Tag: editorial

Meet Our New Intern: Anna-Quinn French

Anna-Quinn French

Anytime I am asked to give any information or details to introduce myself to new people, my answer is always, “I am nothing if not a sensitive, hopeless romantic”. For as long as my memory goes back, I can remember being drawn to anything teeming with self expression, curiosity, and love. With a brother four years older and a sister two years older, my life consisted of tagging along or performing absurd made up plays and dances for my family. My siblings nurtured and protected this artistic part of me, most likely because watching your youngest sister make a fool out of herself is free entertainment, and supported all of the wild products that stemmed from this unbridled creativity. Whether it was attempts at fantasy short stories, songwriting, auditioning for the school band, or desire to act in our school plays, my siblings and parents were applauding my efforts every step of the way. 

Around the time I entered my teenage years, my once unflinching confidence was being threatened by growing feelings of self doubt and insecurity; the beauty of being a teenage girl. These overwhelming feelings seemed to elucidate an obvious truth I had been ignoring. Despite my continuous efforts in varying arts, I was not really good at any of them. I had dipped my toes in repeatedly, testing the waters of all the different artistic pools, but none of them seemed to feel good enough for me to dive right in. This realization hit me like a cartoon piano falling on an oblivious passerby; I didn’t really have an art or creative outlet to proudly identify myself with, even after years of trying. 

I finally discovered my place artistically when I was 13. One day when I was in the 7th grade, my brother came home from school and walked into my sister and I’s shared room with his laptop propped open on his forearm. With a nervous energy radiating off of him, he slowly lowered the screen down to my bed and said he wanted to give me something. The top of the Google Doc pulled up on his screen read, “An Ode to my Sister”. While I had read some poems before this occurrence, usually for assignments in school, never had I received one that was about me or was filled with the kind of words that immediately produce tears and a burn in your throat. I was unaware of the power that poetry possessed until then, and after witnessing how much it touched me emotionally, I saw a way to release my desire to create and produce some form of art. 

I began writing as much as I could from that moment. While a lot of my early poems are impossible for me to read now out of sheer embarrassment, they still reveal the emotions and sentiments of what it is like to be a confused teenager who wants nothing more than to feel a part of something important and special. Poetry introduced me to a world that did not shy away from painful vulnerability or sensitivity, but rather embraced it. Getting to be a part of the Sundress team is an opportunity I craved when I was younger, so I feel nothing but gratitude and excitement to be where I am today. I am hopeful that more opportunities like this will come my way in the future, but for right now, I am thrilled to be in an environment that loves the art as much as I do.

Stirring: A Literary Collection Seeks Editorial Applicants

Stirring: A Literary Collection is seeking editors! Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing literary journals on the internet. Stirring operates under the umbrella of Sundress Publications, an entirely volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing collective.

Our volunteer editors’ responsibilities include reading submissions in their respective genre, responding to submissions, and submitting final selections to the Managing Editor in a timely manner.

We are currently taking applications for the following positions: Book Review Editor, Nonfiction Editor, and Associate Poetry Editors.

Required qualifications: a knowledge in contemporary works, strong written communication skills, and the ability to work under a deadline.

Stirring strives to commit to diversity through encountering as many unique and important voices as possible through the work we publish and the members of our editorial board. We are actively seeking editors of color, trans and nonbinary editors, editors with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary editing.

To apply, please send a CV and a 150-250 word letter of editorial intent to Luci Brown at stirring.managingeditors@gmail.com. The letter of intent should include, but not be limited to: what authors and type of work interests you; your vision as a staff member at Stirring; your past work in literary editing (if any); and what books or journals you are currently reading.

Applications due by July 31.

Web: www.stirringlit.com   Facebook: StirringLitMag
Email: stirring@sundresspublications.com Twitter: @StirringLit

Meet our New Intern: Nicole Drake

Lonely kids make the best creatives, I hear.  We play with dolls and direct the drama of their complex inner lives; we talk to ourselves; we read and read and read and read.

I grew up, homeschooled, in a tiny town in Illinois, current population 1,977.  My whole world could have fit inside a thimble. By the time I turned 15, I had read 362 books.  I jotted notes for stories down in the margins, half-cast scenes in the spaces between chapters.

I was lucky: my world didn’t stay small forever. A few years and a move to Florida later, I was applying to colleges, an impending major in writing or linguistics ahead of me, and found out I was accepted to a program that would have me move to Europe for a year. Specifically, Italy. My grandma called my mom four times in the span of two days to tell her that “She does know that they speak a different language there, doesn’t she?” and “How is she going to get there, is she going to fly by herself?”

I, despite my grandmothers expectations, made it there alive and continue to be alive to this day.

What living in another culture taught me is how expansive the world is. Writing, for me, has always been about expression. We write and read in the languages we have grown up in, that wrap cozily around us like blankets. But expression changes when it’s filtered through other mediums, through the half-garbled words of a language you’ve only just started piecing together, or through the stories of someone who has lived a life totally opposite to your own. We take for granted our perspective, our insular reality. But there’s a whole world out there.

I moved back to the states for the last three years of my degree at Florida State University. I took as many unique literature classes and writing workshops as I could cram in my schedule. I developed a passion for Post-Colonial literature and other genres that tell the stories of historically underrepresented groups. I was diagnosed with the type of illness I would never recover from. Despite that, I kept living. I graduated with a degree in creative writing, triumphant and exhausted.

In the year since, I have had so much opportunity to grow. I pursued my passion for books and publishing by serving as the Fiction Intern for the Southeast Review, which allowed me to channel the hard-won literary skills I gained in school into something tangible. I taught Argentine Tango for a scientific study focussing on tango’s effects on patients with Parkinson’s disease, and got to see the continual progress of each patient who, the day before, had said that they could never do that impossible thing. I’ve worked as a Social Media Manager for a tattoo shop, and trained others on my team in new skills that even a few months ago, I thought were impossible.

All of that has, gloriously, lead me here. It has been a year of never-ending expansion, and I am so grateful that I will have the ability to bring that growth as well as my passion for words to Sundress Publications.

Nicole Drake is a graduate of Florida State University with a BA in Creative Writing. She has served as a reader for the Southeast Review and the Seven Hills Review, and currently works as the Social Media Manager for Capital City Tattoo’z. She teaches dance and works her way through her endless “To Read” list in her spare time.

Now Hiring: Editorial Interns

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Sundress Publications

Now Hiring Editorial Interns

Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing collective founded in 2000 that hosts a variety of online journals and publishes chapbooks, full-length collections, and literary anthologies in both print and digital formats. Sundress also publishes the annual Best of the Net Anthology, celebrating the best work published online, and the Gone Dark Archives, preserving online journals that
have reached the end of their run.

The editorial internship position will run from January to July 2019. The editorial intern’s responsibilities an include writing press releases, composing blog posts and promotional emails, proofreading manuscripts, assembling press kits, collating editorial data, and more. The intern may also be responsible for writing copy, conducting interviews with Sundress authors, and promoting our catalog of titles.

Preferred qualifications include:

  • A keen eye for proof-reading
  • Strong written communication skills
  • Familiarity with WordPress or HTML
  • Ability to work under a deadline
  • Knowledge of contemporary literature a plus

Applicants are welcome to telecommunicate and therefore are not restricted to living in the Knoxville area.

While this is an unpaid internship, all interns will gain real-world experience in the ins and outs of independent publishing with a nationally recognized press while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Interns will also be able to attend all workshops at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at cost.

To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to our Staff Director, Anna Black at black@sundresspublications.com by December 15, 2018.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Laura Villareal

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I wasn’t always a reader. I remember looking for picture books about kids with the same skin color as me but there were very few. At some point I think I internalized the idea that books weren’t for kids like me. This idea was reinforced in school when we only read books by white male writers, and when my teachers expressed doubts about my writing being my own. They believed it was “too good” for someone like me. I was detrimentally shy, but I refused to be underestimated so I continued to work hard. Looking back now I realize that those experiences had less to do with me and more to do with how the world perceives people who look like me.

My parents never stopped encouraging me to read and write. They played audiobooks in the car, gave me books they loved, and let me read whatever I wanted.  Eventually, I learned to love exploring the lives of people different from me. Each new book taught me empathy. I fell in love with the limitlessness of language and how it costs nothing to tell a story. My mom used to tell me that if I couldn’t find a book I wanted to read, then I should write it.

It wasn’t until I was in grad school at Rutgers University-Newark that I discovered a community of writers. Everything was new to me. I grew up in the middle of nowhere Texas and had limited knowledge of all things literary. The closest library near my home only housed poetry books by white poets and dead poets. It didn’t occur to me that the world of poetry continued moving and growing like the world of fiction did. That’s naive to admit, but I’ve been lucky; the kindness and generosity of my peers and teachers saved me. Their book suggestions, conversations on writing, and invitations to readings exposed me to a world I couldn’t imagine back home.

After graduation, I moved back to Texas and felt displaced. I continued reading and writing, but didn’t feel like I had a community anymore. By living in a house surrounded by fields instead of my fellow writers, I’ve learned that writing shouldn’t be done alone. I believe that it’s essential to build community, support other writers, and champion their work.

Last summer, I found a community that allowed me to do all those things at VONA/ Voices. All 9 poets who were in my workshop are brilliant and the best people I know. Every day I feel grateful for their support and friendship.  

All of this has led me here to Sundress Publications. I’m always looking for ways to participate and learn more about all the work put into presses and journals. The hard work of writers, editors, and readers at presses and literary magazines is what sustains the writing community. I’m excited to go behind the scenes as an editorial intern with Sundress Publications.

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Laura Villareal is from a small town in Texas with more cows than people. She earned an MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee, Black Warrior Review, Breakwater Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Freezeray, Reservoir, The Boiler, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and scholarships from The Highlights Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, and VONA/ Voices. She’s also a reader at Winter Tangerine.

 

Meet Our New Editorial Intern, Samantha Isler

sam-w-maitaiI was born in 1992, exactly twenty years after Bewitched aired its final season. Coincidence? Yes. But my parents named me after Samantha Stephens, the nose-twitching witch at the center of the show, so it is a weird coincidence. I cannot wiggle my nose, which is probably the one thing holding me back from my magical destiny.

I once saw a ghost in my undergraduate college’s theater. He followed me for a month and would appear directly in my line of vision, not at all like the stories of shadow men in the corner of your eye. A year later, visiting alumni were discussing their own sightings. One woman described exactly who I had seen. “That’s Harvey,” she said. He had been appearing for at least thirty years.

I started college as a biology major before switching to English/Theater. I’m now a second-year graduate student in Emerson College’s Writing, Literature, and Publishing program, but I still love science. My best friend mapped the genome of a species of lactating beetle. Did you know some beetles lactate? You do now.

A well-made video game can be one of the best storytelling tools in the modern world. However, I am an absolutely dreadful gamer. Years of practice have done nothing. I have owned every generation of Playstation and still forget where the buttons are. If you ever see me on Destiny, run away. It’s for your own good.

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Samantha Isler loves thunderstorms, campfires, and most cheeses. She lives for science fiction, horror, and fantasy in any medium, including comics and theater. Sam is a student in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing graduate program at Emerson College.  Before coming to Emerson, she worked in a bookstore for four years. Her bookshelves have not recovered since.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Sam Campbell

If you were to ask my mom what I could normally be found doing when I was a child, her response would be automatic: reading or writing. In fact, if you wanted she could even pull out her shoebox of relics from my childhood and offer you up dozens of stories that date back to toddler times. You don’t want to see that—I promise you. But they’re there, resting as proof of my early fascination with words. This fascination came naturally to me.

I’m not sure what it was about writing that made me feel so alive. Everything about it felt right and real. Although I would create worlds and people that didn’t exist, the characters felt like people I knew and the places felt like places I’d been.  As I grew, so did my love for writing. I wrote everything imaginable. I wrote short stories, poetry, song lyrics, scripts, and I even finished my first full-length novel by the time I was in high school.

It didn’t take me long in high school to realize that no one could help me get published except myself. Teachers didn’t know how to help an aspiring novelist and neither did guidance counselors. I quickly began to understand that the odds of becoming successful in the writing world were equal if not worse than the odds of becoming a successful actress. Since then I’ve had two poems and two short stories published. I also wrote hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, and four novels that all live in notebooks and my MacBook.

The writing industry is not for the faint of heart. I might have given up—after all, I am now 25 and my younger self was convinced I’d be “J.K. Rowling successful” by this point in my life—but after a particularly disappointing onslaught of rejection letters I was browsing my university library and found Stephen King’s On Writing. I went home and read it in a single night and my determination was renewed.

Sometimes the things you want most in life are the things that elude you. When this happens, you have two choices. You can give up, or you can reevaluate your approach and try to find a new way to reach your goal. It was in this frame of mind that I was given an opportunity to become a member of the writing community again for the first time since graduating college in 2014. I am so excited to begin this new chapter of my writing career as an editorial intern with Sundress Academy for the Arts. I hope that being able to work on the other side of the writing community will give me a deeper understanding of the publishing process, and that I will be able to apply the knowledge and experience I gain here to my writing career.

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Sam Campbell lives for four things: writing, learning, traveling, and spending time with her friends and family. She graduated in 2014 from East Tennessee State University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in both Psychology and History. She went on to earn a Master of Education in Educational Media and Technology from ETSU in 2017. She is currently teaching Honors English II and Advanced Placement Psychology at Seymour High School. While she adores her job, writing is and always will be her passion. Her fiction has appeared in Unto These Hills and The Mockingbird. Her poetry has appeared in Pine Tree Poetry and The Claiborne Progress.

Meet our New Editorial Intern: Katie Culligan

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My name is Katie Culligan, and every week, I go to a Space Jam-themed cycling class for seniors that I started going to accidentally, but now go to purposefully.

I learned to read in the city of Buffalo, New York, and learned to drive in the mountains of East Tennessee. I’m a junior creative writing student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where I am also an affectionate succulent parent. My writing is currently forthcoming on my mother’s refrigerator.

It was a love story between an intense person and an intense pastime when I became a varsity women’s rower for the University of Tennessee. My teammates reinforce everyday that French braids are where girls keep their secret power reserves and they should make you feel very intimidated.

In my free time, I am a purposeful chaos maker in UT’s youngest improv troupe, Cumberland Striptease (that I did not name). When I grow up, I want to be a stately lady that wears bright orange lipstick very poorly and very confidently. Until then, I’m so excited to be here at the Sundress Academy for the Arts looking for my words.

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Katie Culligan is currently young and terrified at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she is a junior studying creative writing. Her favorite responsibilities are NCAA rowing, big sisterhood, and believing unwaveringly in ghosts. Her writing is informed by this age of indestructible men, though she likes to think her life isn’t. She also thinks if you haven’t tried fig newtons with peanut butter yet, you really should.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern, Emily Corwin

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Hello! My name is Emily Corwin and here are some things to know about me!

  1. I love lists. Also bread, coffee, dresses, and lipstick.
  2. I live in Bloomington, Indiana with my partner, Joe and my cat, Soup.
  3. I am currently completing an MFA in poetry at IU Bloomington!
  4. As someone with chronic conditions (hip impingement, anxiety disorder, various joint issues), I write a lot about physical and psychic pain, and about fairy tales, the girly and the grotesque, longing, and magic.
  5. Next spring, my first full-length collection, tenderling is forthcoming from Stalking Horse Press. I have two chapbooks, darkling (Platypus Press) and My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) which came out in 2016.
  6. I am a Midwestern girl through and through—I grew up in Michigan, went to school in Ohio, and now, I am in Indiana!
  7. My favorite color is pink, my favorite musician is Grouper, and my favorite flowers are dahlias.
  8. My current poetry inspirations: Diane Seuss, Liz Bowen, Laura Theobald, Jennifer Givhan, Vievee Francis, Kiki Petrosino, and Stacy Gnall.
  9. My ancestor, Jonathan Corwin, was a judge in the Salem Witch Trials.
  10. I just finished my year as Poetry Editor of Indiana Review, and I am looking forward to continuing my editorial work at Sundress!

Emily Corwin is an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington and the former Poetry Editor for Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Day One, Hobart, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press) which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling is forthcoming in 2018 from Stalking Horse Press. You can follow her online at @exitlessblue.

Introducing Lauren Perlaki, Sundress’s Newest Editorial Intern


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As a west side transplant from Downriver, MI, I have discovered how deep my love goes for Coney Islands. And three lane highways. They just don’t have them on the west side. I’ve concluded these must be east side things.

Following my senior year of high school, I crossed the state to attend Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, MI. Now a senior at K, I am studying art history, media studies, and creative writing. In a year’s time, I hope to be pursuing my MFA in poetry.

I don’t remember when I started to write, I just know that I always have. Stories, poems, journal entries—honestly, I probably have enough journals kicking around to fill a small bookcase. In 9th grade, I had an English teacher who was the first to give me a proper introduction to poetry, and that was it—my first love (poetry, not my teacher). 

In writing, I have found success, failure, opportunity, and community. Writing, specifically poetry, has allowed me to spend a brief stint in NYC, interning with the PEN American Center and Poets House. Writing has given me the opportunity to intern with the Kalamazoo Book Art Center’s poetry reading series, and to claim the title of co-editor-in-chief of K’s literary and visual arts magazine, The Cauldron. Through the written word, I have had the privilege of getting to know so many neat people and places. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. 

Aside from reading and writing, I enjoy going for walks, writing music, and sitting down to watch a good documentary with some quality company. And coffee. I really love coffee.

As a megafan of the written word, and an advocate of literary reform, I am absolutely delighted to be working with Sundress Publications as an editorial intern. I am grateful for this opportunity, and can’t wait to see where this work will take me.

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 Lauren Perlaki is a senior at Kalamazoo College double majoring in Art History and English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She is also pursuing a concentration in Media Studies. When she isn’t furiously working to meet a deadline, or cramming 500+ years worth of art into her noggin, she can be found singing with her a cappella group, searching for a decent cup of coffee, or going on about how great the music scene is in Kalamazoo. She is a co-editor-in-chief of Kalamazoo College’s annually published literary and visual arts magazine, The Cauldron, and a lover of modernist literature.