dipity. Say Happy Birthday to Dipity Lit Mag!

celebrating our two year mark and a series of incoming updates

We’re officially two years old everyone—three is ahead! I apologize in advance for any typos again as I type this as quickly as possible. I know it’s not that long but still, it’s been a really great learning experience for me—I’ve truly come into contact with so many rad voices, supportive poets in the community, and awesome artists in such a short amount of time! Time sure does fly by as we all know!

Anyway, I want to say thank you to the volunteer staff and those of you who have followed Dipity Lit Mag since day one. I recently onboarded a few more volunteers to the reading team and they’ve been doing an awesome job overall thus far with great detailed notes. Also, to friends and past volunteers still on this mailing list thanks a ton for your ongoing support and contributions—means the world to me!

September 3rd, 2022 was around the time I started Dipity Literary Magazine, but we didn’t open up officially/announce for subs until about the week of the 9th if I recall. Also, I might have missed the birthday of the Hummingbird Blink: Nectar Poetry Spotify podcast on February 27th, 2022 which led up to the creation of Dipity Lit Mag. And now I’ve started to put the new episodes also over on Apple and will see about linking them up to YouTube since Google podcasts were discontinued, but if you enjoy video watch out on Spotify. Older podcast episodes consist of more music out on just Spotify, that’s why there’s an unusually large gap on Apple. I prefer listening on Spotify. I also recently heard that audio Apple podcasts are available through a new web-based platform now too.

As most of you know, Dipity Press recently launched in January around the 17th of this year, and I’m hoping to gradually expand a few other publication series within it that will involve a lot more interior artwork and photography as well.

Upcoming Events & News

Issue no. 5 is officially under construction! I recently started drafting the new music section and overall layout for issue no. 5 so it’ll be packed with meows, a bunch of music features, poetry, and abstract/surreal cat art. Our interior fonts will be changing too. Please note what I’ll place on the website sometime soon isn’t necessarily the official front cover of issue no. 5 yet, just a fun placeholder cover for now (subject to change) but it certainly could be the cover depending upon feedback.

It’s honestly a really lighthearted fun issue for the most part, but we still have room in quite a few sections still and hope to get there by this September and October latest. We are striving to highlight music alongside poetry much further in this upcoming issue and future ones rather than merely artist bios. I think it’s awesome when we get to learn more about artists and what goes on behind the scenes and their origin stories!

It typically takes a few months to put each issue together so I’m predicting this will be an end-of-November or December issue release. Some poets who were published through Dipity within the past year or so may be contacted soon about partaking in the regular bonus sections we have yet to fill as there wasn’t a ton of interest in the direct new bucket guidelines for those, so we may extend it or stick to tackling those like past years in terms of book recs, etc. If you’re not contacted for issue no. 5 bonus sections don’t worry, it could be a future issue down the road—same applies to musicians/bands. Again, we didn’t release as many magazine issues this year due to prioritizing the launch of Dipity Press and some unforeseen staff availability changes back to back.

Chapbook #2 Status

Our second chapbook has finally reached its 100% completion point and has some really cool artwork on the outside and inside. We’ll share some previews with you here once it arrives, on social media, and also on the podcast very soon! Yes, we hope to have more poets share their chapbooks on the community podcast. I’m also trying to have our chapbooks involved in a few fun pop-up literary table events along with our magazine issues this year and the following. After our second chapbook release, we’ll also have a third chapbook TBA, and possibly more still under review from the previous window.

Protagonist App Test Run

We’ll also be trying out the Protagonist mobile app. You may recall, that I mentioned this earlier in the year over here in a past post and wasn’t sure at the time, but have been hearing great things about it from fellow journals and magazines so we’re testing adding some publications from the online tank on our site over there (not all of them as I’m not 100% sure yet if it’ll be a regular task but probably will and remember we will be starting up a new B&W spin-off text-only version of Dipity sometime too prob in 2025).

Do note since our online tank is free on the site those will typically be free to read in their app like a mirror whereas ones only available in print will typically be subscription-walled by us which I think is fair. We can also upload audio reads into the app, so if you submitted to our podcast or provided an audio recording in the past year that was previously unpublished then you’ll most likely see it in the app once we upload it. Our Substack interviews will remain in Substack centrally for now and we’ll place these Q&As in print from time to time as well. Our online tank will still exist too alongside this. We might be able to add interviews into the app one day (unsure if we’ll do so), if not probably just the poems or short stories from those Q&As at a minimum.

There is nothing out there in the Protagonist app quite yet for Dipity Literary Magazine but a few author profiles I added as shown above, but I’ll be working on adding as many publications as possible very soon and will have some on the team perhaps help with this over time because it does take some time to format them line spacing wise and transfer over in another location/match them up. I’ll also be doing some fun new quick digital collages for these poems, spoken word pieces and short stories for fun because there’s an image requirement. Eventually, everyone we’ve added thus far will be notified via email to claim their author profile and update their current bio for this only after some maintenance and updates on their end are completed—unknown ETA but it’ll happen. We won’t upload all Dipity publications into the Protagonist app of course but quite a few now and then.

Cafeyn Updates

Aside from Protagonist, don’t forget that you can subscribe to digital versions of our print issues through Cafeyn too. Our Cafeyn web + mobile app digital PDF reading subscription cover price is reduced slightly down to now $8.99 (excluding the additional monthly subscription fees). Remember you’ll choose the region or country closest to you if you go that route and your preferred language.

Gift Shop Updates

Since our expenses sadly went up this year. I just updated the Swag shop with some fun items and incorporated mostly some of my old The Tiny Koala Doodle Company cartoon artwork from lol way back when I was in college, high school, and middle school even into sticker sheet packs along with some recent abstract collages. We also have wall art and hoodies. I have seen some friends in the community put these stickers on their laptops. All purchases help alleviate the monthly fees and maintenance expenses. There’s international shipping for these too. Some submitters have donated to us as well and it helps—so thanks so much if you ever did so!

Micro-Chapbooks

We will be officially kickstarting micro-chapbook submissions, this will be a bite-sized downloadable ongoing series of about 11 poems each through our website as planned initially but this was put on hold for a bit. I haven’t seen a ton of interest in the fixed eBook versions and some poets mentioned they do enjoy downloadable micro-chapbooks instead via some polls I did out on social media. I don’t know when exactly but very soon (possibly within the next few months), so your best bet is to closely watch our Submittable page for the guidelines and IG, but I’ll try to share alerts out here.

I’m not sure if our mid to full-length chapbooks will be placed in this digital downloads library section as longer reads get to be quite clunky and tough in that format to read so those may solely be made available in print (TBD still). We might be making a print series out of micro-chapbooks one day too TBD—uncertain at this time because one of our printers that allows for shorter works only ships to the U.S., otherwise they’ll just be downloads separate from the mid to global full-length print ones.

Feedback Requests

Lastly, quite a few poets have inquired about poetry feedback and I do primarily voice audio feedback at Dipity over poetry and typed manuscript/collection reviews—I’m hoping to add another team member in the future to help do more of these and crossover tasks (if anyone is ever interested in volunteering one day—use our staff page inbox and it will be reviewed at a later date—otherwise might do a staff position posting). For right now feedback options are not available but we’ll get there eventually once a few upcoming print publications are finished and issue no. 5.

I’m thinking we’ll convert the Help Desk section to predominantly intake poetry feedback and book review requests going forward in one place in the future.

Other P.S. notes: I am still deciding how we’ll address covers for the new micro-chapbook spin-off series. Once issue 5 is completed we’ll move on to issue no. 6 of course too after a brief break in between.

And hopefully, we can start up the next round of the yearly Music Symphonic Challenge after we announce the winner of the earlier round out on the podcast sometime this year.

New Podcast Episode

We have our first official video-based accepted podcast submission up—check out episode no. 133 with Anthony Xavier Jackson. Again, we don’t have transcripts on our podcast, so we totally may add these reads and the written/typed version along with audio into the Protagonist app to give others more than one option.

August Music Community Recs 2024

One more thing, since not everyone uses social media, here are our August 2024 recent release music recommendations TOP 16. again Please give these songs a listen, some of them have wicked cool lyric and music videos on their channels such as Jahrund — Jahrund, Witches — Edda, Wait- Cosette & Elise Koscso, Sword to the Heart (ft. Frequency Fixer) — MYRY, and Weed — Saint Gardenia and others below I didn’t mention. Although this song is not listed Kiiōtō also has a really beautiful skateboard music video with “Painkiller” which is a fave of mine. Mooshu also has some really cool unique outdoor music videos.

If you’re looking for past announcements, head over to our News tab as they’re hidden from the Substack app.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to post these rec lists every 25th of the month but will definitely try out on our social media channels. There may be a significant gap in Dipity’s online Q&As and posts as I work on issue no. 5’s layout for the rest of the year and other things—meaning the publications, updates, and shares may be a bit sporadic and not weekly for a bit of course. NOTE: Remember you can download the Substack app to comment and engage further with Dipity Lit Mag + Press.

Other Items

We recently got our ISSN application approved so there will be some downtime for some issues again while I update the ones available in the U.S. store’s back covers and the other formats, but you can order them elsewhere in online bookstores still while this occurs. Do note the prices are a tad lower through our website to accommodate for U.S. shipping and delivery fees. Whether you save more that way or through Amazon, or other online bookstores depends on where you’re located in the world. Again, I went back and cleaned up some minor typos, fixed numbering, as well as details like the copyright/ share permissions and our location page. I also added new spine serialization text. Most versions in online bookstores are on economy light paper whereas the ones on our site are all a tad heavier paper type again, but the content is the same.

Our online Q&As and spoken word channel subs will remain open for most of the year along with a few other fun categories. A couple more podcast episodes at least 3-4 or more are slated for this year—we’re just waiting on some remaining items and others availability changed due to summer events. I recently added a free option for poets who were published through Dipity Lit Mag to read their poem(s) on the podcast if they’d like to, but following the new format guidelines still—so check it out if you’re interested. Finally, in 2025 we’ll aim to take more artwork submissions through Submittable.

Thanks so much for your support! ~ Jazz Marie Kaur (VFORROW)

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Any other thoughts, comments, or shares?

We appreciate anyone who takes the time to comment, subscribe here, pledge support to our Substack, donates directly to help fund future community projects on our website, visits the gift shop, or buys us some pizza slices over there. Stay tuned for more Substack shares and interviews. Thanks again for your support and have awesome days ahead!