Past Intern Updates: Katie McCoach

Katie McCoach, Issue 6 Nonfiction Editor, discusses her experience at Superstition Review and other internships and how they gave her the experience to pursue her ideal career.

dsc_0507Until my internships with Superstition Review, Ellechor Publishing, and Folio Literary Management, I had no idea where my Creative Writing and Communications degrees were going to take me. I knew I enjoyed the degrees I had chosen for myself, but what job would I end up with? I felt like the only choices I kept hearing were technical writing, teaching, or apply for MFA programs.

Those options weren’t for me. But then the lingering question; what was?

Well, a few internships later I discovered my dream job, and the path to take to get there. Fast forward a year and here I am now, pursuing my dream. Half of my time goes to an author marketing company where I spend the day executing marketing campaigns for traditional and self-published authors, and the other half of my time is spent freelance editing as Katie McCoach Editorial. I edit and critique manuscripts, query letters, website content, and newsletters. When I look back at how in the world I got here, it comes down to six things interning did for me, so I wanted to share them here for you.

  1. Real Life Experience – I know you hear this all the time. Enough already, right? But it really cannot be expressed enough. The internships I held were all very different from one another and from each of them I discovered this whole world I knew nothing about. I learned how to communicate with authors, how to hone instinct in selling, selecting, and editing, and I saw the different roles each person can play in the publishing industry. Many of the things I learned in my internships I would never have learned by just my degree alone.
  2. Discover What You Want  – A couple years ago, I was the Nonfiction Editor for Issue 6 of Superstition Review. Here I learned the in and outs of a literary magazine: how to communicate with authors and pique interest, how to develop an instinct for selecting the best work for the issue that season, and I had a chance to read amazing work by so many brilliant writers. At one point, I was asked to give comments on one of the pieces, to see if there were any suggestions or feedback we could contribute. This was my favorite part, and it wasn’t even one of my typical duties. That’s when the first hint of what I wanted to do as a career began to hit me.
  3. Conduct the Ultimate Interview – Internships are jobs. Although they are temporary and often times only a few months long, they are still jobs. This is your chance to conduct the ultimate interview – how does this job fit with your personality? How are your skills best utilized? Can you see yourself here in five years? How could you move up in the industry? I worked for a literary magazine, publishing company, and literary agency. I saw very different roles of the publishing industry, and from it I discovered where I fit best.
  4. Path to Your Dream Job – Every person in your industry started somewhere, maybe even interning exactly where you are now. So ask them – how did they get their job? What about their boss’s boss? The path to your dream job becomes readily available to you as an intern and this is your chance to begin it.
  5. Perspective – I chose to intern at companies that were all related to publishing and from this I saw different parts of the industry that I could have never seen if I hadn’t worked in the areas I did. Interning at Superstition Review I saw the literary magazine side of publishing. The publications in literary magazines across the country influence contests and grants. These contests can mean referrals for lit agents, which in turn can mean a sale to an editor, and the next book a publishing company picks up. There is much more to it than that of course, but I now am able to see the industry as a whole, which gives me perspective, especially in relation to the job I chose to pursue.
  6. Connections – This is another one of those things we hear a lot. I currently live in Los Angeles and I am surrounded by the film and TV industry. I see first-hand how connections are the only way to establish your place in that industry. The same goes for publishing, though depending on the path you choose, it might not be quite as cutthroat. When I first moved to LA I attended one of those kind-of-awkward-but-you-push-through-it networking events. I was wary at first, and then I met someone who was starting her own marketing business. She needed an editor for her website content and what do you know, here I was, an editor. On top of gaining business with her, she also had a friend who was a literary agent, and that agent knew other freelance editors, and by then my connections had tripled. This happened just from a two-hour networking event, so imagine what a semester-long internship can do.

Interning was definitely the right choice for me and my career path, and – I have to cliché it up right here – I would not be in the position I am today without it.

If you are a current or past intern, what has interning done for you? If you are debating interning, what things do you hope to gain from the experience?

Katie McCoach graduated from Arizona State University in May of 2011 with her Bachelor’s of Arts in Creative Writing and Communications. She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA as a freelance editor. She has had essays published in TrainWrite and Kalliope. You can visit her at www.katiemccoach.com and on Twitter @katiemccoach

Lynn Levin’s Newest Poetry Collection

Miss PlastiqueLynn Levin’s newest poetry collection, Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press) is set to come out in May 2013. Her previous collections include Fair Creatures of an Hour, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium, a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award (both by Loonfeather Press). With Valerie Fox, she is the co-author of a craft of poetry text entitled Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press).

You can read more of her poetry published in Issue 6 of Superstition Review.

 

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Emilia Phillips

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Emilia Phillips.

Emilia Phillips is the author of Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013) and two chapbooks including Bestiary of Gall (Sundress Publications, 2013). She has held fellowships from U.S. Poets in Mexico and Vermont Studio Center and received the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal and Second Place in Narrative’s 2012 30 Below Contest. Her poetry appears in AGNI, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris-American, and elsewhere. She is an adjunct instructor of creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University, the associate literary editor of Blackbird, the De Novo Poetry Prize and social media coordinator for C&R Press, and the prose editor for 32 Poems. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

You can read along with her poems in Issue 6 of Superstition Review.

To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Michael Schmeltzer

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Michael Schmeltzer.

Michael SchmeltzerMichael Schmeltzer earned an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. He helps edit A River & Sound Review and is a two-time nominee of the Pushcart Prize. His work has been published in New York Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Water~Stone Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Fourteen Hills, among others.

 

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.
You can read along with his poems in Issue 6 of Superstition Review.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Molly Brodak

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Molly Brodak.

Molly Brodak is from Michigan and currently lives in Georgia. Her poems have recently appeared in Field, Kenyon Review Online, Bateau, Ninth Letter, Colorado Review, and her first book A Little Middle of the Night, won the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize.

You can read along with her poems in Issue 6 of Superstition Review.

To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273

Changing Hands First Friday Poetry | Eric Wertheimer: Mylar

On Friday, June 1, at 7 p.m., Changing Hands Bookstore will present Superstition Review contributor Eric Wertheimerwho will read from Mylar, his debut poetry collection.

Eric Wertheimer lives in the desert with Mili, Dani, Aya, and Tupac, where he is Professor of English and American Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Underwriting: The Poetics of Insurance in America and Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876. He has published his poems in a variety of journals over the past 10 years. His other book projects include Pretexts: War and Writing in the Early Republic and Within Trauma: Politics, Poetics, Praxis.

SRAWP Spotted: Paul Lisicky

Issue 6 Contributor Paul Lisicky is very tall so I had to hold the camera up high to get this shot. We love Paul so much we’re featuring an interview with him in out forthcoming Issue 9 conducted by James Chilar. Paul’s prose that appeared in Issue 6 is coming out soon in his new book UNBUILT PROJECTS (Fall 2012, Four Way Books).

 

 

SRAWP: Spotted, B.J. Hollars & Michael Martone

Superstition Review editors were happy to catch up with B.J. Hollars, Fiction Issue 6, and Michael Martone, Interview Issue 4.

B.J.’s essay “Fifty Ways Of Looking At Tornadoes” is forthcoming in Quarterly West.

Michael’s new book is Four for a Quarter. It is separated into four sections, with each section further divided into four chapterettes. The book returns again and again to its originating number, making chaos comprehensible and mystery out of the most ordinary.

Submissions for Issue 7

It is time again to gather your works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and art and ready them for submission to Superstition Review Issue 7. The submission period for Issue 7 is from February 1 to March 31. This marks the second issue that we will be using Submishmash, an online management tool that allows our staff to view and handle submissions. For information on submission guidelines go to http://superstitionreview.submishmash.com/Submit.

The staff at Superstition Review has just completed their second week of work on Issue 7. Our Section Editors for art, nonfiction, fiction and poetry will soon be receiving and reviewing submissions via Submishmash in the coming weeks during our submissions period beginning February 1 and ending March 31. Advertising Coordinators are busy researching new advertising opportunities, composing blogs and updating our Facebook and Twitter pages. With an eye towards later in the semester our Reading Series Coordinator is researching authors to feature.

As you can see, we are already making steady progress on Issue 7. Keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks for updates on our progress.