PDR Blog

“Nothing is sexier than an intelligent hard-on.” So says KD Diamond, editor of Salacious, an independent magazine devoted to queer feminist sex art and literature.  

With its offering of erotica, poems, photographs, and comics (Diamond is a comic artist and illustrator), the magazine “aims to meld pornography with high art.”  

Diamond and friends have put out two issues so far and the editors at PDR are big fans. That’s why we’re re-posting her call for support to print their third issue:

“Salacious #1 sold out within about 6 weeks of being printed. It was amazing! We did a print run of 550, and it went like hotcakes. It’s already become an amazing commodity.

We decided to take a risk, and we doubled the print run of #2. We have a much better printer, and so the cost was basically the same for doubling our print run. We’ve already sold approximately 500 issues of #2, so we’re at the same place we were with #1, which is wonderful!

The unfortunate difference is that, with #1, we had start-up funds, all of which went into printing promotional materials and helping with printer costs. Issue #2 has had nothing but capital from magazines, which, to be transparent, isn’t enough. We currently owe our new printer another $2700, and we don’t know where that money is going to come from. 

For everyone that donates $10.00 in the next week, you will get a COMPLETELY ORIGINAL illustration from me. It’ll be a little bit like Illustration Roullette in that you will not know what you’ll be getting, but it will be hand-drawn and signed by yours truly. 

You can donate here: http://salaciousmagazine.com/support.php

Or if you have a PayPal, you can wire money to kd@katiediamond.com

I know this is asking a lot. Many of us, myself included, don’t have a lot of spare change right now. I’m aware that start-ups are rough for the first 3-5 years, and I’m willing to stare bold-facedly into that roughness and totally rock the hell out of this magazine. We are filling a void and supplying a new voice to the queer sex media, and I feel strongly about continuing this work. But I don’t feel right asking my printer to go ahead with printing #3–nor do I think he’d let me!–without finishing our payments for #2.

You are all amazing.

Thank you.

- kd diamond”

Miranda July is one of my favorite people, so I was excited to see her on the cover of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.

I remember being knocked out by No One Belongs Here More Than You, her collection of stories in which lonely and shockingly odd characters make real or imagined–but usually unexpected–connections with other people. I especially love “This Person.”

July is probably best known, though, as a performance artist and filmmaker. Honest, intimate, and daring, July’s 1999 film ”You, Me, & Everyone We Know” was hailed by Roger Ebert as one of the best films of that year.

In April of this year, we had a chance to talk to July about her new film, “The Future”. You can listen to the discussion here.

Like the stories, poems, and images in PDR? Help us keep this free, open access magazine going. 

We’re trying to raise $500 in sixty days. This will pay for approximately 20 months on a fast and reliable server to host the magazine and our website. We put out an issue every six months, so that pays for three issues plus the extra content we add to the site–we featured an interview with Miranda July in May, for example.

We don’t have any outside sources of funding; it’s all out-of-pocket. We started by hosting the magazine on a budget server, but our readers told us they couldn’t always get to the site–it took forever to load, or the server kept crashing.  The service provider we were using was even the subject of a denial of service attack by a malicious hacker that disrupted our site for several days. 

To promote the work we admire–from Pulitzer Prize winners to the never-before-published–and to reach our readers, we needed a more reliable web hosting service. We’ve made the switch but it’s costing us more money than we have. All the work we put into the magazine doesn’t mean much if readers don’t have reliable access to issues.

We hope you’ll consider helping us reach our goal by clicking here or on the “donate” button on the top left of the main menu. Thanks for your support and for reading the magazine!

On the eve of our launch party, Gabrielle Varela of the Cambridge Day posted an article about PDR. Varella describes the magazine as “lushly produced” and “brilliantly crafted … a gateway for artists to debut the way they deserve, as well as presenting a compilation of striking work to those with a love for art and a discerning eye.” We’re blushing a little bit, as that’s just about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about us. 

The party was a big hit, by the way.  Thanks to everyone who came! And stay tuned; we’ll be posting photos soon.