Meet Our Intern: Emma Goss

I LOVE bookstores (my favorite is McNally Jackson's Books in New York) and can often be found sitting on the floor with all my selections around me as I decide which ones to buy!

I fell in love with poetry in elementary school. I attended a progressive school called Children’s Community School, where I was encouraged to choose books that genuinely interested me for homework, rather than the teachers assigning books. This freedom allowed me to connect with literature on a personal level from a very young age—something I now recognize as rare and something I’m incredibly grateful for. Some of my earliest favorites were Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, and Out of my Mind by Saran M. Draper. My third grade teacher, an avid poetry reader, played a key role in nurturing my passion for the genre. I began writing poetry in fifth grade and haven’t stopped since.

In high school, my passion for reading grew, especially as I started taking creative writing workshops (where I fell in love with the pantoum and ghazal poetry forms). I became particularly interested in speculative fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, and literary fiction—genres that continue to inspire me alongside poetry. At Vassar College, where I study English with a focus in creative writing, I’ve been fortunate to take courses that stretch my thinking, including Fragment as a Form of Knowledge, Disability in Literature, and Popular Women Writers. These courses introduced me to works that now live on my prized Goodreads “favorites” shelf—Fun Home being a standout. I also serve as Editor-in-Chief of The Vassar Review and have written for our campus newspaper, The Miscellany News, and our fashion magazine, Contrast.

I’m thrilled about the opportunity to intern for Sundress Publications and immerse myself in the world of nonprofit literary publishing. My previous experience as an editorial intern with Abrams Publishing and working with a fiction editor on mystery/thriller novels has prepared me well for this new endeavor. I’m eager to learn from and contribute to Sundress’s projects and team. Again, as someone very (and shamelessly) obsessed with Goodreads, I’d love to connect and swap book recommendations—just say the word!

Emma Goss is a senior English major with minors in Film and Linguistic Anthropology. A passionate reader, she prefers to always be juggling a poetry collection, a literary fiction novel, and an audiobook. Emma is especially drawn to poetry rooted in nature symbolism and metaphor. Some of her favorite collections include The Tradition by Jericho Brown, War of the Foxes by Richard Siken, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, and Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson. Her poetry has been published in Pangyrus Magazine and by the Princeton Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Poetry Contest. Originally from Los Angeles, she spends her time hiking local trails or browsing the poetry shelves at Barnes & Noble Studio City when not at Vassar.