Tag: intern

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 Social Media Intern, Tierney Bailey

The Myers-Briggs test tells me I am an ENFJ, like Abraham Lincoln (mostly interesting because I am distantly related to Mary Todd Lincoln) and Peyton Manning (mostly interesting because I was born and raised in Indianapolis—though I only have any fealty to the Pacers because I loved Reggie Miller’s big ears a kid). ENFJs like to put things into external contexts, according to all the profiles I’ve ever read. That might be true, since I was born October 2, 1993, but I like to contextualize it with “I share a birthday with King Richard III, Sting, and Ghandi.” I, however, am mostly convinced that this is just because I wholly embody the phrase my mother uses most often about me: “They can hear you a county over, Tierney.” As a toddler, I constantly received invitations to birthday parties for little, old ladies I had conversations with inside grocery stores and book stores. I remain unconvinced about by the NFJ bits, but “extravert” fits.

Sundress is not my first dealing in publishing. (Here’s to hoping it won’t be my last!) When I first entered college, I enrolled as an English/education major. Luckily, while I loved my students, I found my way into the publishing program early on. I spent my remaining three years as a professional writing major with terrific professors at the University of Indianapolis honing my skills to various degrees—writing, editing, designing, Tweeting, any gerund I could possibly fit into my schedule would eventually be done. Now, I am enrolled at Emerson College as a Writing, Literature, and Publishing graduate student with more amazing people. Most of the time, I use communication to put my world in order because I see interaction as a piece of the greater conversation.

Maybe this is why I’ve ended up as Sundress’s new intern for social media.

I guess the basic profile of myself is this: my name is Tierney Bailey. I like to talk and listen and learn. I mostly just try my best.

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Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. She currently copyedits for Strange Horizons. Tierney is also a Writing, Literature, and Publishing graduate student at Emerson College. As an East Coast transplant from Indianapolis, Tierney still smiles upon the slightest bit of eye contact. If you can’t find her on a train between Providence and Boston, she can easily be found on Twitter as @ergotierney.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern, Cheyenne L. Black

This is how far I have come to be a Sundress Intern:

When I was five, my mother took me to see The Lawrence Welk Show, live. He picked me out of the audience, did a little dance with me and complimented me (to my mother—not to me) and then kissed my cheek. The left side of my face is still my best side, photogenically speaking, and the right, not so much. My mother thought the kiss had something to do with it, and I still wonder if he should have kissed the right, too.

Since then, and probably not because of that kiss, I dropped out of high school; had three kids; raised them as a single parent (until I married again in 2013); buried my mother; traveled full-time in an RV for three years with three kids, two cats, and a dog; was diagnosed with a disability; enrolled in community college at 39 (first generation students rock!); bought a house; subsequently went to university where I graduated with a double-major in creative writing and interdisciplinary studies at 42; and am now pursuing my MFA at Arizona State University where I am the editor-in-chief of Hayden’s Ferry Review and a Virginia G. Piper fellow. Although I am enrolled in the poetry program at ASU, I write cross-genre and my current projects are a novel-length experimental long poem about growing up in the Sonoran desert, and (when I have time) a novel.

I’m pretty interested in the ways that our lives interact with space and place, with nature and our seeming need to conquer or tame or label as a means of taming (and by this I mean not just nature but children, women, and everything we put in this “wild” category)—so most of my work is place-based as a foundation to explore these ideas, and I’m also fascinated by the ways we create and destroy utopias and dystopias in reality. The intersections I can see for all of my work are women and primitivism; place and pain; naming and taming; spit and anger.

In what seems like another life, I owned a tea company and was also sea kayak guide in the islands off the coast of Washington state (which I still call home) and where I still love to paddle (and drink tea). So if I’m not writing or building something out of mud (vernacular architecture buff), I’m probably swimming, kayaking, or canoeing, or otherwise trying to catch a ferry to the islands. I’m an advocate for women in every area, a community activist for disability rights, for the importance of the arts, the right to equal food access, and a puzzler of the ways we hold and make space.

Honestly, I could not be more excited to join the Sundress team as an intern. This is a collective organization which I admire deeply. To be a part of things which we love already is a treat and an honor.

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Cheyenne L. Black serves as the editor-in-chief for Hayden’s Ferry Review at Arizona State University where she is a third-year MFA candidate and Virginia G. Piper global fellow. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the anthologies We Will be Shelterand In Sight: An Ekphrastic Collaboration, as well as the journals 45th Parallel, American Journal of Poetry, and New Mobilityamong others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children where she brutally and with much zeal strikes the ‘s’ from directionals like toward, afterward, and backward.

Project Bookshelf: Cheyenne L. Black

If I’m trying to look cool I’ll say this is my bookshelf:

And it’s true. When I bought the house in 2010, one of the first things we did was install these shelves. Note how I can never change the size of my television. Which is probably okay since we never turn it on. It’ll last forever I think. Note too that these are in perfect order, there is a fiction section, a poetry section, and a reference section. Most of these books haven’t been touched in at least six years—since I started school. Most of these books don’t even belong to me. They were inherited from my mother or belong to my now-adult-once-teen daughters.

But if I’m being honest about the current state of MY books I’ll show you these instead: 

And I’ll add that there are at least twenty more stacks of books that look exactly like this, on my desk, on my nightstand, on the floor near both of these, and anywhere I regularly try to stake out space in a house full of people. Because right now I’m always bouncing back and forth between home and school, my actual books, the ones I use, read, reference, and sleep with, aren’t on that wall at all. (See also: lesesucht.)

I’m currently in a constant state of flux between Washington state and Arizona, so I’m always carrying whole boxes of books back and forth. I carry more books back and forth than I do items of clothing. And because I’m only in each place for a few months at a time before I have to return to the other, I don’t really bother to unpack them exactly. I more distribute, stack, and scatter strategically. Moreover, when I’m in one place I will inevitably, never mind how many books I brought, need one that is in the other location and will pay shipping to have one of my kids send me the book or will buy another copy. Thus I now have two copies of many books, too, but I can never remember in which state. . . So the truth of my bookshelf presently is that it’s more box than shelf, more floorstack than display, more misplaced panic—than leisure. But I’ll probably pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about if you mention this to me in public.

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Cheyenne L. Black serves as the editor-in-chief for Hayden’s Ferry Review at Arizona State University where she is a third-year MFA candidate and Virginia G. Piper global fellow. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the anthologies We Will be Shelter and In Sight: An Ekphrastic Collaboration, as well as the journals 45th Parallel, American Journal of Poetry, and New Mobility among others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children where she brutally and with much zeal strikes the ‘s’ from directionals like toward, afterward, and backward.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Danielle Alexander

Hello, hello! I’m Danielle Alexander. I’m quite a few years post undergrad, so I’m not your typical intern. Since graduating with a BFA in Creative Writing from a small, liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I have been working in nonprofit communications and grant writing. Two years ago, I opened a brick and mortar used bookstore. The store, then Bombadil Books, (let’s be best friends if you get the obscure Tolkien reference) was amazing. It brought the world of self-published zines and handmade journals to me. It was also a TON of work (hello taxes, accounting, inventory, legal paperwork, etc.), on top of continuing to work a full-time job in the nonprofit sector.

In the past few months, I’ve transitioned Bombadil Books into Grey Grey Books, an online and pop-up shop that I run out of my home, still focused on used books, zines, and handmade journals. Retiring from the world of running a storefront has allowed me to focus more on some things I have been putting off for a few years: working on my own writing, applying for an MFA program, and getting some experience in the publishing and editing world. I am thrilled to be joining the Sundress Publications team as an Editorial Intern this summer, fulfilling a long-time dream of working with a small and passionate team of talented, literary-minded individuals.

When I’m not pricing out vintage books or sewing up journals, you’re likely to find me travelling, doing yoga, talking about anxiety and self-care, bullet journaling, and spending time with my dog, Mugs, and cats, Jane and Austen.  

Danielle Alexander is a writer and the owner of Grey Grey Books, an online and pop up shop that sells used books, zines, and handmade journals in Michigan. Her writing has appeared in The Bandit Zine’s Love & Heartbreak Issue and The Aquinas College Sampler, where her poem Mother received an American Academy of Poet’s Honorable Mention. She has self-published two poetry chapbooks: Sunlight Get Through (2016) and Chasing Rabbits (2016); two collaborative artist’s books, We Sit Together, At the Table (2015) and White Walls: Entelechia (2015); and recently self-published Ten Lists: A Workbook for Anxiety (2017). Danielle holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from Aquinas College and will be pursuing an MFA in Nonfiction or Poetry in 2018. Her work can be found at http://www.greygreybooks.com.

 

 

 

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.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern, Rosetta Berger

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Hi, I’m Rosetta and I am thrilled to be joining the Sundress team as an intern! I have been fascinated by language since a young age, and I began teaching myself languages other than English at age 11 when my family traveled to Malawi and I learned some basic phrases in Chichewa, and so far my pursuit of formal language education has enabled me to become conversationally fluent in French and Russian. I have studied linguistic theory and published a scholarly article on language contact between Proto-Russian and Scandinavian languages, which received the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Memorial Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research at Harvard University. I also had the privilege of working in the Pama-Nyungan Lab at Yale University, which focuses on the historical linguistics, prehistory, and documentation of Australian Aboriginal languages.

Of course, I have also loved reading from a very young age, and I find joy in applying linguistic theory to literary analysis. While pursuing my bachelor’s degree at Wheaton College, I worked in a lab that uses text mining software and word frequency and distribution algorithms to analyze authorship of and relationships between literary works, a discipline called lexomics. My work in the lexomics lab led to the publication of a paper that I co-authored on the literary relationship between two Icelandic sagas. I produced an annotated translation of the Old English poem Juliana for my senior honors thesis, in which my annotations focused on explaining important linguistic and artistic choices I made in my Modern English translation. While I have found a love in studying the role that language plays in literature, my first love was and always will be sitting down with a good book and just getting lost in it.

In addition to reading, writing, and learning languages, I enjoy listening to podcasts and music (especially symphonic metal), playing video games, and being used as a pillow (or bed) by my tuxedo cat Chiyo. I am so excited to join the Sundress community and look forward to being a contributing member of the team!

Rosetta Berger is a recent graduate of Wheaton College (Massachusetts), where she double majored in English and Russian Studies and studied literary and linguistic analysis. She has also studied at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a research assistant in a linguistics lab at Yale University. Rosetta has published scholarly articles on the literary relationship between Icelandic sagas and on the historical development of the Russian language, a paper which was recognized with the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Memorial Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research at Harvard University.

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.

Meet Clarisse Nakahama, Our Newest SAFTAcast Intern

Clarisse Nakahama

 

Hey there! I’m Clarisse and I am the new intern for the SAFTAcast. I recently received my Bachelors of Arts in English: Creative Writing and Sociology and Anthropology from University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. I flip-flop between writing poetry, short fiction, long fiction, and staring at my computer/notebook with sheer terror.

In the interest of complete honesty, this feels a little like an icebreaker in high school or a 101 class. Y’know, the kind where your teacher has everyone go around the room and say their name and one interesting thing about themselves. Of course, you never remember anyone’s name because you are far too busy thinking of an interesting fact but have forgotten everything about yourself. So by the time it gets to you, not only do you not know anyone’s name but your interesting fact is “I like Legolas” and instantly you feel like an idiot because of course you like Legolas. Who doesn’t like Legolas? And to make it worse, the girl who went before you built homes for people in Argentina before being the first college student on Mars and the guy after you has seventeen black belts and right between these stellar examples of humanity is you, Legolas Girl.

So in the spirit of awkward icebreakers, here is a quick list of ten interesting/fun facts about me:

  1. I am Legolas Girl.
  2. As an April Fool’s prank the club that I was co-president of once spammed one of our academic buildings with tiny pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch after he photobombed U2 at the Academy Awards. We taped them so he looked like he was jumping out from behind posters.
  3. I can flip a butterfly knife (also known as a balisong or fan knife).
  4. As a graduation gift, my friends and I photoshopped our favorite professor’s face onto William Shakespeare and presented it to him in a pink frame. He loved it and has it on his desk.
  5. I had a brief stint of notoriety in college when my friends and I purchased a David Tennant cardboard cutout and put him in our hall window. He scared many a passerby at night and during the day. Today, he remains at the school, surveying the University of Puget Sound campus.
  6. I can solve a Rubik’s Cube.
  7. My thesis in Sociology was about the lines drawn by gatekeepers, specifically the gender lines drawn by male gatekeepers, in the Marvel and 70s punk subcultures.
  8. Over the past four years I have crocheted eighteen scarves, thirteen hats, three stuffed animals, two pairs of gloves, two tops, and two blankets.
  9. One week before my high school graduation, I sprained my ankle at Disneyland.
  10. My best friend and I have an ongoing debate about Boromir from Lord of the Rings. In fact, he is not allowed to be mentioned in our presence. Ever.

But truly, I am excited to be a part of the SAFTAcast and learn more about podcast creation and promotion. I think podcasts are such an interesting medium for storytellers and writers. To have the opportunity to work on this one is amazing.

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Clarisse Nakahama is a recent graduate from University of Puget Sound where she double majored in English: Creative Writing and Sociology and Anthropology. Some of her short fiction and poetry have been published in her college’s literary arts magazine, CrossCurrents. When she wasn’t busy researching Marvel comics and punk music for her senior thesis, Clarisse was acting as co-president to Nerdfighters Club and president to Writers’ Guild. Her yarn collection is slowly but surely morphing into a scarf collection, even though she has very little use for crocheted scarves now that she has returned to her native Southern California.

By Fluorescent Light: An Introduction to Kristen Figgins, Intern

KFigg 2My husband is an amateur historian, so I spend a lot of time thinking about medieval villages, where people participated in rigorous apprenticeships before entering into a vocation themselves.  We both know, my husband and I, that the medieval period wasn’t laugh-a-minute, that people generally lived hard lives with plenty of religious festivals to break up the monotony of blacksmithing (or whatever it was you did) with a play depicting the death of some saint.  But we still complain that, you know, those guys were onto something.  Internships, apprenticeships, those are the way to go.

I sit here at my desk, lit not by candlelight but by six bright fluorescents, on the first day of school, someone lecturing in a classroom across the hall, much too loud, and I think about my good fortune.  I’m one of the newest editorial interns at Sundress Publications, and even though I have gotten used to be being the teacher, I’m going to have an opportunity to be a learner again.  I’ve always been fascinated by the publishing industry, which, as a writer, no matter how much I learn or how familiar I get with the process of submission, still seems like a mystery cult, shrouded in trade secrets and behind-the-scenes stuff.  Getting my acceptance email from Jane Huffman felt like being told that I was to be inducted into the Illuminati, like looking at a medieval map and seeing “Here be dragons” and saying, yes, yes, please.  

Except, of course, it isn’t. Everyone is very polite and there don’t seem to be any rituals involved in this business of publishing, at least not yet.  But I am an apprentice to the trade now, it feels, and I’m already learning a lot.  I was able to read an advance copy of Xochitl-Julisa Bergera’s Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge.  It was beautiful and amazing and it did feel like a secret that was being whispered to me.  I put together a series of questions for Xochitl-Julisa that will be used in an interview, which did feel a bit like pulling back a curtain.  

My recommendation, in the twenty-first century, to all of you who are not time travelers of the medieval period, is that when you see a listing for an internship position, to reach out and grab it with both hands.  You might just find yourself at Sundress Publications, like I did, sitting at your desk and feeling yourself very lucky to be learning the secrets of a beautiful, mysterious, and fascinating trade.  

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Kristen Figgins is a writer of fabulism, whose work has appeared in such places as Dunes Review, Zoetic Press, The Gateway Review, Puerto del Sol, Sleet Magazine, Hermeneutic Chaos, Sakura Review, and The Whale Road Review.  Her story “Track Me With Your Words, Speak Me With Your Feet” was winner of the 2015 Fiction Award fromPuerto del Sol and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Micro Award, and Write Well Award.  Her first chapbook, A Narrow Line of Light, is available for purchase from Boneset Books and her novella, Nesting, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in the Summer of 2017.