Publishing Internship Opportunity

Roots Wounds Words (RWW) is offering unpaid internships to students interested in book publishing and/or arts administration careers. 

Their internship program, which runs from September – December and February – May, allows students to work 20 hours per week and offers an opportunity to learn about the literary arts and publishing industries. As a RWW Publishing Intern, you would have the opportunity to work closely with seasoned professionals and gain hands-on experience as you own day-to-day tasks, help with special projects, assist with the publication of anthologies, and attend organizational meetings.

Since 2018, Roots Wounds Words has offered free, donation-based, and low-cost literary arts programs such as writing workshops, multi-month writing intensives, master craft talks, book clubs, monthly storyteller showcases, and publication opportunities. Their storytellers are located across the country, as well as in Canada, China, the UK, Côte d'Ivoire, and elsewhere. RWW's former Faculty include literary artists such as Saeed Jones, Deesha Philyaw, Joel L. Daniels, Linda Villarosa, and more. According to RWW, "In 2022, RWW will offer workshops in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, speculative fiction, and young adult fiction. The RWW 2022 Spring Publishing Fellow will have the opportunity to support the tribe we serve--talented, yet often overlooked and cast aside, up-and-coming Storytellers of Color."

The following is from their internship posting:

Who you are:
• A rising junior, senior, or graduate student interested in exploring a career in book publishing and/or arts administration
• Self-starter with strong interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills
• Enthusiastic and excited about discussing recent BIPOC books you’ve read and celebrating BIPOC storytelling traditions
• Possess a great attitude and a desire to learn as well as excellent organizational skills
• Resourceful with the ability to balance multiple responsibilities and work independently
• Must be results driven, and take appropriate steps to achieve goals while taking ownership of situations as needed
• Proficient in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint

What you will learn:
• Book production and publishing
• Interviewing BIPOC authors
• Writing book reviews
• Creating and reviewing submission materials
• Managing and updating databases
• Managing and organizing literary arts events

How to apply:
In order to be considered, all candidates must submit both a resume AND cover letter to: Nicole Shawan Junior, Executive Director Roots. Wounds. Words. NSJunior@rootswoundswords.org

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT: As a leading arts organization that champions BIPOC storytellers, we believe that including and representing diverse voices in all aspects of our business is fundamental to what we do. Roots. Wounds. Words. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, social-economic status, justice involvement, body type or size, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

PAID STUDENT RESEARCH FELLOW POSITION for SPRING 2022

PAID STUDENT RESEARCH FELLOW POSITION for SPRING 2022 

DESCRIPTION

Undergraduate student sought to join a collaborative, public-facing humanities initiative focused on an understudied Black woman writer, racial justice education, and literary recovery.

 

EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT

8-10 hours a week

COMPENSATION TBA, pending grant approval, expected in early January 2022

 

QUALIFICATIONS

The successful applicant will be intellectually curious, detail-oriented, self-motivated, committed to racial justice, interested in women’s literature and history, and an excellent writer, reader, and communicator. Because this is a long-term project with the possibility of extending the work beyond the Spring 2022 term, preference will be given to first-years and sophomores, although juniors and seniors will also be considered.

HOW TO APPLY

Submit a letter of interest and a resume to Dr. Jean Lutes at jean.lutes@villanova.edu by Jan. 5, 2022.

DETAILS

Dr. Jean Lutes (English department) is looking for a second student to join a team of scholars working on “The ’Steenth Street Project: Recovering Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Stories of Black Childhood.” This project aims to recover a lost short story collection written in the 1890s by Black author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. 

In deference to Dunbar-Nelson’s long career as an educator and advocate for racial justice, the project goal is to produce an open-access digital edition of the story collection, along with curriculum resources and to make our work scalable, relevant, and adaptable to multiple K-12 school systems. 

 

Dr. Lutes and her two collaborators – Dr. Brigitte Fielder (University of Wisconsin) and Ms. Denise Burgher (University of Delaware) – have prioritized collaborating with the Black-majority school district of Philadelphia to collectively produce a text and its accompanying resources, which will bring Dunbar Nelson’s work directly to the people who inspired and shaped the Annals of Steenth street, American children. 

The ’Steenth Street stories feature children in a poor urban neighborhood and the middle-class reformers who show up to help -- and who often misunderstand and misstep. The collection is based on Dunbar-Nelson’s work teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in the 1890s in New York City. 

 

The Student Research Fellow hired in Spring 2022 will help to document the publication history of the 12 stories in the collection (several were published both independently, both during Dunbar-Nelson’s lifetime and after), to compare story versions to establish a definitive text, to conduct original archival work for the introduction to the edition, and to identify historical documents to be published as appendices to draw the reader into the world of the author and the text.

Winning T-shirt Design!

 Congratulations to Carlos Antonio Alvarez for submitting the winning design for the new English department t-shirt contest! New swag, coming soon!

new English department t-shirt design

Alumni Profile: A Career in Consulting

Deb Pfisterer (‘00): A Career in Consulting

Interview Conducted By Jacqueline Ridberg Larabee, VU MA '23 student

Deb began, like most college students, not quite sure what path she would pursue after graduation. She started her time at Villanova by majoring in Accounting. While she felt that business was always in her future (she says half-jokingly “I know I was meant to be in business because even as a kid a three-ring binder from my Dad excited me”), she also says she was unexplainably miserable as an Accounting major. Deb then decided to follow her bliss and become an English major where she “became who [she] was.”

After graduating in 2000, her first job was for Boeing in military aircraft as a procedure writer. At Boeing, she was originally tasked with the mission to “get everyone into the 21st century”. By updating their systems from paper to digital files and asking the questions that others were afraid to ask, Deb created a consulting position for herself. She begins by saying that she didn’t know what consulting was at first, but she learned by doing.

Deb Pfisterer '00

Deb discovered the skills she developed as an English major were vital to her success in the world of business. As an interpreter, Deb spends a lot of time translating the quantitative (facts and data) into the qualitative (words), weighing the needs of the customer with the technically correct jargon. She recounts her first interview with Boeing, where she was concerned about her qualifications: “And that’s why the Boeing guy, when he interviewed me, I said, ‘Well why hire an English major?’ And he said, ‘You can read, write, and communicate, which is more than most people can do.’” Deb has found that to be enormously true. Much of her time is spent as a writer—writing emails, contracts, negotiations. But to write accurately and with the correct style, she finds that it all comes down to ruthlessly asking questions. 

Consulting, to Deb, “means asking questions, that others may not ask or are afraid to ask. I believe in the Socratic method, right, because that’s the way it was in the English Department.” At Boeing, her initial inability to understand the technical jargon served as an advantage because it allowed her to ask questions others didn’t. “When you don’t know anything, you don’t have anything to lose.”  This fearlessness in the corporate environment allowed her to demonstrate her expertise as a consultant, which she believes is in “reading, writing, and describing.”

But ultimately, Deb found that you need passion to consult, which she feels is one thing English majors bring to the table. “It’s not so much a passion to be a consultant; it’s a passion to want to help, to want to create, to want to write... that’s what it really means.”

Presently, she works for the firm Booz Allen and in her free time, when she isn’t spending time with her two cats Coco & Chanel, she mentors current Villanova students. Deb says that students have reached out to her primarily via LinkedIn and that she allows the students to take the lead. She emphasizes that she’s “always open to networking... I never say no.” The advice she gives to anyone graduating today (as someone who has no regrets herself) is: “Be okay with making as many mistakes as possible.” Deb believes they will make you the person you are supposed to be.

 

Bailey Quinn publishes "Sea Salt" in APIARY Magazine

Congrats to English major, Bailey Quinn, for publishing "Sea Salt" in APIARY Magazine. Bailey wrote this piece in Cathy Staples's Introduction to Creative Writing Course. Well done, Bailey!

Halloween Horror Writing

Drs. Quigley and Mullen headed to Good Counsel Hall with candy and other goodies in tow to host a productive, somewhat scary creative writing hangout. Here are some of the highlights--look forward to more creative writing hangouts ahead!

Students from the creativity on the page 

ACS course share their work with one another!

Hard at work writing with candy for fuel

More writing!

Lexi won some English department swag in the raffle!

Spring 2022 English courses on Race and Social Justice

 As you think about registration, consider taking a course in the English department on race and social justice this spring!