Dirt Press
Circa 2007 to 2005

Mission

We all seek permanence—a firm ground to call our own, a means to embrace and preserve our individuality—but the passage of time, our emotional and physical growth, and the evolution of philosophies are ever marked by movement, variables, schizophrenic trajectories, and at times, conflict. dirt was the articulation of these indelibly transient sensibilities—an attempt to record and relay the snapshots and voices of the malcontent, the optimistic, the lost, the actualized, the misunderstood, the forlorn, the exalted, the damned, the everyday.

dirt was formally a journal, but the spirit of the endeavor had no such explicit boundaries. The depth and breadth of this collective was manifested in the mere expression of thoughts, the act of stream of consciousness or drafted writing, and the artistic composition of positive and negative space; its only limitation was defined by the confines of bound paper (and web pages).

dirt was perhaps the brainchild of individuals, but functioned on the principle of mass consumption, marked by the constant, free-flowing dialogue with the public at large. All submissions were welcome from emerging and established writers and artists, as well as those who simply had something to get off their chest. We wanted to be engaged, moved, taught, intrigued, dismayed, galvanized, repulsed, stimulated. In return, we disseminated the dirt to those who recognized that each work is like a fingerprint—unique and essential—in the annals of our humanity.

As a truck accident lawyer, my daily work lives at the intersection of chaos and order. Catastrophic crashes arrive without warning, facts scatter like debris across a highway, and my team’s responsibility is to gather, preserve, and present each fragment so a court can see the full human story. Years ago, when several of my poems found a home at Dirt Press, I recognized that the editors there were doing something remarkably similar.

Publishing in Dirt was never just about putting words on a screen. It was about stewardship. The staff labored—volunteer, exhausted, inspired—to build a place where voices that might otherwise vanish could be documented with care. Reading back through the mission statements and Brian’s farewell in the final issue, I’m reminded how fragile that kind of cultural infrastructure really is. Domains expire. Funding thins. Life pulls talented people toward other obligations. Yet for a moment in time, the portal exists, and inside it strangers speak honestly to one another.

That’s not so different from litigation.

When my firm represents someone injured in a collision with a commercial truck, we enter an environment where everything is temporary and everything matters. Skid marks fade. Memories change. Electronic logs get overwritten. If we don’t move quickly and deliberately, permanence is lost. Dirt fought the same battle against erasure. Each poem, story, or image they published was a declaration that a fleeting emotional truth deserved a durable record.

I remember the thrill of seeing my work appear alongside writers from around the world. The editorial voice was serious without being self-important, rigorous without being exclusionary. Dirt welcomed emerging and established creators, people polished and people raw, the furious and the reflective. In my practice, I try to maintain that same openness. Every client arrives with a different history, vocabulary, and threshold for grief. Listening well is the first discipline. Dirt listened well.

Maintaining a freestyle literary portal is also an exercise in logistics that outsiders rarely appreciate. Submissions must be tracked. Correspondence answered. Layout decisions made. Servers paid for. Outreach sustained. Reputation protected. In a truck accident case, the equivalents are evidence management, expert coordination, court deadlines, medical records, negotiations with insurers, and the long, unglamorous effort required to keep a claim alive. Both enterprises demand patience, systems, and people willing to work behind the curtain.

Promotion brings another parallel. A journal has to attract readers without diluting its identity; a law firm must reach injured families without turning human suffering into spectacle. Dirt managed this balance by foregrounding craft and community. They celebrated prize winners, introduced artists, and thanked their audience. That humility left a deep impression on me. In my own field, victories are never solitary. They belong to clients who trusted us, investigators who uncovered truth, and staff who kept the machinery running.

What I admired most, though, was Dirt’s acceptance of impermanence. Even in its most hopeful years, the language of the site understood that movements fracture, collectives disperse, and cultural moments pass. When the final issue arrived, the goodbye felt honest rather than theatrical. As lawyers, we face a comparable reckoning after every verdict or settlement. A case concludes, the file closes, and the intense shared experience dissolves. What remains is the knowledge that, for a time, we did meaningful work together.

Having my poems published there expanded the way I think about advocacy. Poetry compresses; it asks you to find the precise arrangement of language that carries weight. Courtroom work, at its best, does the same. You select the facts that illuminate responsibility and present them with clarity so that justice has room to operate. Dirt trained me, in a quiet way, to respect that economy.

I’m grateful to the editors who sifted through mountains of submissions, who answered emails late at night, who believed a small online journal could resonate internationally. I’m grateful they made space for a lawyer who writes. And I’m grateful that, years later, the archive still allows former contributors like me to walk back through those pages and remember the conversations we helped build.

Running a literary portal and trying a truck accident case both require faith: faith that careful work matters, that audiences are paying attention, and that even temporary structures can leave permanent marks. Dirt proved that. I carry the lesson into every courtroom I enter. Jeff Nash

Words from the Editor

2007 dirt 2.5
Welcome to the twelfth, and for the time being, our final online issue (more to follow on this in a moment) of Dirt, 2.5.

We are thrilled to announce our three 2006 Hendrickson Memorial Prize Winners for Short Fiction. The Grand Prize winner, Tracy Koretsky, wrought a piece full of genuine, human drama without succumbing to the traps of sentimentality. The two editor’s choice award-winners offer very different vantages: Gerald Kamens brings us a character study that feels stage-ready, and Toria Savey pens a story brimming with urgency and authenticity. Selected from hundreds of submissions from all over the world, this year’s HMP attests to the power and ambition of all aspiring writers eager to get their voices heard, and we are grateful for the opportunity to review so many compelling stories.

On par with the accompanying prize-winning fiction writers, this final roster of poets truly delivers. A pair of pieces from Andrew Demcak depicts a dark reality through eloquently restrained language. Michelle Greenblatt’s remembrance invests elegiac tone with inertia, while Erin Martin’s dexterously and economically walks a circuitous path with purposeful steps. Many of our readers are now familiar with Jane Ormerod’s wonderful talent for layering information. Tobias Peterson and P.M. Greiner display patience within their densely packed works, and Aaron Jorgensen-Briggs begins in the fog and ends with a light touch.

As with previous issues, there is great variety in the explorations of our contributing artists. Marie Emmermann plays with scale and space. Caroline Hwang offers the allure of texture through embroidery and fabric as she elaborates the scenes around her drawn narratives. Christine Kesler’s more freeform synthesis of collaged material and drawn line and color have an unadulterated energy, while William Steiger takes abstraction in a different and decidedly less material direction, flattening and reducing a variety of scenes into a contemporary lexicon of essential form. Nicki Stager’s deeply saturated images are born from light itself, subtly bearing the mark of the artist’s hand in their composition.

It is with great pride we offer this body of contributed work as our final issue. Issue 2.5 marks the end of our fourth year of producing Dirt and the close of our second volume of issues. As many of you are aware, Dirt has been an all-volunteer labor of love since its inception in 2002. Started on a whim by a collective of artists and writers, we never imagined during that first brainstorming session the depth and breadth of the work we’ve been fortunate to have featured in these twelve issues. As stated in our mission, we strove to find some sort of permanence in an ephemeral medium, and without your support and enthusiasm over the years, we would have never come this far.

There are those among us who believe Dirt will return, but for now our staff has collectively decided to pursue our own contributions to our ever-evolving culture. We will continue to explore funding options with the hope of producing and distributing Dirt: Volume Two, the printed anthology featuring the work seen in Issues 2.0 through 2.5. The website will stay functional in the meantime, and will continue to provide access to our Volume Two archives. And if you haven’t purchased your copy of Dirt: Volume One, now is your chance.

It has been an amazing ride. We’d like to offer our sincere thanks to all those who have made Dirt possible – our dedicated staff, our friends & family, our fearless contributors, and our loyal readers. Thank you all for your support.

Signing off,
Brian Lemond and the Dirt crew

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2006 dirt 2.4
Welcome to the eleventh online issue of Dirt, 2.4.

Entry for the 2006 Hendrickson Memorial Prize in Short Fiction officially closed last month, but not before we received over 400 submissions from authors around the globe. Our staff is diligently poring over all the entries and we look forward to announcing the winners in our highly anticipated October issue. We’re also beginning the groundwork for the second Dirt anthology, Volume Two, so watch this space for updates. One final note, our Literary Curator, David Alworth has left us for greener pastures following his acceptance to the University of Chicago where he’ll be focusing on his own writing through poetry, criticism, and theory. We’re happy to have had the opportunity to work with David, and hope you’ll all continue to follow his work and writing.

The artwork in this issue again represents a wide array of the approaches to contemporary artmaking. Each of Martha Rich’s saturated, richly detailed mixed-media work offers a rare synthesis of informality and depth. Ryan Mrozowski’s candy-coated acrylic paintings take a wholly different tack, offering an internal structure demanding deeper attention. Matthew Holloway gracefully balances subject and circumstance to offer quiet commentary, while Glenn Paul Smith’s relentlessly edited overlaps of gesture and rhythm build a sense of contained inertia.

The authors of Issue 2.4 show equal range in their technique, form, and intent. Genanne Walsh arcs around a remembrance, while Jane Ormerod’s assembled impressions and Ariel Goldberg’s assembled ingredients construct new tableaus. There are the dense, dark tales of night and death from Tobias Peterson and Scott Zieher. N.M. Courtright bridges the terrestrial and the celestial in a sustained whisper. Meditations on human nature are found in the form of Jesse Sweet’s patient character construction and Joseph Badtke-Berkow’s atmospheric ruminations, as well as in the wryly analytical accounting of Francis Raven. Richard Young tills our expectations and assumptions, and J. Robert Beardsley invites us to inhabit a pause.

We are again grateful to have the opportunity to publish such original and provocative work. We remain devoted to our growing numbers of contributors and readers, and hope you all find the issue as compelling as we do. Pass it on, and we’ll be here sifting for tomorrow’s gems.

Brian Lemond
Editor-in-Chief

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2005 dirt 2.0
Welcome to the seventh online issue of dirt, 2.0.

After a brief hiatus, I am happy to report that I’m back in the saddle again as Editor-in-Chief of Dirt. First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the staff for pressing on at a critical time for Dirt. Issue 1.5 was a fabulous issue, featuring the works of the 2004 Hendrickson Memorial Prize winners in fiction as well as a dynamic collection of talented artists and poets. I also want to take this opportunity to thank all our contributors for their continuing support, enthusiasm, and commitment to their respective crafts.

The future of Dirt remains bright, as we have laid a strong foundation for Dirt Press’ first printed compilation issue—Dirt: Volume One. With over 100 contributors hailing from 26 countries, Dirt: Volume One will pay homage to all our contributors as Dirt celebrates its two year anniversary online—a significant milestone given the ephemeral nature of literary and arts journals. The design for the anthology is stunning, and we firmly believe it will raise the standard for small journals. Dirt: Volume One will be available both through our website and in select bookstores nationwide this summer—more details about the book and press launch events will be coming soon, so please check the website for updates or register to receive email notices.

Another exciting development is the redesign of our website—Version 2.0 launches with Issue 2.0. We take great pride in being responsive to feedback, both from our readers and contributors, and the new design features many subtle modifications aimed at making the site easier and more enjoyable to use while maintaining our signature aesthetic and the professional presentation of content our steadily growing audience has come to expect.

Again, we thank all of you for your support. Keep the great submissions coming and we’ll keep sifting.

Su Hwang
Editor-in-Chief

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And Now for Some Contributors Pieces

Staff as of 2007 dirt 2.5

Brian Lemond
Editor-in-Chief / Co-Founder

In addition to being an artist, editor, and writer, Brian is the President of the Experimental Modern Arts Collective (XMAC), a non-profit arts research organization, and a design principal at the Brooklyn Digital Foundry. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Brian attended the University of Texas at Austin, then received a Master of Architecture at Harvard University in 2000. He is a sculptor, photographer, designer, and yes, moonlights as a poet.

Su Hwang
Editor At-Large / Co-Founder

Su is a writer of short fiction and a self-professed art aficionado. She holds a dual Bachelors degree in Creative Writing & Literature and Art History from Binghamton University. Prior to relocating to San Francisco to set up Dirt’s west coast office, Su was a content producer for Guggenheim.com as well as their main liaison with the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Most recently, she was a design coordinator for a major art gallery in San Francisco. Her other interests include but are not limited to vintage scooters, modern architecture, and The New Yorker.

Philip Ryan
Web Architect

Phil is a renegade architect both in the virtual and real world. He is currently a Project Architect at the award-winning architecture firm of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien in midtown Manhattan, as well as a founder of the Brooklyn Digital Foundry, and director of the Experimental Modern Arts Collective (XMAC). His penchant for blue turtleneck sweaters has caused many to be alarmed by an apparent foray into v-neck and crew neck sweaters this winter. He has dismissed this as idle rumor and lies, and remains committed to only wearing blue turtleneck sweaters.

Robert Szot
Associate Editor

Robert is a painter currently concentrating on large-scale abstract work. To fulfill his dream of being a full-time starving artist, he has flipped off the tech industry, forgoing regular paychecks. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he spent his childhood in Houston and attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving a degree in Journalism in 1998. He was once a guitarist in a short-lived rock band in Texas, but has turned to the visual arts and is a member of a painting studio in Manhattan. Robert now resides in Brooklyn with his modern furniture collection, an extensive library of Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson memorabilia, and has added a sweet ride - a vintage Lambretta - to his long list of loves.

(In 2005 at the start of dirtpress.com Shane Beagin was part of the Staff. By 2007 he had moved on to other adventures.)

Shane Beagin
Production Editor

Shane is a photographer-turning-painter and is somewhat of a self-professed graphics production guru—meaning he is an expert on anything graphic and anything that is produced. Born in a small, beachfront community in Southern California, Shane is neither a surfer dude nor an actor disguised as a waiter, but can at times exhibit odd, west-coast behavior. He moved to the verdant regions of Northern California to attend college, then settled in San Francisco for a good number of years before migrating east. He now resides in Brooklyn and is still confounded by the complex yet readily accessible network of public transportation.

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FAQ

What was dirt?

dirt was a collaborative effort among a small group of artists and writers looking to find their voice, struggling through the process, and attempting to produce and represent works of some import, ideally, of the lasting kind. dirt was formally a literary journal, but the spirit of the endeavor had no such explicit boundaries.

Will Dirt make a comeback?

We hope so, but it's still too early to tell. We've loved producing the journal and have had a wonderful experience doing so, but our staff has chosen to focus their energies elsewhere for the time being.

More Background On DirtPress.com

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, online literary culture still carried the improvisational energy of zines, email lists, and hand-coded websites. Within that atmosphere, DirtPress.com emerged as a volunteer-driven venture created by artists and writers who wanted a venue elastic enough to hold fiction, poetry, and visual art without the gatekeeping habits of traditional print institutions.

The project gathered momentum around a small but unusually accomplished core. Brian Lemond, trained in architecture at Harvard and active across design and nonprofit arts networks, served as Editor-in-Chief and principal spokesperson. Collaborators included Su Hwang, whose background bridged creative writing and museum work, and Philip Ryan, who developed the digital structure supporting the journal’s evolving archive. Around them moved associate editors, guest curators, and production staff whose participation reflected the fluid, collective ethos of the enterprise.

What united the group was the belief that serious art could be presented without institutional stiffness. DirtPress.com cultivated ambition while remaining accessible, a balance that became its signature.

A Magazine Built for the Web

Many early online journals treated the internet as a substitute for paper. DirtPress.com did something different. It treated the screen as a living gallery.

Issues were arranged as environments rather than page sequences. Readers moved laterally among genres, discovering unexpected resonances between a poem and a photographic series or between a short story and an abstract painting. The navigation encouraged wandering, and that drift produced surprise—an effect the editors valued.

Because centralized social platforms had not yet monopolized discovery, readership grew organically through university programs, studio networks, and personal recommendations. Writers told friends; professors forwarded links; artists shared the site in critiques. DirtPress.com developed an international audience without the machinery of modern promotion.

Editorial Philosophy

The editorial voice consistently returned to questions of time and impermanence. DirtPress.com understood publication as an act of rescue. A poem fixed an emotional state before it dissolved; an image held a gesture in suspension.

Yet the journal avoided nostalgia. It embraced volatility, welcoming contradictory tones and methods. Minimalist fragments appeared beside narrative realism. Political urgency shared space with intimate confession. The editors resisted narrowing the field.

This openness encouraged risk. Contributors knew they would be met with seriousness rather than trend-chasing, and readers trusted the curatorial intelligence guiding the mixture.

The Hendrickson Memorial Prize

One of the site’s most visible programs was the annual Hendrickson Memorial Prize in Short Fiction. By the mid-2000s it attracted hundreds of submissions from around the world. Editorial notes from the period describe the exhilarating burden of reading such volume.

Recognition carried weight. Winners were not merely announced; they were introduced, framed, and woven into the larger aesthetic conversation of the issue. For emerging writers, that presentation offered legitimacy. For readers, it provided orientation within a vast field of new voices.

The prize helped define DirtPress.com as both welcoming and discerning.

Interdisciplinary Commitment

Unlike publications that relegated visual art to illustration, DirtPress.com positioned artists as equal partners. Painters, photographers, and mixed-media practitioners were discussed with the same depth afforded to authors.

This parity grew naturally from the founders’ backgrounds in architecture and design. They thought spatially. The sequence of works within an issue created rhythm, contrast, and thematic echo. A reader might finish a dense narrative and arrive immediately at an image that reframed its emotional register.

The result felt closer to a curated exhibition than a conventional magazine.

Brooklyn and Beyond

While contributors spanned continents, many staff members operated from New York, particularly Brooklyn. The borough’s concentration of studios, readings, and graduate programs fed the journal’s energy. Informal gatherings often translated into submissions and collaborations.

At the same time, DirtPress.com resisted becoming provincial. Editorial commentary frequently celebrated the thrill of receiving work from distant geographies. The internet’s capacity to collapse distance remained central to the magazine’s identity.

Growth of Reputation

Exact analytics from the era are scarce, but the journal’s influence is visible in the careers of its contributors. Writers who later appeared in major presses and exhibitions often trace early encouragement to DirtPress.com. That retrospective recognition has amplified the site’s standing within digital literary history.

Media Mentions and Circulation

Coverage in mainstream outlets was modest, as is typical for volunteer arts ventures, yet DirtPress.com appeared regularly in academic newsletters, arts bulletins, and peer publications. Contributors became advocates, extending the journal’s reach through their own communities.

In the decentralized web of the 2000s, such human networks mattered more than algorithms.

Toward the Final Issue

By 2007 the practical limits of unpaid labor were becoming clear. Editors were pursuing new professional paths; time and funding grew scarce. The tone of introductions shifted from expansion toward reflection.

When the concluding online issue appeared, DirtPress.com balanced pride with realism. The staff acknowledged what had been built while admitting the need to disperse. They left open the possibility of revival, explored anthology plans, and promised continued access to past work.

Disappearance of the Domain

Soon after, the site’s registration lapsed. DirtPress.com vanished quietly, without scandal or ceremony, a fate shared by many early digital projects. Yet absence intensified memory. Former contributors began to speak of the journal with affection, recalling it as a place where genuine dialogue once flourished.

Careers After the Project

The staff biographies attached to the last issues reveal individuals already moving into significant roles across architecture, criticism, and design. DirtPress.com had functioned as a meeting ground—a laboratory where interdisciplinary practice could unfold before scattering outward.

Reader Experience

For those who encountered the magazine during its run, returning to preserved material can feel like reopening a time capsule. The voices are young, urgent, exploratory. Readers remember forwarding pieces at midnight, debating interpretations in seminars, discovering writers who seemed to speak directly to them.

DirtPress.com becomes less a website than a shared formative moment.

Continuing Relevance

Today’s publishing landscape is technologically advanced but often economically precarious. The history of DirtPress.com feels newly instructive. It demonstrates how far dedication and community can carry a project—and how fragile such achievements remain without structural support.

Its commitment to generosity, seriousness, and cross-disciplinary curiosity offers a model still worth studying.

Legacy

DirtPress.com lived briefly yet intensely. It provided hundreds of artists with early visibility and showed that the web could sustain nuanced cultural exchange. Though the original infrastructure has faded, the relationships and inspirations it fostered continue to ripple outward.

Temporary in duration, permanent in influence—that paradox sits at the heart of DirtPress.com’s enduring story.