'tina: the magazine by Matteo B. Bianchi in the Secret Mag Club in September

The first time I met (by telephone) the writer Matteo B. Bianchi was in 2020, while the world was barricaded at home and I was buying up new titles to make known to the readers of Frab's. This is how I came to Matteo and that he came to me proposing to tell about Frab's in an episode of his podcast Cover. From there my request, which became more and more insistent, to be able to include one of the longest-running literary magazines in Italy in our Secret Mag Club, was practically taken for granted. I “courted” Matteo for months to make that special issue of 'Tina that he had in mind and that, by a strange and beautiful combination of events, it became reality.
But let's start from the beginning ...

It was 1996 when Matteo B. Bianchi clandestinely photocopied the first twelve copies of the first edition of 'Tina: "I thought of sending it to 11 people and I wanted to keep a copy for myself", he says in an interview. Eleven people so enthusiastic about the project that they persuade Matteo to publish the magazine for over 20 years.
'tina, diminutive of rivistina, is a contemporary pop fiction magazine that meets all the requirements that a good independent magazine must have: the contents are of the highest quality and is completely free, starting from the irregular cadence with which it is published, to finish with its shape, which has changed over the years to adapt to the times. Born in full fanzinaro style, 'tina for a few years was a digital-only magazine (to be printed and bound at home) before returning to paper, also taking the form of a podcast and, in 2021, with the number 36 that we have sent to the subscribers of the Secret Mag Club, take on the appearance of a book (one of those well done that also have a hard cover!).

Among the pages of 'tina, newcomers have always been published, sometimes accompanied by new stories by well-known writers. I believe that the real strength of this small magazine is the great and not obvious ability of Matto B. Bianchi to make a selection, to know how to read talent before everyone else, to reward original and never banal pens. Suffice it to say that among its pages have passed, from beginners, established names of national fiction, such as Tiziano Scarpa, Paolo Nori, Piersandro Pallavicini, Ilaria Bernardini, Marco Mancassola, Antonella Lattanzi.

Ceci n’est pas un livre

"For years I have dreamed of making a book by 'tina, but I never had the right opportunity to do it. It was there, in the mental drawer of the projects ”. Matteo thus introduces the thirty-sixth issue of the magazine, a special issue because it is more full-bodied than the others, 224 pages of words, 11 short, medium, long and very long stories interspersed with the sacred (or sacrilegious) graphics of Sergio Tanara, plus a ghost track, or a hidden story that exists but cannot be seen, a bit "as it was once done in CDs, that there was a hidden song and one discovered it only if he let the CD go empty for a while" (I for example I will never forget the fright of the first time that I let go on, by pure chance, the Lunapop album Squerez and left a disturbing song which many years later became Cremonini's "Il Pagliaccio").

The criterion with which the stories are selected is always the same: they are the ones that Matteo B. Bianchi likes best among the many he receives every day. For this special edition the stories of: Mattia Grigolo, Chiara d'Agostino, Sergio Oricci, Luca Laudati, Vincenzo Corvello, Alberto Poli, Marta Correggia, Anita Ranchifiori, Enrico Prevedello, Luca Murano, Luca Tosi and Gianmarco Perale have been selected for a potpourri of words that make you laugh and even a little pissed off, but above all they are able to keep the reader glued to the pages of the book-magazine for hours!
You will have to deal with madonnas (who for the first time enter a story and not only on the cover of the magazine), graduates without honors with little desire to seek employment, strange deaths of seagulls, adulterers with the benefit of the doubt, would-be suicides and much other.

Of 'Tina however, you must know another thing, it is a rather rare product because Matteo B. Bianchi generally prints a few copies to be distributed exclusively during presentations. Of this issue, which was printed just for the #SecretMagClub, we still have very few copies available and, if you hurry, maybe you can still find them HERE.

I just have to wish you a good and healthy reading!