What is North American Fur?

 

North American Fur, more commonly known as NAF, is an APA-zine. The "APA" part stands for Amateur Press Association; these are groups of people who contribute to their organization's publication and make comments on each other's contributions. "Zine" is short for "fanzine", a non-professional publication (as opposed to comics printed by a company that pays the creators). There used to be a lot of fanzines around the furry world — prior to the rise of the Web, that was the only way to let people see your art, unless you could get into a professionally-published comic. There used to be several APA-zines around as well, such as Gallery and Huzzah, but they're pretty much gone.

 

The difference between an APA-zine and a regular APA is that an APA-zine sells copies to the public to defray costs, meaning that members don't have to pay for their copies.

 

What does NAF the publication look like?

 

As printing technology has advanced, NAF has gone through a number of incarnations. Current issues are printed as 6" by 9" perfect-bound softcover books with color interiors. That doesn't mean that art must be in color, just that it can be.

 

Each issue of NAF is printed in two editions, the public edition, which is sold to the public, and the member edition. Member copies have private pages for comments and such that do not appear in the public copies. The private pages used to be on blue paper and hence are sometimes still called "blue pages". Due to the way we're printing now, we can't insert paper of different colors, so the private pages now have blue borders at the top and bottom.

 

It sounds like NAF has a history?

 

As of August 2017, 36 issues spanning 20 years. It was started in 1997 by Paul Groulx (Growl), who published the first three issues. Jarlidium Press picked it up with issue four when Growl was unable to continue it himself.

 

 I have to be a member to be in NAF?

 

Yes, that's the way APAs work. It's easy to apply: just email us at info@jarlidium.com with some samples of your work. These days, a pointer to your FA gallery/DA gallery/personal webpage is fine — anything that provides a typical sampling of your work so we can evaluate it fairly.

 

I'm in! What now?

 

Please check out the FAQ for new members and the official policies.