Each semester, New Letters, UMKC’s literary journal, offers internships to students that provide hands-on publishing experience, including publication management, copy editing, manuscript evaluation, grant development, writing and market research, and creative writing.
MFA student Colleen Boyd recently wrote about her experience completing the internship this spring:
One of the best experiences I’ve had in grad school so far is the New Letters internship; not only was it fun working for the magazine, but I also discovered what it takes to run a business like New Letters. One lesson I learned is the importance of precision and how it concerns not just the editor and the magazine department, but also those working with the press and the radio. For an magazine editor, it’s naive to think that precision doesn’t matter; an editor can’t publish a magazine full of bad stories filled with errors.
But there’s a difference between knowing the importance of producing a clean piece and actually writing or editing a solid piece. If the editor wants success, double-checking is a must for any sort of writing that will appear in a magazine; this includes determining correct grammar usage and using words that convey the point of the poem, story, or essay. Another important factor about exactness that concerns the magazine editor is the work’s integrity; she needs to keep the meaning of the work front and center, and not make so many changes that the original theme is lost. Both ideas concerning exactness also apply to the press and radio branches.
Cynthia Beard in particular drove home the point of exactness when she brought in some library books and showed how the publisher messed up the text, whether by setting the words too deeply into the spine of the book or choosing an ink that made the text shiny and illegible. And Angela Elam’s tour of the sound booth and recording studio for New Letters on the Air conveys how technically precise the radio DJ must be to take an hour-long interview, fish out the critical parts, and cut those down for a small time window. Given the success of all three branches of New Letters, it pays to be meticulous when editing for a literary operation, because only then can the best work be produced.
Check out the New Letters website to read Boyd’s full essay and learn more about internship opportunities.
