2025 Subscription Launch

Like a desktop computer being dragged back into the earth by a cluster of ferns and blooming bryophytes, we are helpless to resist the passage of time. Admittedly, Kyle Knapp makes it look pretty fun, which is why his illustration was chosen by our Founder Pass holders for our 2025 subscription.

Here are some important updates on our subscriptions:

• They cost the same. $60 for a year of Dirt is the right amount. We’re not raising our prices.

• We changed the term of your subscriptions. When we designed the subscriptions, we imagined them as being good for a calendar year, but most people want them to be good for 12 months after they purchase them. We’ve automatically updated your subscriptions to expire 12 months after you purchased them no matter when you bought your subscription in 2024.

• If you bought the 2024 subscription as soon as it launched, you’re definitely about to expire. The best way to check when you purchased is to click on “profile” in the upper right corner of the site while logged in and then “view assets” and “NFT transfers”—if you’re too lazy to do that, reply to this email and we’ll look it up. Buying a 2025 subscription will extend your access for another 12 months. If you’re stuck on the success message for your last purchase, tab back to step “4” payment method.

Keep reading for a recap of one AMAZING year. Thank you for being part of the dirtyverse, we couldn’t do it without you. 🫵

2024 IN REVIEW

By Daisy Alioto 

2024 started with the My Movie Theater series with MUBI, featuring essays by Isaac Fitzgerald, Erica Berry, Rax King and more. Readers gravitated toward Isaac’s tales of sneaking snacks into the theater—rotisserie chicken, a three-liter bottle of Mountain Lightning—but in typical Dirt fashion, the ending broke our heart. 

We then shifted into scent for our Scent Access Memory (S.A.M.) series with Are.na. We published Terry Nguyen on mall smells, Viv Medithi on gasoline and Katy Kelleher on holy fragrance. The series culminated in a bespoke perfume launch with UFO Parfums that quickly sold out. 

We got honest about the economics of being a writer in a series with Literary Hub. Naomi Kanakia wrote about the absence of money in contemporary novels and David Hill wrote about whether there has ever been a middle class of writers. Some people kept money diaries. 

But writers didn’t just write for us—they also modelled for us, in a digital fashion collaboration with DRAUP and Dani Loftus. Readers applied to wear the “Trash Trench,” a virtual garment made of plastic bags, and Nika Simovich Fisher traced the history of the desktop trash icon while Alyse Burnside gave us a history of Faxlore. 

The second iteration of The Nightlife Review was a complete shift from print zine to audio storytelling. In June 2024, Dirt published “audio postcards” from five cities around the world, each anchored by a different writer: Paz Azcárate in Buenos Aires, Jocelyn Silver in Los Angeles, Dan Q. Dao in Saigon, Chidinma Iwu in Aba, and Harrison Malkin in New York City.

We went straight from audio to tarot with our Summer of Bibliomancy series in collaboration with Moonlight, launching a digital deck designed by Christine Shan Shan Hou. In the words of Michelle Lyn King, “There are times in your life when you need a structure to make sense of the mystery of being alive…Tarot is a narrative art. It acts as a guide, giving clarity and continuity to experiences that seem otherwise meaningless.”

Speaking of narrative…we were also profiled in The New York Times this summer. We launched our podcast, Tasteland, co-hosted with Creator Spotlight. And that was just the beginning of another season rich with collaborations.

Lana Del Rey sings “It's you, it's you, it's all for you,” and our weeklong exploration of the suburbs with Rose Books and Night Gallery definitely was. (Night Gallery’s long-sleeved tribute to Lana and video games was spotted in the shopping cart of a prominent public intellectual who will remain nameless.) Running around the suburbs made us hungry, so we turned to Cake Zine for a dessert-themed third edition of The Nightlife Review. We argued for more food at raves and tried a truly life changing bread pudding. 

We had two columns this year that stood out to our readers. Objet, which featured writers talking about a single object, came up frequently in our Reader’s Choice awards. You liked Erin Somers on her sleep mask, Michelle Santiago Cortés on her machete, and Marlowe Granados on her Bakelite bag. Our column with NA beer brand Visitor about museums led to this great Hayley Jean Clark interview on grottos, after which Daisy Alioto coined “grottocore” for Prune. (By the way, if you haven’t been keeping up with Prune you’ve missed some truly memorable writing on Tupperware, spoons and towels.)

Now, 2024 is coming to an end. It’s the season of giving back—and we did—raising $1500 for Marfa Public Radio with a tote bag designed by David Alderman. What’s happening next year? A short-form video series and a new publication. Yes, you read that right. You’ll never guess what it’s about. And we’re publishing our first book, too. So stick around. You might fall in love with something. 🤎 

Special thanks to Walden Green, Becky Miller, Norah Rami, Chloe Norman, Sylvie Pingeon and Maya Lerman.