Steamshovel Press

History

Kenn Thomas launched Steamshovel Press in 1988 from St. Louis, Missouri, and kept it running into the 2000s. The zine occupied a unique space at the intersection of UFO research, JFK assassination studies, parapolitics, and subcultural publishing. Where most UFO newsletters stayed within their lane, Steamshovel Press treated the UFO question as one thread in a larger tapestry of suppressed information and covert power structures.

Thomas drew contributors from across the conspiracy research world, publishing writers who moved between ufology, deep politics, and countercultural media. The publication's tone was literate and curious rather than paranoid, and it maintained a zine aesthetic rooted in the DIY publishing culture of the late 1980s and 1990s. Steamshovel Press connected readers to books, lectures, and researchers they would not have found through conventional channels.

The zine benefited from the 1990s conspiracy culture boom that produced The X-Files, Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM, and a wave of related media. But Steamshovel Press predated that boom and outlasted much of it, sustained by Thomas's persistent curiosity and a loyal readership.