Tag: intern

Laura B. Robbins Introduction

Hi, everybody! I’m Laura, and I’m so excited to join the Sundress team as a Development Intern.

I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m incredibly proud of my city, and yes, I think our BBQ is the best. I have a love of books and reading, and one day, I hope to work as an editor for a major publishing house. My love of reading stemmed from my parents, both journalists who take the written word very seriously.

While I spend a good portion of my time reading books or writing about books, I also enjoy spending time with my family and friends, watching a little too much Netflix, fawning over kittens, and online shoe shopping.

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Laura Robbins, a Memphis native, is a senior at the University of Tennessee studying English Literature. For the last year, she has worked at UT’s library in Special Collections. When she isn’t writing papers or reading books for class, Laura enjoys buying more books than she has the room for and discussing anything from feminism to the latest superhero movie.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Bridget Sellers

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Hey there!

My name is Bridget and I am a 5’6 freckled beanpole, born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. I am currently studying to get my B.A. in English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. After I finish my undergraduate degree I hope to get my Ph.D. in literature, travel as much of the world as I can, and finally settle down in an off-the-grid tiny house with a field of wildflowers for a lawn.

My central interest is contemporary poetry— I have this theory that poetry is the best media format for giving people a voice in the world today. I’m also very interested the post-postmodernism debate and the interaction between contemporary poetry and translation studies. I write my own poetry but so far have been too much of a wimp to submit anywhere. My work can be found at my Poetry in Progress blog. My favorite poetry anthologies I own are The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Haikus in English: The First Hundred Years, and I Love Roses When They’re Past Their Best. At present, my favorite novel is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

When not writing or reading, I love to absorb media in other formats, including cinema, animation, theatre, visual art, and video games. I also like to travel to new places, roll around in the outdoors, take deep and fulfilling naps, and pet every cat I see.

I am delighted to join Sundress as an editorial intern so I can not only give my best effort to an incredible organization but also grow and learn as part of this community.

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Bridget Sellers is a faerie child and a junior at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville majoring in English with concentrations in Literature, Creative Writing, and Technical Writing. She has also studied at the University of Urbino in Italy and The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. A burgeoning poet and literary scholar, she published her first paper on contemporary poetry last spring  in the UT journal, Pursuit.

Meet our new editorial intern, Bradi Musil

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I’m Bradi, and I am one of the new Sundress Academy for the Arts‘ Editorial Interns this summer.

People who know me well will tell you I question everything, smirk far more than is necessary or appropriate and am way shorter than I look at first glance. Although I typically prefer reading works of contemporary fiction, I’ve found that I gravitate toward producing nonfiction pieces. Working primarily in journalism for the past three years, I have published over 130 articles for the University of Tennessee’s newspaper, The Daily Beacon. I focus my work on investigating and covering social justice issues, paying special attention to women’s health and empowerment and criminal justice reform.

Ultimately, my dream is so use my skills and passion for writing to promote social change. I believe that the written word is immeasurably powerful when used with intent, and that’s why I love Sundress Publications.

When I’m not writing, you can usually find me snuggling with my dog, Gregg Norman, drinking the wine he was named after, or re-reading Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves for the one-hundredth time.  I really love getting to share ideas with other creatives, and my favorite thing of all is getting to tell someone’s unique story.

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Bradi Musil is a senior English and Criminology student at the University of Tennessee, but she spends most of her time boarded up in the student newspaper, The Daily Beacon’s, office, where she serves as the Editor-in-Chief. She has written over 130 pieces for publication and edited twice that many. Bradi also works as an interviewer for the Planned Parenthood “Tennessee Stories Project” that tells the stories of East Tennessee women who have been affected by abortion.  What Bradi loves more than writing is getting to work with other writers who share her passion for producing work that pushes people out of their comfort zone and forces them to consider the uncomfortable realities of an unequal, unjust society. 

Meet Our Newest Intern, Graham Bonnington!

 

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Hey everyone!

I’m Graham Bonnington, and it’s great to be here.

I re-discovered my love of writing prose near the end of my Communications Bachelor degree days. My days are spent feeding my coffee addiction and writing ideas down on paper before sitting down in front of a screen to get the prose out. I tend to write cosmic horror, which is in the realm of HP Lovecraft stuff, but minus the racism. Right now I’m trying to finish a book about a pansexual black girl realizing she’s part of an alien race trying to liberate itself from the planet. I also enjoy being “woke” and enjoy electronic music. Look me up on Soundcloud or my band I do vocals for, Landslide of Signal.

I’m looking forward in being part of Sundress.

Thanks!

Graham Bonnington is a Chattanooga Tennessee native. He graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a master’s degree in creative writing. A reader and writer of cosmic horror, Graham also prides himself as an amateur early middle ages historian (don’t get him started on the Lombard King Grimoald I), a non-believer, an electronica musician, a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and all things astronomical.

Meet Our Newest Intern, Jasmine An

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Hello!

I am thrilled to be joining the Sundress team as the Editorial Intern for Agape Editions.

I am a poet that began her writing life as a fiction writer. A younger version of me happily completed four years of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) before my prose started shrinking and splicing, until the present day where the thought of trying to write 50,000 words of continuous narrative in a single November seems like a wonderful joke.

In my own writing, I obsess over haunting, mythology, and inheritance. I am fascinated by literary psychoanalysis and Sun Wukong the Monkey King. Much of my work revolves around Chinese-Americanness and the Midwest.

When I’m not writing, I enjoy stabbing people with blunt, flexible swords in the sport of fencing. I have also competed in olympic style archery (recurve only, compound bows are cheating) and rode horses for about ten years. Childhood dreams of knighthood die hard.

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Jasmine An is a queer, Chinese-American who comes from the Midwest. A 2015 graduate of Kalamazoo College, she has also lived in New York City and Chiang Mai, Thailand, studying poetry, urban development, and blacksmithing. Her chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, was selected as the winner of the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming in February 2016. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in HEArt Online, Stirring, Heavy Feather Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Her soulmate and forever muse is Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. As of 2016, she can be found in Chiang Mai continuing her study of the Thai language.

Rebecca Klingsten On Joining The Sundress Publications Intern Crew

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Hello, everyone!

My name is Rebecca and I’m happy to introduce myself as a new editorial intern. SAFTAcast host Scott Fynboe is a former professor of mine that first introduced me to Sundress. He suggested that I attend the fiction writers’ retreat this year and so I did. I had an amazing time in Tennessee meeting so many interesting individuals and that’s how I learned about this internship.

To tell you a little bit about myself, I’m originally from Howell, Michigan but have lived in Florida for about ten years now. I moved up to the big city of Orlando on July 1st in anticipation of beginning my studies in creative writing at University of Central Florida. I have also already started my job at Walt Disney World as an attractions operations cast member. So if anyone happens to be at Animal Kingdom, you can find me at It’s Tough to be a Bug!

Besides the many new things occurring in my life, some of my interests include traveling, video games, and various TV series. Of course I also enjoy reading and the genres that I like in particular are fantasy and historical fiction. Two of my favorite authors are Kim Harrison and Diana Gabaldon. (I’ll probably mention these two again when I do my Project Bookshelf post.) I’m also a huge animal lover and along with introducing myself, I thought I’d introduce my animal child as well. His name is Furby and he’s a very important part of my life even if he is just a cat.

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Now that you all know a little more about me, I look forward to meeting and learning more about the many of you that work for Sundress Publications!
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Rebecca Klingsten is a Junior at University of Central Florida. With a concentration in Creative Writing, she also hopes to have the opportunity to teach English as a foreign language in other countries. When she isn’t writing she spends her time at Disney and watches her favorite TV shows such as Game of Thrones.

Semicolon

It’s tattooed on the base of my neck: a large, black semicolon. I got it in the fall of my senior year of college, after a boy broke my heart by not loving me back, after I self-harmed for the first time in almost ten years, after I was diagnosed with a panic disorder. Truthfully, it was a bit of a rash decision, like many tattoos are for 20-somethings living in college towns, but it has come to mean more to me the longer it has been inked in1235977_10152452573315869_4960828711613384046_nto my body.

A semicolon by definition, is a punctuation mark used to separate two complete clauses. However, a few weeks before I decided to brand myself with a punctuation mark, I heard another way someone looked at it. The Semicolon Project, an organization that aims to bring public awareness to mental health, specifically for those who self-harm, have attempted suicide, have depression, and anxiety says that “asemicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence, but chose not to. The sentence is your life, and the author is you.”

For me, this definition became a crucial mantra to me. Every day I choose to live, and every day I need to remind myself that my choice is important.

The Semicolon Project started as a small, planned event: on April 16th, 2013 draw a semicolon on your wrist to support mental health awareness. The response was remarkable. Over 700,000 people in 9 different countries participated, showing their support for speaking about mental illness. When I heard about the results, I wanted to leave my mark too, but I didn’t want mine to wash off with a few showers. I wanted my mark to be as permanent as the illness I live with.

I chose my neck because I want to remind myself that while I cannot always see my semicolon, or see a way out of a bad situation, it’s still there, and I’m still there. I will continue to grow and change. I will continue to be sick, but what is important is that I remember that I am still here, living and trying to figure out every wave of my illness. I don’t end here;

Hunter Parsons is a recent graduate from Kalamazoo College with a degree in English with a writing emphasis. She has been published in The Cauldron, Kalamazoo College’s literary magazine, and is being mentored by poet Diane Seuss. When she’s not writing, being a plant mom, or advocating for young women’s self esteem, Hunter is baking and organizing her ever-growing makeup collection. 

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Hunter Parsons

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I come from a small city swallowed by larger suburbs. Clawson, Michigan is two square miles that is often mistaken for some other town located in the hub of the Metro Detroit area. Growing up, I spent my summers buying stale licorice ropes and Green Apple Jones Soda from the gas station around the corner, roller skating at the rink down the street, and sitting on my porch writing stories and poems in my journals.

When my location changed to Kalamazoo, Michigan to attend college, not much about my small town personality was altered. I still asked random people on the street if I could pet their dogs, I found quiet places in Kalamazoo to write, and became obsessed with fairy lights, baking, and caring for air plants.

I have been a writing consultant in my college’s writing center for three years, a teacher’s assistant for creative writing classes, co-taught a course on pedagogy, assisted in selecting works of fiction for my college’s literary magazine, The Cauldron, and have been published in zines such as This Heart is Homebound.10846333_10152906125364421_913962029239935187_n

This summer, I’ll be graduating from Kalamazoo College with a BA in English with a writing emphasis and will trek back to Metro Detroit with poetry books, a tiny plant army, and a collection of too many coffee cups. I hope that being home and without roller skates, I’ll be prompted to apply to graduate schools to pursue an MFA in poetry.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to work for Sundress Publications as Editorial Intern!

Hunter Parsons is a senior at Kalamazoo College pursuing a degree in English with a writing emphasis. She has been published in The Cauldron, Kalamazoo College’s literary magazine, and is being mentored by poet Diane Seuss. When she’s not writing, being a plant mom, or advocating for young women’s self esteem, Hunter is baking and organizing her ever-growing make-up collection. 

Meet Sundress’s New Editorial Intern: Rhiannon Thorne

I have a rat who steals bookmarks. I named him Modesto after the protagonist of a Spanish film in which a teacher coerces a handful of dead teenage students to pass on to the other side. I like him because while he nibbles on the spines of my paperbacks, he does not talk back or disagree with my opinions on books. That would be my “three interesting things about me” ice-breaker, if this was an awkward face-to-face meet-and-greet and not just an awkward blog post. And yes, I probably spend too much time talking to my rat.

Rhiannon ThorneMy name’s Rhiannon, but most of my friends and Spaniards call me Raquel. I hail from Northern California, and so you’ll catch me saying such gems as “hella” and “dude”, although they may be démodé colloquialisms. After getting a couple BA’s at Sonoma State University (English & Spanish—no, contrary to all previous indications, I do not speak Spanish, sober) I moved out to Wisconsin for a while, where I learned the difference between “grilling out” and “bbq”—an important distinction according to friends of the Bud Light camp. Then I’ve been in Arizona a few years, where I haven’t picked- up anything Arizonian because you never meet anybody in Phoenix that’s from Arizona.

I’m currently in transition between Phoenix and the Silicone Valley and will be moving shortly back to Nor Cal. I’ll miss the desert. Everywhere else is too cold. And I’ll miss the nostalgic value of the valley—Phoenix was good to me. While here Kate Hammerich and I started cahoodaloodaling, for which I am now the Managing Editor; I began submitting my own work, landing in Midwest Quarterly, Foundling Review, Sheepshead Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and Bop Dead City among others; I became a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly. All fun things after sitting stagnant on my degrees in a call center for years.

More recently, I became an editorial intern here at Sundress. I’m looking forward to learning what I can about publishing before I apply and (fingers crossed) matriculate into grad school where I plan to get my MFA in poetry and then perhaps later an MA/PhD in publishing.

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Rhiannon Thorne’s work has appeared in Grasslimb, Midwest Quarterly, The Sierra Nevada Review, Bop Dead City, and Existere among others. She is the managing editor ofcahoodaloodaling and a book reviewer at Up the Staircase Quarterly. When not busy wrangling a pet, a good book, or a bottle of craft beer, she may be reached at rhiannonthorne.com.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern, Alexandra Chiasson!

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As an English major at the University of Tennessee and an intermittent reader of The Metro Pulse, I have been vaguely aware of Sundress Academy for the Arts since I moved to Knoxville in 2011.

It wasn’t until this summer at Knoxville PrideFest, however, that I spoke to a Sundress Academy staff member who persuaded me to attend my first SAFTA event—the 2014 OUTSpoken staged reading. The reading sounded unique and fresh, particularly for East Tennessee, so I rounded up a group of friends to accompany me. When I arrived, I was delighted to see that I knew one of the performers and several members of the audience.

The performers were excellent and the material genuine. One piece, a series of open letters written by a close friend, moved me to tears. Unfortunately, I only got to see the first 20 minutes or so of the OUTSpoken reading. About a third of the way through, I felt a feeling in my stomach that I at first mistook for some physical manifestation of the emotions I was experiencing. It soon became apparent that it was more likely the unfriendly mingling of the coffee and salsa I had ingested earlier that day, and I ran to the restroom where I promptly vomited.

I tell this story not to make some strange point about the poignancy of spoken word or to share a cautionary tale of which acidic foods are most incompatible. I tell this story to share this remarkable coincidence and how I overcame some fairly negative associations when this internship position fell into my lap this fall and I delightedly snatched it up.

I am currently a reluctant and unseasoned writer, and I hope that my impending work with Sundress Publications as the Editorial Intern will assist me in quelling uncertainties—which sometimes cause me to feel like I did the night of the OUTSpoken reading—regarding sharing my writing with others. I cannot think of a better community of artists to mingle and network with, and I look forward to attending many more (hopefully sans vomit) SAFTA events.

 

 

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Alexandra Chiasson is majoring in English (Literature and Technical Communication) at the University of Tennessee, where she also writes a weekly humor column called “Stained and Confused” for the student-led newspaper. Her ongoing research project explores ecofeminist perspectives on Appalachian literature, with a focus on the writing of Amy Greene and Ron Rash. Her hobbies include serving on the Sex Week UT planning board, sampling different types of pretzels, and bragging about bargains.