Intimate Ephemera is the first major study of autobiographical writing produced and consumed in a youth subculture. Investigating the uses of the zine form for life writing, it examines the recurrent themes in texts circulating in Australian zine culture, including depression, consumerism, popular culture and political identity.
Intimate Ephemera also examines zine culture as a unique community of life writing and reading, where handmade texts circulate in an economy of gifting and exchange utilising the postal system. The book analyses the material diversity of zines as handmade objects, examining the use of the photocopier and craft techniques in these limited edition publications, bringing a focus to the role of the text-object in communicating personal experience.

Anna Poletti has been involved in do-it-yourself cultural projects since the late 1990s, including managing the National Young Writer's Festival (2000) and coordinating the This Is Not Art group of festivals (2003) in Newcastle, NSW. She currently lectures in Communications and Writing at Monash University.