Daphne’s diary entry #6
Written by Daphne Bryant
Designed by Rachel Chu
It’s been over a month since my last diary entry (did you miss me?!) but in my defense I’ve been veryyy busy. Earlier this month Dreamworldgirl Zine received over 400 applications for our staff positions and internships; that is CRAZY. I had a great time interviewing everyone and I’m so happy with my 20-something new staff members. However, the hiring process was definitely a lot. Not a day went by when I wasn’t on Zoom asking questions and talking about the zine. Now things have slowed down a little bit, but they’re about to kick up again because submissions are open RIGHT NOW!
That’s right; by the time this diary entry comes out submissions for Dreamworldgirl Zine’s second issue: Bitter will be open and anyone, anywhere, will be able to submit to us in the hopes of getting published. This is, naturally, very exciting for me and the rest of the team, but it’s also so strange? When I opened submissions for the first time in April, I was literally throwing shots in the dark and hoping I’d hit a target audience willing to put their faith in a brand new publication. And while we are still very much a baby publication (don’t let the 3k followers fool you), this time around I am going into the submission season knowing that we will probably receive hundreds of incredible pieces. I have no doubt that there will be hype around the issue; if anything, I’m nervous that Emma and I’s jobs are going to be 10x harder now because we only have 25 spots in the print issue! Fears aside, Bitter is genuinely such an awesome theme. I’ve been playing with it for a while now, and it’s truly such an interesting concept in terms of girlhood and what people can do with it. I can’t wait to see everyone’s different interpretations; I’m already seeing it with the photoshoots we’ve been doing. I think of our 7 Deadly Sins collab with NY Archive, which obviously gets into some pretty touchy vices like greed and gluttony. Or Tearin’ Up My Heart, a boy-band inspired photoshoot where we’re going to have a bunch of mascs posing and dancing to one of the most dramatic, poppy breakup songs of the Y2K era. If those are just some of our ideas, I can’t wait to see what our readers and followers cook up.
