Lovely readers,
For those of you that have been with us for some time (and for those of you who are simply curious minds), I’m excited to share that this issue yields a new trajectory for The Dilettante. As some of you may know, I created The Dilettante in college to offer a coherent home to my various poems and photographs. Starting as what was effectively a personal zine, it expanded to include submissions from friends and peers at my university and in the New Orleans area, and has continued to grow to what it is today—an arts and literature publication featuring works from 27 artists across the globe.
This issue’s call received a whopping 194 submissions, largely thanks to my discovery of artist and writer Facebook groups. Not only did this necessitate an evolution of our editorial team to efficiently sift through the volume of submissions, but it forced me to confront the self-limiting beliefs I maintain. Just yesterday, I was describing the latest issue of my “zine” to a couple of friends, including the number of pages and contributors, when one of them responded, “That doesn’t sound much like a zine to me!” I paused for a moment before admitting that it is, I suppose, more of an independent arts publication than a zine. To be clear, I say this not to diminish zines as a medium, but to reveal the walls I construct around my own creative practice.
To this day, I hesitate to consider myself an artist or a creative—partially because of the connotations those labels have acquired in the landscape of performative identities, but also because my silly brain struggles to believe that anything I do or create is meaningful to anyone other than me. In fact, my hesitancy to consider myself an artist is the catalyst of The Dilettante’s genesis and its etymological heart. Still, I forget that people read the words I write or see the photographs I create. I forget that I am a person in the world, witnessed and experienced and known by others.
Prior issues (previously called “editions”) of The Dilettante centered around a unique theme: decay, love, and rebellion, to name a few. In the spirit of breaking free of constraints, however, Issue 7 is themeless. And in the spirit of transparency, the real reason for this approach is that I couldn’t think of a cohesive theme that encapsulated my inspiration for this issue: the desire to explore artists’ creative processes.
I’ve always wondered how other artists approach their craft. What inspires them to create? What guides their process? Do they feel as uncertain, as much of an imposter, as I do? For this issue, I interviewed two local artists—one an old friend of sorts, and the other a new friend (I hope). Through talking about their crafts and what urges them to create, I had the privilege of getting to know each of them on what, to me, felt like a deeply intimate level—not just what they did, but why they did it. The memories and emotions and desires and anxieties that compelled their work. Thank you, Nina and Aaron, for entrusting me with these parts of yourself.
And so, dear readers, I entrust to you this issue and its many hours of labor—not only from myself, but from the incredibly talented group of people who are a part of it. I hope you enjoy.
Love,
Vi
The Dilettante‘s Issue 7 will be published on June 27, 2026.
The Dilettante 
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