Hello Dismantle readers!
Welcome to our Summer 2023 Issue! In the spirit of the recent solstice ☀️ we’re taking this moment to reflect on where we’ve been in 2023—and where we’re hoping to go!
So far this year, we:
- Published a Spring Issue that we’re super proud of, bringing together voices of past Dismantle contributors in a new format.
- Received a record number of essay submissions and continued growing our audience of readers!
- Taught a six-week seminar on mindful writing practices.
- Began developing Yoga for Creatives! This will be a live virtual class for our Patreon members, meant to get creative juices flowing via yoga and mindfulness (details coming soon).
Inspired by the sun, we are using the energy of the last six months to fuel us forward. Similarly, all five authors in this issue draw from themes of reflection, engaging with their past to brighten up the things to come.
Giovanna Errore offers details about her surprise trip to a nudist spa and how it made her rethink her relationship to her body and chronic illnesses.
Rachel Harmon gives us the story of an empowering shopping trip and how it led her to think about her body, power and our culture’s love/hate relationship with boobs.
Saachi Gupta connects her own experience of anxiety about what to wear at a funeral to larger, complicated narratives about gendered expectations of respectfulness and mourning.
Cole Hersey offers a childhood anecdote that set him on a path to a worldview with liberatory potential.
Gaurav Monga explains how his personal and artistic history informs his latest writing project.
Thanks, once again to hvnly for her incredible work helping us edit and plan this issue!
We hope you love these essays as much as we do. And we hope you have some time to enjoy these longer summer days. We’ll be using them to plan for our five year anniversary in the fall!
— Sara and Elise
