Stephen Duncombe has written one of the only book-length studies examining the phenomenon of "zines.""Note from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture" traces the historical rise in zine popularity beginning with fanzines of the 1930s, fueled in the 1970s by the punk movement, and reaching a height in the 1990s. In his estimation there are 10,000 zines currently in print and over 750,000 readers. The interest in this paper is in those produced by girls and young women, ages 13-21. According to the paper, as defined by Duncombe, zines are "noncommercial, nonprofessional, small circulation magazines which their creators produce, publish, and distribute by themselves." What makes a zine a zine and not a hobby, according to Duncombe, is the politics practiced by the writer. "Zinesters" set themselves in opposition to mainstream culture in terms of both form and content, and they usually write for a like-minded audience. The paper states that Duncombe writes about "selling out" the underground culture of zines to the world of academia and its current fascination with cultural studies. It finds that the tool that zinesters use most readily in writing against mainstream culture is the personal--they believe that what makes their writing significant is their own experience, and that experience is rooted in both the ordinary and the extraordinary. The paper profiles several zines. (NKA)