Tag: meet our new intern

Meet Our New Intern: Ana Mourant

Ana Mourant, a young woman, with blonde hair and light skin, wearing an explorer's hat, a short-sleeve shirt, shorts, and sandals, walking on a rope bridge high up in a forest

Growing up in rural Alaska, my family lived a largely subsistence lifestyle, which is the term we use when a family obtains most of its food from the wild rather than a store. We foraged for berries, fished for salmon, and hunted moose. We didn’t have a TV when I was young, nor computers, mobile phones, or even running water. Books, however, we did have. My family’s village had a small library, with many more books than people. Only about thirty people lived in the village year-round (yes, thirty, not thirty thousand), and our small library had around ten thousand books. With this book-to-people ratio, it’s no wonder that I became an introverted bibliophile.

People began to attract my attention as a teenager when I became interested in languages and met several foreign exchange students after we moved to the city. I use the word “city” loosely, since Juneau is a small town from most of the world’s point of view. But for us, Juneau was considered the “big city,” with its population of thirty thousand (yes, thirty thousand, instead of just thirty). I took linguistics, French, and Latin in school, and learned a bit of various other languages, including Greek, Italian, Mandarin, and Cantonese. My family decided to host an exchange student, after which I launched myself off on my own series of exchange programs to Greece, France, and Czechia, and spent my junior year of high school abroad in Germany (adding fluent German to my list).

In college, I knew I wanted work with literature, and initially thought I would become a writer. From my extensive language background (at that point I could speak five languages, to varying degrees), I knew I wanted to procure a thorough education not just in English literature, but the English language as well, from a linguistic point of view. I found the program I wanted which offered a major in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. I completed my BA and was also awarded membership to Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society.

College life was fun, mine especially so since I had the pleasure of studying English and global literature written from the beginning of the Old English language up to the present. Still, my heart has to get off the pages and into the woods sometimes. No matter what country I’m in or how many buildings I’m temporarily surrounded by, I always make time to return to the forest, the mountains, or whatever form of nature I can get to. I also make time to listen to Indigenous storytellers whenever the opportunity arises. Growing up in Alaska, I was immersed in both Indigenous as well as Euro-American culture. When I wasn’t out playing in the forest or reading, I was often listening to others tell their stories. In Alaska, we’re lucky that live storytelling is popular, both in casual settings as well as large ticketed events in cities. During the latter half of my college years, I began to realize that my true passion lies not in writing my own creations, but in helping others to tell their stories.

When I discovered editing, I knew that this was the path for me: helping others tell their stories. My mind is analytical, my background is strong in language, and my heart is with storytellers who have braved the wilds of life and have enthralling experiences to share. I found that I enjoy helping others more than writing my own pieces from scratch. I love the process of analysis. I love seeing the forest through the trees and helping the story shine. I love getting a rough manuscript and working as a team with the author to form it, see it grow, and watch it bloom.

After I finished my undergraduate program, I pursued this passion and went to grad school at the University of Washington to obtain my editing certificate. I graduated in June 2025, not only with my editing certificate, but also with a certificate in storytelling and content strategy. I am now equipped to help authors find their voice and bring stories to the world.

During my time at the University of Washington, and since then, I’ve edited books, news articles, and websites. I’ve worked with well-known authors, first-time authors, international journalists, and businesses around the world. I enjoy editing a wide variety of material, my favorites being nature writing and anything by or about Indigenous Peoples. As of this writing, besides my editorial internship with Sundress Publications, I’m the copyeditor for journalist Marcie Sillman, and I continue to freelance edit for a wide variety of publishing houses, authors, and businesses. My three favorite authors are Robert Macfarlane and Tristan Gooley, both nature writers, and Wes Henry, whose wonderful prose makes me smile every time I work on his humorous teaching memoir manuscript (in the substantive editing phase as of this writing).

Stay tuned for my Sundress Reads book reviews coming up in the next couple months, as well as my Sundress TikToks. I’m so excited to work with Sundress Publications and happy to be a part of this team!

Ana Mourant is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, developmental edits, structural edits, line edits, copyedits, proofreads, and beta reads, as well as authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Meet Our New Intern: Natalie Gardner

A white woman leaning against a wooden deck railing with the woods behind her. She is wearing a black dress, a green army jacket, and a black scarf, and is looking to the side.

The first piece of writing I was ever proud to share was a horror story I wrote for my tenth-grade English class. It was early October, and we were charged with writing spooky stories to share on Halloween, which unfortunately fell on a school day that year. Inspired by the works of Franz Kafka, the first author I became truly obsessed with, I wrote about a man who woke up paralyzed and was then embalmed while still alive. It was gory, visceral, and definitely not school-appropriate. When sharing it with my classmates, the predominant reaction was one of disgust. Although embarrassing in retrospect, I reveled in this reaction; I had made them feel something, no matter that it was disgust. Ever since then, I’ve been chasing that feeling.

I’ve always had a penchant for the weird, the off-putting, the over-the-top and campy. I attribute this to feeling like an outsider for most of my life, being both visibly queer and caught between my very Southern upbringing and the culture of my suburban hometown. Combine this with the inherent body horror of growing up as transgender, it seems self-evident that horror would eventually become my mainstay.

The urge to shock is not an inherently negative thing. Although it can easily give way to base cruelty, shocking art can also be a powerful tool for galvanizing others to action. For me, creating and enjoying art that seeks to shock is an act of self-empowerment. In a way, I am claiming the right to exist as something strange and margin-bending. To this day, I still love trashy, over-the-top art of all kinds, from Pink Flamingos to ’80s slashers, from Manhunt to Bladee. 

Around the time I started college, another of what I would call my “sustaining motivations” emerged—the urge to document. I was regularly attending hardcore and DIY shows hosted in basements, bars, and anywhere else that would take us. Additionally, I was (and still am) immersed in Knoxville’s “queer scene.” Inhabiting these spaces catalyzed my personal and artistic development. Anyone who has danced until 3 AM or moshed in a basement that is packed from wall-to-wall will tell you that it is an experience like no other. Its beauty is in its transience; for just a few hours, you are one with everyone around you. If the experience itself doesn’t convince you of this, stand outside after the show and watch complete strangers talk like old friends, share their last few cigarettes, and make plans to see each other again despite having just met. Watch the crowd dissipate, go back to your normal life, and then do it again a few weeks later. Do this again and again, watch scenes emerge and thrive and die, and you’ll understand the urge to hold on to it.

Queer lives, local scenes, basement shows where people who feel unwanted find community for the first time in their lives—all of these things are transient and immeasurably beautiful. Much of what I write is an attempt to document the beauty around me before it is gone. I owe this perspective on life and writing to another author that influenced me as a teenager, Torrey Peters. Peters’ debut novel, Detransition, Baby, was the first book I read by a trans author explicitly for a trans audience. It’s hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly enthralling, but more than that, it is a snapshot of the trans experience in a particular time and place. Peters moved me and showed me that I could accomplish more with my writing than I ever imagined. My writing became imbued with a new purpose, or rather, my ends evolved. No longer was I writing just to get a rise out of people. Instead, my goal became to create something that spoke to my particular moment, and for it to move the reader through its sheer, self-evident beauty.

When you really get under the hood of it, this desire is the same as my long-held desire to shock and disgust. Buried under all the teenage angst was a desire to make the reader feel something, and for them to really feel it. In truth, this is the goal of all art. There is beauty in every moment, in every voice, and I believe Sundress Publications is a place that values this beauty. I am excited to be a part of this team, and I look forward to making beautiful art with y’all!

Natalie Gardner is a trans writer hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is currently pursuing a BA in English with a minor in philosophy from the University of Tennessee. She loves transgressive fiction, hiking, and schlocky, B-tier horror movies. When she isn’t working, you can find her haunting the coffee shops of Fort Sanders and DIY shows across East Tennessee. Her work in the field of linguistics can be found in Feedback Review in Second Language.

Meet Our New Intern: Aylli Cortez

Aylli, a fair skinned person with short brown hair, sits cross-legged on the grass. He is wearing wide frame glasses paired with a black crew neck top and blue jeans. Small purple flowers and various plants fill the upper half of the background.

Last February, I had the honor of reading some of my poems at a book launch in Makati, not far from the city where I grew up. As a then–university student who’d only been published in one journal, I was thrilled to play a supporting role in the milestone of a great poet. I didn’t expect to come away with a message of encouragement that evening, but when the author signed my copy of his collection, he also scribbled on the title page: “For Ayl—keep writing… You don’t have a choice now.”

The note struck me as funny, scary, and touching at the same time. Both a form of pressure and a show of recognition, it seemed to say: You need to continue doing this because it’s who you are. Now, one year later, I can do what I couldn’t in that small independent bookshop, call myself a writer. Not because I have a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing, or an award, or more published poems, but because I feel belonging in this community and want very badly to give back.

In my undergraduate years, I grew as a writer, editor, and facilitator through my participation (turned presidency and editorship) in two literary organizations. Combined with the experience I gained from my workshop and publishing classes, as well as my summer internship at the university press, I realized that honing my craft wasn’t a solitary endeavor. Writing didn’t have to be isolating; it could prompt me to converse and collaborate with my peers! I later learned that many of us shared the same zest for arts, culture, and niche Internet fandoms. Still, we needed the resources and opportunities to recognize that we weren’t alone.

While the pandemic drove classes online for half of my college life, I managed to organize and often moderate literary talks, writing workshops, social events, deliberations, and training seminars. It was a great way to invite professional authors to share their work and expertise with us, but also to invite students to read widely and critically, develop confidence in their works-in-progress, and offer their skills in service of each other.

Since graduating in June, I’ve learned to become a student on my own terms. Aside from reawakening my reading practice and seeing it translate to a calmer, more consistent writing process, I’ve made a habit of seeking and attending art events around Metro Manila—especially ones that platform small presses and self-published creatives. Talking to illustrators, writers, komikeros, and zinesters gives me perspective. Our insights (and friendship) show me what needs are and aren’t being met while getting me to see more possibilities for us as artists.

Now, I believe that self-expression can only take me so far, as my ideas flow furthest when I engage with material made by others, be it literary or “extraliterary.” Poetry welcomed me by encouraging that I test the distinction between the two.

As a genre, poetry willingly lends itself to overlaps. It can house hybrid forms, it delights in playful language, and it offers endless chances to experiment. When I came to grips with being transmasculine, I felt uncomfortable with the disclaimers of fiction and nonfiction, the line between real and not. Poetry didn’t have me choose. As I began reading more books by queer and trans poets of color, many of whom I have a dear professor to thank for introducing to me, the more my conviction in my future grew. Being a poet made me realize that my transitioning self was real, even though he wasn’t fully embodied yet.

Sometimes, I wish I’d arrived at this level of clarity sooner (read: before I drowned in my thesis), but I’m grateful nonetheless. Without my friends, mentors, and those writers I admire from afar, I wouldn’t have tried to put myself out there and soak up the opportunities that revealed themselves once I paid attention. No, in this timeline, I remain spurred when it comes to sending my poems out and starting new projects while my current manuscript sits in a contest inbox.

Having these connections almost makes me forget that I’m still the slippery, spunky, and super clunky kid that I was ten years ago. A younger Aylli dreamed of becoming a published writer, but he didn’t imagine that he’d be on the masthead of an international literary journal, or work for a U.S.-based publication, or be on a first-name basis with so many brilliant artists and writers, but here I am! A bit worn out, a bit bruised, but way less “I hate my body” and much more “This isn’t even my final form.”

Looking back, what alarmed me about the note saying I didn’t have a choice wasn’t the thought of my not liking that outcome, but the fact that I could no longer hide its importance to me. I enjoy withholding details, and being vulnerable doesn’t come easy. But when you’re a writer and everything else in the drop-down menu of the word, there comes a point where you admit that not having to confess anything (if you don’t want to) doesn’t absolve you of the need to be honest about what you want.

I’m excited to spend the next six months as an editorial intern at Sundress Publications. This is a dedicated press run by volunteers who deliver on the kind of care that writers deserve, and I feel privileged to play a short part in seeing it thrive. Editorial assistance is crucial to bridging the gap between necessary stories and the audiences that seek them. I want to support and offer this practice in my endeavors at home. I want to continue being led by wonder and respect. I want to inject myself into the world. I want to dream of the places my craft will take me, and of what I’ll become. Most of all, I want to choose to admit this.

Aylli Cortez (he/they) is a transmasc Filipino poet and creative writing graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, where he received a DALISAYAN Award in the Arts for Poetry in 2024. His work has appeared in VERDANT Journal, en*gendered lit, Bullshit Lit, HAD, and like a field, among others. Based in Metro Manila, he is currently a poetry reader for ANMLY and a member of the Ateneo Press Review Crew. Find him on Bluesky and Instagram @1159cowboy or visit his website.

Meet Our New Intern: Rachel Mekdeci

Author of this blog, Rachel, wearing a pink mask and a purple bandana with one raised fist and the other hand painted red while carrying a banner. Behind her, there is a sign that says 'Free Palestine.'

The first time I was ever a spiteful feminist was at the ripe age of 6, rushing to the water fountain after a taxing round of tag. Like all school girls are wont to do, we had been screaming with delight. A teacher rounded the corner and stuck up her nose at me. She pointed a finger at my eyes and said “Young ladies must be seen and not heard.” Reader, I have no explanation for what left my mouth next. I do not know how that little girl knew just what to say in that moment. All I know is that I said the next thing that came to my head: “Thank God I’m not a lady.”

It’s a funny story, one that I love to tell to unwilling houseguests. When a new friend finally asks “Rachel, what radicalized you?”, I tell them it was a game of tag. That isn’t true. What radicalized me was a history class. It was learning about dowries. It was watching movies. It was that black hole that opened in my stomach in 2015 when the newspaper headlines said there was oil miles off of the beach in front of my home. The tag story is a sweeter pill to swallow.

It was my very own radicalization that led to my hunger for knowledge. Once I could connect the dots, that star of capitalism and the constellation of its damage, I had to know more. I turned to the greats, hooks and Lorde and Butler and Spillers, and prayed over their words. After discovering my own queerness in my childhood, these essays soothed aching wounds yet ripped open some new. I knew I wanted to fix this ugly system, but I didn’t know how. It took many years of soul-searching and wrong choices to discover the best way for me to heal this world. I landed on a simple philosophy. I must learn in order to share.

Knowledge is power, yes, but because you then have the power to disseminate it. I must pour over these words, fiction and fact, so I can carry it forward. This is how I have ended up where I am now: determined senior in English Lit fighting tooth and nail to get accepted to a grad school where I can study queer literature (with an intersectional lens!) to my heart’s content. I dream of ‘Dr.’ attached to my last name, a comfortable office, and classrooms full of minds that need some learning. That is the legacy I want to leave.

I know this is not the usual thing one discusses when asked to introduce themselves, but I could not find a way around it. This, all of this, is who I am. I am a thinker before I am anything else, and I cannot help but to think of the state of the world. If I did nothing, I don’t think I could survive. This is how I do something, as little or huge of a change it might leave.

You’ve now met one of the new interns, but not really. I have written a great deal about one singular facet of my life. I am pleased to report that I am, in fact, a well-rounded individual with many hobbies, favorite foods, and a great deal of dislikes. That is not important. One thing about me is that I view every single moment as an opportunity to learn something new. I wanted this post to help somebody learn. I hope that you have learned one thing above all else:

Don’t do nothing. Please do something.

Rachel Mekdeci (she/her) is a foul-mouthed, mixed-race, Caribbean-immigrant Taurus with a bleeding heart passionate for the arts. As an undergraduate Literature student at the University of Tennessee, she takes every opportunity to write about queer literature and intersectional feminism. Her number one mission in life is to further the reach of the arts and maybe own a house?  

Meet Our New Intern: Claire Melanie Svec

A Latina woman sits on a rock, wearing a purple dress and holding a moon in her hands. In the background, there is the shadow of a tree and city lights.

Literature was not, in fact, my first love. It was music. I have been singing for as long as I can remember. In second grade, I proudly proclaimed to my class that my future career would be “the winner of American Idol!” Although I loved singing, I didn’t start writing until I was fifteen. I met a friend, another fifteen-year-old and a self-taught pianist. He produced melodies from his mind and asked me to write the words and sing. The first few songs were juvenile, but what would you expect from a couple of drama kids who loved Marina and the Diamonds and Melanie Martinez? I soon realized that my love for music was inextricably tied to my need to feel heard, to use my voice.

In high school, I began to seriously write and explore forms other than lyrics in my creative writing class. I remember how our teacher pounded this mantra into us: Be original. He disliked tired phrases more than illogical metaphors, which taught me to push the limits of my writing. I remember once describing the roof of a building, covered in fall leaves, as a crusted lasagna with parmesan cheese sprinkles. The class period was just before lunch, so I suppose that was the influence. Alongside creative writing, I fell in love with AP Psychology, and the scientific structures of the human mind.

After graduating, I moved from my small town in California’s Wine Country to Southern California for college. Alongside developmental childhood and abnormal psychology courses, I took poetry classes, expanding on what I had learned and observed through songwriting. For this reason, poetry has always felt safe to me. The phonetics, the rhyming—I had that down. But poetry, being ancient, experimental, and crossing so many boundaries, spoke to me, even if half the time I couldn’t fully understand why.

Eventually, I transitioned into fiction. This felt not only difficult, but humiliating, painful, and like downright psychological torture. We’ve all been there, sitting for hours pouring your guts out on a page, then realizing it’s too wordy, difficult to follow, and does not convey its themes well. I was lucky. I had fantastic professors who read my work, provided detailed notes, and gave me exercises to dissect the essence of my writing, pull it apart, and stitch it back up. My experience is far from that of a typical young writer—my first serious attempt at writing a short story won a local fiction competition, a feat which blossomed into a commitment to keep pursuing this passion.

Throughout these forms of writing, my central love for voice persisted. I want to be heard, as does everyone else, and art gives us that opportunity to speak to the heart. Music can captivate you with a catchy tune then make you cry during the bridge. Poetry can touch you in strange ways and lead you down its premeditated path. Literature masks reality within a story, often revealing ugly truths, stirring something from within.

Understanding the psychology of humans—our society, power structures, and culture—further fuels my writing. Capturing these nuances in diverse stories from diverse individuals gives us the power to produce empathy and, hopefully, justice for those our systems have failed.

It is an incredible opportunity to learn through Sundress Publications: to elevate bright, diverse voices, and to share their stories with the public. I hope the small role I play can help expose hidden truths, make us see what we try to ignore, and inspire human connection.

Claire Melanie Svec holds a BA in Psychology with a Minor in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine. She is a writer, poet, and singer-songwriter whose work focuses on mental health, morality, and feminism. She has won the first-place prize in fiction for The Ear Literary Magazine‘s Linda Purdy Memorial Prize. In addition to her editorial internship with Sundress Publications, she is currently serving as a fiction reader for West Trade Review.

Meet Our New Intern: SINDUS Kim

A Korean person stands, head turned to the right, so that their face is mostly covered by shoulder-length black hair. They wear a shoulder bag, white pants, and a black shirt that reads MARRIAGE FOR ALL in red punk font. There are trees, grass, and other greenery in the background.

My first work of presentable quality was written in 10th grade, fresh after a devastating breakup with my Discord girlfriend of six months, and published on a well-known fanfiction website in a fever dream of heartache. 

I had explicitly tagged my piece as “Breakup Self-Insert,” because I recognized halfway through the draft that this was a thinly veiled projection of my own angst. A personalized hell of Hurt/No Comfort. Pieces taken from the still-burning house fire that was our mutually blocked DMs, then slapped onto an innocent Google Doc—fourteen thousand words written & proofread in the span of three days. This piece was the final nail in the coffin, my own special closure, and writing it was perhaps the most painful experience in my life: second-place only to admitting on my “Meet Our New Intern” post that I actively wrote fanfiction. 

Be it dissociation or healing, soon after I published the fic, I got over the girl. But I’ll never forget: I woke up the morning after that first chapter and saw that my notifications had exploded overnight. Comments sung praise after praise about a “fresh take on the character” and “a beautiful interpretation.” Every few hours, I’d receive some variation of “I don’t know how you wrote him so correctly!,” and think to myself: thanks, I just pretended he was my ex-girlfriend. I remember being confused, that nobody recognized the deception. Then, one day, the obvious hit me. 

If you squint hard enough, real characters look just like real people. 

Like characters, a real person exists within an ambiguous mishmash of ideals, morality, and history, to fluctuating yet paradoxically static degrees of importance, that influence their decision in any number of ways. These facets layer and collide to form the loose concept we call “self,” whether anthropocentric or otherwise. Similarly, like people, a real character is malleable—so we like to observe this self as it experiences a “thing.” Authors put an extraordinary amount of care into ensuring this happens. Consider everything the self is at this present moment, and why it is that way. Now, here’s a thing. Will the self change? Will it stay the same? Should it? Why, or why not? Or, my favorite—doggone with the character. Will you, the self reading this thing, change as a result of having read it? At the center of literature, there is a push-pull of human reaction; the process of evoking these reactions is what I call art. 

Between real things, the line dividing them is only a matter of semantics. The pravus opus of my career blended a teen lesbian situationship, an adult gay situationship, & every real thing’s real history together until I had something fresh. In the wake of a four-way projection, all of us imposed onto each other, I was left with a sadomasochistic mess of a story—in which every breathtaking reaction was brand spankin’ new. My readers were so compelled by my characters working out their abandonment issues over Spotify playlist descriptions that they could, graciously, overlook the fact that I clearly didn’t know what a semicolon was. 

All this to say: since then, I’ve loved real characters & people everywhere, and I’m elated to continue doing so as an editorial intern for Sundress Publications. I hope this was obvious from the piece, but I got back together with the girl. Please don’t go looking for my fic—I might have to quit my internship if you find it.

SINDUS Kim (any/all) is a writer & fan of the odd, off-putting, and preternatural. Though they have a penchant for fiction and CNF/essays, their Word document dedicated to bad poems about their ex-girlfriend well-exceeds fifty pages. You can find him at his completely empty Instagram and Twitter @sinducated, or her website, where she’s open to all kinds of small talk and inquiries.

Meet Our New Intern: Ines Pinto

Brunette woman smiling, wearing a mid-length dress with stripes of orange and white with pink sneakers and round sunglasses. The background includes three highly ornate golden columns and the facade of a small palace with golden windows and pale green and pink walls.

Growing up, my mother would repeat time and time again the same mantra: “Books are our best friends.” I used to spend hours touching the books she kept on the lower shelves, so it made sense that she wanted me to believe that. It would be far more frustrating having to deal with a toddler who destroyed the books she collected than simply transforming me into a fellow bookworm. So, this introduction will very much be a representation of who I am through the books I read.

My mother would take me to bookstores and let me pick whatever books caught my attention. At ten, I developed a weird obsession with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and a thirst for tragedy and love stories. I devoured the pages of Margaret George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Susan Vreeland’s The Passion of Artemisia, and Carolly Erickson’s The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. I was a historical fiction devotee, who only cared about stories focused on tragic women. But to my peers, I was just a weird kid.

During a particularly unforgiving hot summer, I had nothing new to read, so I wandered through my mother’s bookshelves. The Lisbon Book Fair was not until two weeks from then, and I was extremely bored and unwilling to venture into the outside world before nightfall. That’s how I came to meet Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. While their stories mainly starred men, I couldn’t help but feel embraced by the melancholy and dark humor present in all of them. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky became a favorite by the time I acquired the more age-appropriate Hunger Games trilogy—which I adored!

Reading transported me to different realities, allowing me to live in the shoes of others. Writing, on the other end, was where I found the comfort of transforming all of my wildest ideas into something palpable. I found myself writing about worlds I made up in my head and characters who struggled with the same things as me. In a way, it helped me comprehend the issues I was facing, taking away a lot of the anxiety of starting high school, university and, later, moving abroad.

Whenever I reminisce over my past lives, I tend to attach books to them. The first time I kissed a boy, I was in the middle of the first Twilight book. When I inevitably got my heart broken, I found myself re-reading chapters of Anna Karenina until I became sick of the book. The day I had a meltdown over my degree choice, I wallowed my way up to a mall bookstore and found The Bird’s Nest—this would kickstart an addiction to Shirley Jackson’s writing and a shrine to her work that has since been taken down due to my continuously moving to different places. The day I started to plan my move to Berlin from Lisbon, I had just finished The Master & Margarita—my favorite book of all time and completely unrelated to the moving decision as far as I’m aware.

Books gave me the gift of empathy. I understood how my lived reality was shaped by many factors I could not control—my skin tone, my passport, my education. As a firm believer in the human right to dignity, and that we should all be equal under the law, I was fuelled to use my research skills to improve the world. Working for Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO, was extremely fulfilling due to my intrinsic need to help others. Contributing to Sundress Publication’s mission aligns this with my love for literature and the belief that books can make us better people.

Ines Pinto (she/her) is from a small beach town near Lisbon, Portugal. She decided to leave those shores behind as she moved around Europe, eventually completing her master’s degree in International Politics. She dreams of a fairer world, so she worked in the non-profit sector to call for the end of corruption and dirty money flows before moving to New York to start a brand new adventure. She is also the proud mother of a spoiled cat named Louis, a certified multilingual Eurovision fan, and a reader with an appreciation for all genres.

Meet Our New Intern: Nic Job

Nic, who is white with short-cropped purple hair, is wearing a navy jumpsuit with sparkly straps and hugging a dark brown horse. They are smiling.

As a child, everyone thought I would be the homebody of my siblings. I existed almost exclusively with my nose in a book or competing in some sort of local sporting event. The worst punishment for childhood mischief that I could imagine was losing reading privileges. (Often, what I was getting in trouble for was reading—when I ought to have been sleeping.) I preferred climbing trees and hanging out with the horses to social commitments and struggled to fit in with my peers. When I heard on the radio that my favorite author had passed away, I was so distraught that my father turned around and took me back home that day instead of taking me to school.

It came as a shock, then, when I spent eighth grade obsessing over scholarship applications for a boarding high school 3,000 miles away from home. California to New Hampshire at fourteen. I had never been further east than Billings, Montana. I became rather gifted at sleeping on airplanes.

That began a habit of travel, exploration, and collecting experiences. A summer program in Virginia. A summer working in Montana. Books were always my escape, but I learned to appreciate this incredible world we inhabit as well. My undergraduate years took me to Maryland, England, Czechia, back to California, and Montana again. Graduate school to Illinois. I realized just last week that my cat turns three this 4th of July, and has already moved with me four times, across multiple state lines. No different countries for him though (yet).

A dream that has stayed with me through all of this is to someday provide the little kid sitting behind the classroom at recess with a book half as big as they are in their lap the same solace I found—and still find—in the written word. The dream has morphed, reshaped, softened, and solidified over the years, but has never felt so real and attainable as in the last two years. Achieving my MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing was so much more than getting a degree. It was validation, was a step in the door, was a glorious capitulation and commitment to my craft. I feel like I am standing on a precipice of opportunity now. No longer chasing it, but arrived, teetering, on the edge.

These next few months, my internship here at Sundress Publications will be accompanied by applying to PhD programs and residencies, and editing the novel I wrote for my thesis.

Nic Job is a queer writer with their MFA from DePaul University and a constant curiosity for the world—cultures, places, people, and themself. They are a human who loves humans, and all of their tangled-up ordinariness. Their fiction, non-fiction, and poetry is published in Club Plum, Defunct Magazine, Spare Parts Literary, and other magazines.

Meet Our New Intern: Addie Dodge

A white woman with short blonde hair is standing in front of a brick wall looking at the camera.

I have always loved stories. As a child, weekends were spent at the library amassing impossibly large stacks of books. I had a tendency for sneaking off from the children’s section to the literature aisles, tucking works like Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird into the middle of my pile to try to make my selections a little less suspicious. Usually, I got away with it. 

My love for reading translated into a love for writing as well. Poetry came first, as I attended readings and workshops throughout high school, and longer-form fiction followed, leading me to where I am now, finishing the final edits of my first novel manuscript while also getting ready to begin work on a second project.

I entered college fully intent on pursuing a major in creative writing. A voracious reader and writer, I began my coursework with a great deal of excitement and urgency to learn. However, I found myself questioning if this was the right path for me as I also began taking classes in psychology and falling in love with the field. At the same time, I was hired as an editor for my college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and was finding great purpose and passion in working with writers and other editors to bring pieces to full realization. I was excited about and impassioned by my work as an editor, while also wrestling with the question of whether I was going to continue pursuing writing or delve further into psychology. Now, in my senior year of college, I’ve decided to do both. 

For me, working as an editor is a direct extension of my writing practice. This work has given me the space to consider writing from a different angle, and to work with other writers in a holistic and generative process, something I am excited to continue in my work with Sundress Publications. 

While it may seem like a strange combination, working as a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter while also pursuing editorial work, I believe that my work in the field of psychology is a different translation of what I do as an editor and writer. As I move further along the path to becoming a therapist, it’s clear to me that much of this clinical work is listening to and assisting in realizing individuals’ stories in order to help them process what has happened to them. 

On the other side of that coin, I see my work in editing as another way of bringing stories to the surface through supporting writers in the development and propulsion of their stories. I deeply believe in the inherent healing that is available in telling stories, and in those stories being heard and understood. As such, I believe that the development and distribution of published works is crucial to our societal well-being. It is a great privilege for me to work with people and their stories in these two separate, but inextricable modalities. 

Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a BA in Psychology with a Minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She fills her free time with hiking in the mountains and lots of reading. 

Meet Our New Intern: Hedaya Hasan

A brown woman is posing to the side in a greenhouse with a tall green plant. She is wearing a black hijab, varsity jacket, blue jeans, and red handbag.

My first passion was reading. I did all the things keen readers do, though “keen” would not even begin to describe my addiction. Visits to the library became a weekly ritual. I grew hard muscles in my small arms from the heavy bags of books I carried home with me. I read when I wasn’t allowed to; late-night reading earned me more than one scolding and my teachers complained that I kept my nose to my books instead of paying attention. I read myself into deep headaches, completely blocking out the world around me before lifting myself to do something trivial like eat. I outgrew my supposed reading level and was moved to an advanced reading group at school before I outgrew that as well. None of my classmates could believe me when I announced that I had finished reading the Harry Potter series after starting it just two or three weeks earlier. The smartest girl in class was still on the fourth book after laboring through the series for two months which, according to grade-schooler logic, made me the new smartest girl.

I was officially a child prodigy. The kind of child prodigy that excels at one thing more that most people do at a young age but isn’t encouraged enough or given the opportunities or just lacks the verve necessary to carry that genius into adulthood. The older I got, the less impressed people were by my reading compulsion. The class prodigy label was slipping as I began to stray into teacher’s pet and know-it-all territory. I was no longer special. Not only that, but I was insignificantly average. In a desperate attempt to be praised and included, I slowly turned my eyes to illustration. It wasn’t easy to stray away from my books. In fact, I might have read more than ever during the transition period, though most of what I consumed became about painting or drawing. Being artistic or creative, in any form, is a universally likable trait and is apparently more impressive than being well-read. Any artist can tell you that hearing “I can’t even draw a stick figure” is an inevitable and endlessly repetitive phrase thrown around by the ungifted, unartistic peasants that crowd the human population. Not one single person thought I would pursue anything but illustration.

As it turns out, most things that are born with the intention of serving others stay headed down that route. When the time came for college applications, I very boldly applied to one art school. There was no back up plan for me, which I would come to sorely regret. The summer before I was due to start, I panicked. I had been accepted with a full scholarship and had really enjoyed the tours and orientations. One hot summer day, I opened my bedroom window to take a break from the stale air conditioning. Suddenly, sitting there with my chin on the sill, I felt the weight of my future float down and settle on my shoulders like a leaf drifts off a dry, red tree in autumn. I felt it blanket me and grow exponentially heavier. I was suffocating very quickly. To make a long story short, I do not have what it takes to be an artist and lack the wealthy background to be an artist regardless of the former fact. I had planned to study art at university for almost a decade, and that plan crashed before I could understand that it was crumbling. It was the only plan I made, which led me directly to a nervous breakdown. I begged my mother to let me take a gap year (she refused). I switched my major three times before school started and ended up suffering through a semester of film, which taught me many lessons and the importance of being around your own people. Whatever “my own people” may be, they are undoubtedly not film students.

The decision to switch to an English major was made purely by the fact that I had recently become reinterested in reading, this time with a focus on Palestinian literature. It was easy to begin reading again when the stories I read were sincerely important to me. I discovered that I enjoyed and had some talent in writing in a required course. In another course, I discovered that I enjoyed editing even more. It was almost like déjà vu, the way my Cinderella foot fell perfectly into the glass slipper of editing like it belonged to me. I’m more than grateful to have this opportunity as an Editorial Intern at Sundress Publications. Reading has created the parts of me that I love most, and I’m honored to be a part of uplifting more stories that shape people into their own slippers.

Hedaya Hasan is a Palestinian writer and designer based in Chicago.