Wintering

A zine about the hybrid memoir "Wintering" by UK author Katherine May.

© VoidRise 2025






Beige zine cover with white title 'Wintering'. In the middle is a watercolour painting depicting a winter sun over black pine trees. At the bottom, a black on white text says 'a book recommendation'.

double-spread page 2 and 3 of the Wintering zine has a blue-grey background with snow-like white paint speckles. There is washi tape with black skeletal trees at the top and bottom. 2 text boxes on white paintstrokes show quotes from the book: 'There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into Somewhere Else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Somewhere Else is where ghosts live, concealed from view and only glimpsed by people in the real world. Somewhere Else exists at a delay, so that you can't quite keep pace.' and 'Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.'

double-spread page 4 and 5 of the Wintering zine has a white background. a wintery landscape with trees in the background and a road winding towards the foreground is drawn with charcoal pencil. Another quote says: 'Wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful. Yet it's also inevitable.'

double-spread page 6 and 7 of the Wintering zine has a beige background. Page 6 has the quotes: 'Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.' - 'prepare for winter' - 'Doing those deeply unfashionable things - slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting - are radical acts these days, but they are essential.' The bottom half of the page shows a white soup bowl with golden dots. Chopsticks drawn in black ink pull noodles out of the bowl. Page 7 says 'endure its bleakest days' and 'emerge again into the spring'. There are drawings of a hibernating mouse amongst leaves and a twig with hazel catkins.

The last page of the Wintering zine has a beige background with snow-like white paint speckles. In the middle of the page is a white paintstroke from which a purple spring crocus is growing. On the paint, text says 'Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.' Underneath is a snowy landscape with black washi-tape tree silouettes. The title of the reviewed book is named: 'Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May'.





Here's the original text, if you want to translate the zine to your language (it's all quoted from the book). The German version of the book is called "Überwintern. Wenn das Leben innehält".

Page 1: Wintering - a book recommendation

Page 2: There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into Somewhere Else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Somewhere Else is where ghosts live, concealed from view and only glimpsed by people in the real world. Somewhere Else exists at a delay, so that you can't quite keep pace.

Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.

Page 3: Wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful. Yet it's also inevitable.

Page 4: Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.

Doing those deeply unfashionable things - slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting - are radical acts these days, but they are essential.

prepare for winter - endure its bleakest days - emerge again into the spring

Page 5: Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.