridget O’Malley wears her plaid skirt like a straightjacket and hides ink-stained fingers in her blazer pockets, drowning in a world where deviation is heresy and her growing feelings for girls are a sin without a name. When a clandestine punk show hands her a photocopied lifeline, Bridget realizes the only way to survive the silence is to break it—one smudged, illicit page at a time.

*The Midnight Zine Club* is a love letter to the analog rebellion of the 90s: the whir of a forbidden Xerox machine, the sting of Liquid Paper, the adrenaline of stuffing truth into locker slots before first period. As Bridget and her crew of misfits trade detention slips for layout sessions, their underground paper becomes a sanctuary for the secrets the nuns can’t hear and the administration can’t erase—confessions of queer longing, parental pressure, and the fierce, messy work of becoming yourself when the script has already been written for you.

Tender, gritty, and electric with the static of a riot grrrl soundtrack, this is a story about the holy act of making something ugly and honest in a place that demands perfection. For anyone who has ever felt like a ghost in their own life, Bridget’s fight to carve out a space for her voice—between the pews, behind the art room sink, under the cover of midnight—will feel less like history and more like a homecoming.