APA-L

Marty Cantor, August 20, 2007

Inspired by APA-F, a weekly APA put out in New York, Bruce Pelz felt that a weekly APA to be collated at LASFS meetings should be brought to Los Angeles. With the help of his wife, Dian (who became the first Official Collator of the APA) and several other local members, APA-L started a weekly run in October of 1964 which continues to this day. At the time of this writing, APA-L has produced 2204 distributions.

Most APAs call the bundles they produce “mailings”. Even though APA-L usually has out-of-area contributors, some even outside of the US, most contributors are LASFS attendees and pick up their copies right after collation. Therefore, instead of “mailings,” APA-Lers call the collated APA issues “distributions”. It is usually shortened to “disty”.

At one point in its existence, the APA ceased production for a period of about 11 weeks. However, once it recommenced distribution, there have been no further gaps in its production. There have been a few what have been called “Fractional distributions” along the way (e.g., APA-L #30.5). In at least one case this was done so that a certain contributor would break his string of contributing to each distribution. He managed to hear about this and managed to contribute a zine to that distribution, anyway.

Of considerable note is APA-L contributor Fred Patten. He has had a zine in each and every distribution of APA-L. Fred had a stroke a few years ago and he now resides in a convalescent hospital, able to move only his left leg and left arm. The right-handed Fred still produces a zine each week, typing it on a lap-top computer with his left hand. It has been posited that if Fred ever stops producing a zine for APA-L, the world will come to an end.