Tag: introduction

Meet Our New Intern: Katy DeCoste

A black and white headshot photo of Katy, a white person. They have short, straight hair and are wearing black, square glasses, a floral shirt with a collar, and a white knit cardigan. They are smiling with their mouth closed.

As a graduate student in English, most of my day-to-day work involves reading books, thinking about them, and every so often going to a meeting to talk about them. For a kid who grew up reading while walking and spending recess indoors shelving library books instead of playing outside, this is a pretty huge privilege. My favorite way to spend my time is pouring over digitized copies of nineteenth-century periodicals and sending the funniest articles in them to our program’s class group chat. I even spent most of my undergraduate years working in the university library, spending time among thousands of books and plucking the ones that interested me off the shelf for the end of my shift.

In 2020, I received my BA Honors in English and History from the University of Alberta, mid-pandemic. One lackluster 45-minute Zoom graduation and one expensive slip of paper later, I had realized that reading, writing, and talking about reading and writing are most of what I want to do with my life, and since it’s difficult to find a stable job in academia, I thought I’d spend as much time doing these things as possible while I could.

As for creative writing, I’ve been doing it most of my life. I spent my childhood penning novels that ranged from epic fantasy to tween romance tales, sending them to friends pasted in the bodies of emails (I hadn’t figured out file attachments yet). In high school, I discovered poetry, hungrily consuming collections by Robert Frost, Carol Ann Duffy, and Emily Dickinson. I stumbled upon playwriting a few years later, in university, watching friends of mine perform in new, local productions. Now, I’ve (mostly) abandoned my roots in fiction, but I’m currently fantasizing about a project that uses oral history and archival research to create a play about queer culture in 1980s Regina, my hometown.

My love for literature is why I’m so excited to work with Sundress Publications: I want to help give writers the support needed to get their stories into the world, and create the kind of books I want to read. 

Katherine (Katy) DeCoste is a queer, white settler currently living on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples and the WSÁNEĆ peoples, where they are pursuing their MA in English at the University of Victoria. In 2020, they received their BA Honours in English and History from the University of Alberta, as the Rutherford Memorial Medalist in English and Dr. John Macdonald Medalist in Arts. You can find their poetry in Barren Magazine, Grain Magazine, The Antigonish Review, and other outlets. In 2020, their play “many hollow mercies” won the Alberta Playwriting Competition Novitiate Prize. When not writing, reading, or answering emails, Katherine can be found playing Dungeons and Dragons, volunteering with food support initiatives, and forcing their friends to eat their baking.

Meet Our New Intern: Ada Wofford

I’m currently a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Library and Information Science and I will be graduating this spring (maybe in the summer, it depends on my financial situation). I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where I majored in English literature and minored in psychology. I work part-time as a content writer and I’m looking to make it more of a full-time gig.

I’m a Contributing Editor for The Blue Nib, a literary magazine based out of the UK. I write essays and reviews for them but they have also published my fiction and poetry. My fiction tends to be about working-class women and deals with a lot of ethical and existential concepts but I also write a lot of humor so, go figure. Recently, I’ve been dabbling with screenplay writing—I want to write a queer Seinfeld. For the past several months, all of my analytical writing has been focused on 21st-century poetry. I’ve published an essay on Kaur’s work and an essay on alt-lit, critically examining their literary qualities and attempting to explain both their appeal and their function within literature as a whole. I feel such analysis is important as there is hardly any in existence, despite Kaur being the best selling poet of all time. That being said, I feel I should point out that I do not enjoy or admire Kaur’s work nor any of the alt-lit work I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) but I believe the works to be culturally significant and therefore deserving of scholarly analysis.

Apart from all that, I’m also a huge music nerd. I play in two bands (Friendo and HoloFerns) and manage a music review site called My Little Underground.

As for the future, I’m still figuring that out. I applied to some PhD programs in the fall and so until I hear back from them, I can’t start planning anything. My main goal though is to write more and publish more—I hope the experience I gain at Sundress will aid me in this pursuit.

Ada Wofford is currently avoiding her 9-5 enslavement by studying library science at UW-Madison. She’s a Contributing Editor for The Blue Nib, has been published in various places such as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and is currently residing in New Jersey.

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Jessica Hudgins

hudgins

I started this internship at kind of a strange time. I’m living now in my grandparents’ house, where my aunt also lived until she passed away in January. I’m getting things settled and trying to figure out what I want my life to look like.  I’ve never been out of school. The house is beautiful, on 25 acres in a town called Mansfield. My grandparents built it in the seventies, and a pond. I drive a few days a week to my new part-time job in a library, reshelving books and checking out patrons. I have two dogs: a rat terrier named Mitzi, who was my grandpa’s, and Roxanne, my aunt’s Yorkie.

When I graduated with my MFA, I applied to several fellowships but didn’t get any. I went to a couple residencies, the Albee Foundation and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and worked odd teaching jobs. I’m glad for the opportunity to do editorial work, especially with Sundress Publications, which I’ve known about and admired for a year or so.

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Jessica Hudgins is a writer currently living in Mansfield, Georgia. 

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.