An Internship Opportunity, Free Creative Writing Classes, & a Call for Book Reviews

Academy Chicago Publishers is currently looking for two or three interns for an unpaid winter internship in the publishing industry. Zhanna Vaynberg, a recent MAWP graduate, is the managing editor at Academy Chicago Publishers in charge of finding interns, making this an especially promising opportunity for current DePaul English graduate students looking to get a foot in the door at a local independent publishing company.

Academy Chicago Publishers provides a laid-back office environment where interns can pick their hours to work around their schedules. Tasks vary from marketing & social media to reading submissions, proofreading galleys, updating the website, and more. The variety in tasks looks good on a resume and can help the intern figure out exactly which part of publishing they enjoy doing the most.

Email resumes and short (3-4 sentences) cover letter about why you’d like to join Academy Chicago Publishers to Zhanna at zhanna@academychicago.com.

If you are a current DePaul English graduate student interested in getting academic credit for this internship, please contact Internship Director Chris Green at cgreen1@depaul.edu, or check your inbox for more information.

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The weekend of December 1st and 2nd, the Northwestern MA/MFA in Creative Writing Program will offer free writing classes for the public for the eighth year. “The Apprentices: Free Community Creative Writing Classes” will take place at 405 Church St., at Northwestern’s Evanston campus. All workshops are taught by Northwestern graduate students.

The schedule is as follows:

Saturday, December 1st

  • 9 a.m. Turn off Your Brain: Using Automatic Writing for Inspiration (Patrick Bernhard)
  • 10 a.m.  From the Page to the Stage: How to Read Your Work in Front of an Audience (Dana Norris)
  • 11 a.m. A Past that Bears Repeating: Writing Historical Scenes (Rebecca Bald)
  • 12 p.m. Sneaking Past the Gatekeeper: Generating Ideas & Welcoming Creativity (Heather Cunningham)
  • 1 p.m. It’ll Be Funny Someday: A Dark Humor Workshop (Michelle Cabral)
  • 2 p.m. Embracing Ekphrasis: Writing Poetry About Art (Dane Hamann)
  • 3 p.m. It’s Not Stealing if it’s a Cento: a Poetry Workshop (Aaron DeLee)

Sunday, December 2nd

  • 9 a.m. Back to the Future: How Flashbacks Can Help Your Story  (Ross Ritchell)
  • 10 a.m. Fragmented Narrative in Fiction and Nonfiction (Jesse Eagle)
  • 11 a.m. To Tell True Stories, You Must Lie (Alex Higley)
  • 12 p.m. How I See it: Changing Meaning by Changing Point of View (Lydia Pudzianowski)
  • 1 p.m. Great Expectations: How to Subvert Readers’ Assumptions (Alisa Ungar-Sargon)
  • 2 p.m. Smash-Bang: Increase Your Story’s Impact by Ramping Up Conflict (Michael Anson)
  •  3 p.m. Hookers I Have Loved: Writing Catchy Openings (Eric Grawe)
  • 4 pm. Techniques for Writing About Emotion in Prose (Mercedes Lucero)

Classes are for writers with various levels of experience. Prose writers may find the poetry workshops useful, and vice versa. In order to give as many people as possible a chance to take the classes registration is limited to five or fewer classes per person. You may register for a maximum of five classes. Each is taught by a graduate student in creative writing at Northwestern.

To register, please email Apprentices@U.northwestern.edu with the classes you wish to register for and your phone number, or call 847-491-5612.  Classes are 50 to 55 minutes long. Please bring paper, pen or pencil, or laptop. Classes are free but donations will be accepted to benefit Young Chicago Authors.

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Harpur Palate, a biannual literary journal published by graduate students at Binghamton University, has recently begun a Reviews section on its blog, and has issued a subsequent call for submissions. Harpur Palate is now looking for quality reviews of books (or chapbooks) of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Review Guidelines: Harpur Palate welcomes unsolicited, previously unpublished reviews for the web review section of its blog. Reviews may be on recently published short story collections, novels, poetry full-lengths, or poetry chapbooks by emerging or established writers. In terms of length, brevity (2,000 words or less) is optimal, but they will consider reviews up to 5,000-words. The review should merit its length. They will consider reviews written in any style, from the more objective to the unabashedly subjective and narrative. They only ask that reviewers support their conclusions with contextualized text from the work being reviewed. Please avoid plot summaries that don’t illustrate important ideas.

Accepted reviews will be published on Harpur Palate’s blog, noted in the Harpur Palate journal, and promoted on Harpur Palate’s Facebook page.

Submit a review with a brief cover letter via our Submittable page. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable.