An Interview with Peter Mitham, editor of Amphora

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Peter Mitham’s writing has appeared in more than 80 publications worldwide. Based in Vancouver, Canada, he chronicles news and trends in real estate, agriculture and food for such publications as Wines and Vines, Good Fruit Grower and Business in Vancouver. His academic work includes a bibliography of author Robert W. Service (Oak Knoll, 2000). He has edited Amphora, the thrice-yearly journal of the Alcuin Society, since 2009.

EB: How did you get interested in book arts?

PM: I remember being sensitive to typefaces when I was a kid. I remember liking larger point sizes, but then gravitated towards the work of Grosset & Dunlap, which published the Hardy Boys books. In retrospect I would say I liked the layout, the way it made the adventure stories even more readable. I also collected stamps, and many of the designs Canada Post issued in the early 1970s reflected guidelines of designer Allan Fleming, who also produced the iconic logo of the Canadian National Railway Co. and assisted in designing the Hymnal jointly published by Canada’s Anglican and United churches in 1971. I recall Fleming’s work appealing to me at the time, and I would like to think it influenced my later interest in the book arts.

EB: What is the Alcuin Society and its journal Amphora?

PM: Based in Vancouver, Canada, the Alcuin Society formed in 1965 to bring together enthusiasts of the printed word – and the well-printed word at that – and support the likes of Wil Hudson, a small press printer who went on to work with the famous Inuit printmakers in Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. The society, a registered not-for-profit organization, now focuses on an annual Award for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. It also presents a medal for lifetime achievement or extraordinary contributions to the book arts in Canada, the Robert R. Reid Award. Its journal, Amphora, appears three times a year and serves the broader, original audience for the society – people engaged in everything from calligraphy and the book arts to book selling, collecting, and reading.

EB: What sort of people does the Alcuin Society attract? Can anyone join?

PM: Yes, anyone can join the society. The membership is international and made up largely of book collectors, librarians, and those engaged in small press ventures, design and the book arts generally. We joined forces with the Bibliographical Society of Canada on a national book collecting contest, and there’s some overlap in membership and interests with that group, too.

EB: Do you have some favorite books, design elements, or fonts?

PM: Content determines my favorite books, so I would be hard-pressed to pick just one! Gaspereau Press does nice work, though, often with letterpress jackets and an obi (paper strip) holding them in place. With respect to fonts, I favor serifs and use Baskerville on my business card. I’ve gravitated towards Bell in recent chapbooks I’ve prepared for family and friends.

EB: I find that many people are interested in the book arts and have very strong opinions, but the elements are not taught widely. How can people learn more?

PM: Read, practice; repeat. I was fortunate to participate in a workshop on book repair at the end of Grade 7 or 8 – though the memory is dim enough that perhaps I was simply encouraged to consider participating! At any rate, the fact that it was even an option stands out. My real exposure came in university, where as a Master’s student I took a course in bibliography intended to help us understand how books were put together and the manufacturing process that created the physical texts I was studying (and how errors might have crept in). This prompted me to attend sessions that introduced me to what contemporary book designers and publishers were doing. I would occasionally make chapbooks, and continue to listen to and observe what others were doing. A more formal approach would be to register for workshops community centers and local arts groups offer, and combine it with reading and becoming familiar with the work and opinions of those whose work you admire. Robert Bringhurst and Andrew Steeves, and the essays in Devil’s Artisan and Émigré have all played a role in my formation.

EB: Are there some books about books that you’d recommend?

PM: Andrew Steeves, Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography is a recent book that offers a good introduction to various aspects of contemporary book production; Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographical Style is a classic; Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue–Celebrating 25 Years in Graphic Design is a collection of the magazine’s best essays that will have its fans. Read, and then follow up on dropped names to see what else you can discover.

EB: Any thoughts on restoration versus conservation of old books?

PM: Conservation comes first, helping books to age gracefully. I hope everyone has some knowledge of the basic principles (I learned some as part of work towards a badge in the Scout movement). Restoration is important for books that have suffered abuse, neglect and other misfortunes. (I have some that could benefit from that kind of attention!) There are certain volumes we prize as individuals and a society that benefit from restoration efforts, helping us to prize them for what they are rather than what the ravages of time have made them.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

PM: You’re welcome – thanks for the opportunity.

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An Interview with Peter R. Field, founding publisher of the Timberline Review

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Peter R. Field was a story analyst for Miramax Films and New Line Cinema in New York, and is currently an MFA candidate in Dramatic Writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. He was Student Assistant Editor on The Louisville Review and served on the Willamette Writers Board of Directors for four years. He is the founding editor of The Timberline Review.

EB: Tell us a little about The Timberline Review.

PF: The Timberline Review started up at the end of 2014 with a first issue publication date of August 2015, what we thought might be the only issue. The idea was to give Willamette Writers members a gift in celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary. Once we realized the original concept would be much stronger by including submissions from all over the world, we expanded the guidelines. Thanks to the internet, and a modest online presence, the whole notion of the timberline seemed to spread enthusiastically. Issue #4 is now available!

Before you ask, let me explain a little about the timberline. Pam Wells, my founding co-editor, and I were brainstorming names and kept returning to what seemed to us to be powerful physical images of the Pacific Northwest. Rocks. Water. Trees. So much great writing includes that tangible, visceral connection to place. I thought of the timberline, that ecological edge on the mountain where the trees just stop growing. The Timberline Literary Review sounded like a good name. Pam instantly took to it, but she dropped the Literary.

I should also mention that, after the first issue, we made the decision to pay the writers! Yes, we pay our contributors a modest one-time use fee of $25. Incredible as it may sound, this in itself sets The Timberline Review apart from hundreds of journals that pay nothing. Let me also mention that the journal is funded by Willamette Writers (an Oregon non-profit in support of writers everywhere), and staffed entirely by volunteers.

EB: What sorts of writing are you interested in receiving?

PF: First and foremost, we’re not looking for writing, per se, about trees, despite what our name suggests. The Timberline Review publishes new works of short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and essays, from emerging writers and well-established writers, and everywhere in between. We’ve taken pieces from retired doctors, social workers, lawyers, several of whom have seen their work in print for the first time in The Timberline Review. We’ve received some great writing from playwrights, writing in fiction for the first time, and from writers exploring hybrid narrative forms. The mission statement says we seek strong, brave writing that speaks to the times we live in. I know that may sound abstract, but I want to emphasize a sense of urgency, and dialogue, in the literary culture between writers and readers. This goes to the heart of everything, really, the importance of art, and artists, and keeping the conversation going. You might say The Timberline Review enables a little part of that conversation.

EB: How did you and editor Pam Wells get involved with this venture?

PF: Way back in 2014, I was on the Willamette Writers board of directors, and during one board meeting we were engaged in a free-floating discussion about the 50th anniversary coming up (in 2015). Pam happened to be at that meeting, and when I suggested doing a literary journal, she responded enthusiastically. There was a lot of back and forth, hammering out details regarding design, printing, submissions, staffing. We talked to freelance writer and editor Eric Witchey. We talked to Karen Mann, Managing Editor of The Louisville Review. We sought advice from Portland writer Brian Doyle, also the editor of Portland Magazine. Brian gave us lists of other publications and resources he thought we could take inspiration from. And he gave us a powerful essay for our first issue, “The Manner of his Murder,” which received a special mention in the 2017 Pushcart Anthology.

Brian also wrote a foreword for that first issue, a distinctly Doylesque version of our mission statement, that starts with the declaration. “Well, you would have to be four kinds of silly to start a magazine these days. You would have to be some fascinating amalgam of brave and crazy.” It’s worth reading in its entirety, but this short excerpt captures the gist of what we’re about:

“…if we don’t catch and trade and foment and spark and share stories of substance and pop and verve and zest and pith and fury, we will be slathered by an endless insipid ocean of sales pitches and lies. And that would be a shame.” (used with permission of author)

EB: What’s featured in the current issue?

PF: Another feature of The Timberline Review is our use of cover art from local artists. Our first issue featured a gorgeous woodblock engraving by Kevin Clark, an artist in Roseburg. Issue #2 had a cover from an I-phone photograph of Haystack Rock, by Corvallis photographer Bill Laing. The third issue used a portrait by Portland artist Judy Biesanz, and the current issue, Winter/Spring 2017, features an image from another Portland visual artist, John Fisher, that strikes me as oddly fitting to our purpose. The title of the piece, “Ascension,” says it all.

So what’s inside the cover? New poetry from several local poets, Kim Stafford, Brittney Corrigan, Devon Balwit, a lovely poem from Julie Price, a poet who lives in Illinois (and whose work was recognized in 2016 as the winner of The Rattle poetry prize). A terrific story from Jaime Balboa, a Los Angeles writer, inspired by a tragic news story, but told almost as a modern day fairy tale. That piece is called “Raziel’s Last Enchantment.” This is a story that must be told, but it’s not a light piece. Another piece that seems to take issue with the conventions of narrative form is Suzanne Cody’s “Island (I),” both inviting and startling.

Mike Francis, a writer from the Oregonian, gave us a first-person stream-of-consciousness account of his experience as an embedded journalist in Iraq. Natasha Tynes, from Rockville, Maryland, shares a fictional perspective of a would-be Jordanian emigrant in “Uniform.” Even though we don’t request specifically themed material, themes do seem to emerge that complement and counterpoint and more or less peacefully co-exist with each other. “Halab”, by Tala Abu Rahmeh, and Chris Ellery’s “Sparkler”, give us two distinct views of Aleppo.

EB: What’s been the most surprising thing about launching The Timberline Review?

PF: Maybe more of a discovery, than a surprise, but what I love about the journal is the eclectic nature of the whole process. It’s a process of assembling parts into a collage, in this case, literary works of different forms, with this amazing variety of voices and ideas. Sometimes the term aggregation is used to describe a collection like this, but I prefer to think of it as an assemblage, which hopefully stands on its own as a distinctive form.

It’s definitely been a surprise at how well the journal has been received, and how, as a new tangible artifact of contemporary culture, we’ve emerged from the “endless insipid ocean” to stake this claim on the literary landscape.

strong>EB: What other writing projects are you involved in besides The Timberline Review?

PF: I’m at the end of a low-residency MFA program, through Spalding University, in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve written a screenplay that I’m shopping in Hollywood. And I’ve got a nonfiction book proposal I’m working on in the middle of the night. Pam has decided to move on from her role as editor. She’s deeply involved with the graduate program in book publishing at Portland State University.

Issue #5, the Summer/Fall 2017 issue, which is now open for submissions through April 30th, will go on with new editorial staff.
Stevan Allred, a Portland writer known for his book A Simplified Map of the Real World, published by Forest Avenue Press in 2013, joins us as fiction editor. C. Wade Bentley, a poet and teacher who lives in Salt Lake City, returns for his second stint as poetry editor.

I mentioned Brian Doyle’s role in the genesis of The Timberline Review, and we’ve also included him on our advisory board, along with Per Henningsgaard, director of the PSU Book Publishing program.

EB: How can readers get a copy of The Timberline Review?

PF: The Timberline Review is available through the website(timberlinereview.com), for single issue purchase, or by subscription. A number of local bookstores carry us — Powell’s, Annie Bloom’s, Broadway Books. The Southern Oregon Chapter of Willamette Writers usually has copies for sale at their meetings ). We get around to various events, Wordstock, Poets & Writers, AWP. We’re in a few local libraries in Portland and Corvallis. Bloomsbury Books might have a few copies on the shelf by the time you read this.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

PF: Ed, this has been a delight to talk with you about The Timberline Review, and I want to encourage every writer and reader out there to find a way to participate in our cultural discussion, a conversation that must never end.

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The Legacy of the Grimm Brothers: Origins and Transformations–a guest post by Amalie Dieter

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Amalie Dieter is a senior at Southern Oregon University working towards a BA in English & Writing and a BS in Environmental Science & Policy.

The Grimm brothers are the most associated with the fairy tale genre compared to any other author or fairy tale collector and their work has been translated into 150 languages and is known throughout the world (Zipes xi). Despite this wide recognition and fame, how many people really know the original origins and purpose of the tales collected by the Grimm brothers? And how did these tales transform from their original state in 1812 to the many adaptations we see today? Numerous authors and scholars have written and researched the history of the Grimms and their tales and have found that their transformation is in large part due to the readers themselves.

The first edition published the Grimm brothers was fairly small compared to the eventual 210 tale edition: “Today the Grimms’ tales fill two fairly thick volumes, but in 1812, after five years of collecting, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had only found enough tales for one small book” (Bottigheimer 27). The Grimm brothers did not originally collect these tales for children to read: “When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first developed the plan to compile German folktales, they wanted to capture the “pure” voice of the German people and to preserve in print the oracular poetry of the common people” (Tatar 341). The original intent of the Grimm brothers was a scholarly project to preserve the oral traditions and cultural viewpoints of the German people, but after the first printing of the collection everything changed.

The readers’ response to the first edition of the collection was not what the Grimm brothers had been hoping for:

To a great extent the Grimms’ scholarly ambitions and patriotic zeal guided the production of the first edition of the Nursery and Household Tales. But once the collection was in print, reviewers weighed in with critiques that took the brothers back to the drawing board to revise, rescript, and redact. One critic denounced the collection as tainted by French and Italian influences. Another lamented the vast amounts of “pathetic” and “tasteless” material and urged parents to keep the volume out of the hands of children. (Tatar 343)

In the following editions of the Nursery and Household Tales the Grimm Brothers made many changes. They fleshed out the texts they had collected, often doubling their length and they polished the language used. The biggest change of all however, was the intended audience of their collection of tales, from scholars to children (Tatar 343). In order to make their collection suitable for children the Grimm Brothers made many additions and redactions to their collection: “The Grimms were intent on eliminating all residues of risqué humor in the tales they recorded, yet they had no reservations about preserving, and in some cases intensifying, the violence” (Tatar 344). Many of the tales the Grimm brothers had collected originally contained innuendo and sexual content that was considered to be inappropriate for children. The Grimm brothers also added religious references to the text and instructive motives to the tales in order to make them a sort of teaching device for children (Tatar 49). The violence of the tales only intensified over the editions, but during this time period violence was everywhere.

The Grimms would have been exposed to much of the political turmoil of the eighteenth-century: “The French Revolution of 1789, which was followed by grisly reports of the execution of Thermion, affected Wilhelm’s young imagination. His earliest watercolor drawing depicts a bloody scene from Louis XVI’s execution, as his head is held aloft before the gathered mob” (Bottigheimer 3). Other events and changes in Europe during this time were the Napoleonic Wars, the Romantic movement, Kantian philosophy, the age of Metternich, the July revolution in France, he struggles for constitutional government in the German states, the revolution of 1848, and the rise to power of Bismarck (Peppar xii). These events and changes in Europe influenced the additions and reactions to the Grimm brothers’ collection.

Some examples of changes the Grimm brothers made to their collection are found in the tales of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. The Grimm Brothers made the tale of Cinderella more violent than the one written by Charles Perrault: “The Grimms delighted in describing the blood in the shoes of the step sisters who try to slice off their heels and toes in order to get a perfect fit. The German version also gives us a far less compassionate Cinderella, one who does not forgive her stepsisters but invites them to her wedding where doves peck out their eyes” (Tatar 30). Some of the transformations the Grimms made were to serve as harsh lessons for children (Zipes 14). The Grimms revised the Red Riding Hood tale so that the Huntsman rescues Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, while in the original the young girl rescues herself by distracting the wolf with a strip tease (Tatar 18). The Grimms erased all of the inappropriate erotic content and added in behavioral imperatives such as: “When you’re out in the woods, look straight ahead of you like a good little girl and don’t stray from the path” (Tatar 19). Many scholars have pointed out that some of the rewriting and edits the Grimms did made the women in the stories less independent, giving us the role of damsel in distress. The Grimm brothers also took out any “scandal” of their version of Rapunzel: “In the first version of the Grimms’ Nursery and Household Tales, Rapunzel asks the enchantress why her clothes are getting so tight and don’t fit any longer” (Tatar 113). This was taken out and replaced with a less harmful line. The Grimm brothers also made Rapunzel a “wife” to the prince so as to not suggest that Rapunzel’s twins were born out of wedlock (Tatar 113). Other edits were made in general to many of the tales, for example many of the original evil women in the tales were mothers, but the Grimms changed them to step mothers.

A lot has been written about where the Grimm brothers got their tales: “Few readers know that more than half of the 210 fairy tales included in the Grimm anthologies had a woman’s hand in them, whether they were recorded from her storytelling or recorded by her as she listened to another storyteller” (Paradiz xi). Many of the people who provided the Grimm brothers with tales were girls and young women who were in the brother’s social circle:

Wilhelm’s informants were as young as 14-year-old Dortchen Wild, one of six daughters of the town apothecary Rudolf Wild who lived across the street from the Grimm family. Dortchen’s older sister Gretchen, another tale contributor, was 20. The two girls and their mother told Wilhelm several folk tales and many fairy tales, some of which – like “The Frog Prince,” “Frau Holle,” The Six Swans,” and “Many Furs” – later became well known in the English-speaking world. (Bottigheimer 28)

The three Hassenpflug girls (Marie, Jeannette, and Amalie) were also principal sources for the Grimm brothers. The three girls provided the brothers with many tales including, The Seven Ravens, Red Riding Hood, The Girl Without Hands, The Robber Bridegroom, Sleeping Beauty, King Thrush beard, Snow White, and The Carnation (Bottigheimer 29).

The changes that the Grimm brothers made to their collection of tales has influenced two centuries worth of generations and continues to shape our world today: “In this century, Walt Disney’s film versions of fairy tales, beginning with Snow White in 1937, helped add to familiarity with the stories. In recent years, widespread enthusiasm for every sort of fantasy, from science fiction to horror movies, has included a strong up swing of interest in fairy tale” (McGlat vii). There are many Disney adaptations of fairy tales and the tales collected by the Grimm brothers: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled are just a few examples. These adaptations of course do not resemble even the edited editions of the Nursery and Household Tales, not to even mention the originals. Most women and girls in these adaptations are either damsels in distress or villains, gone are the women who save themselves with their imagination, bravery, and quick thinking (Zipes 74). There is also very few traces of violence and sexual content left in any of the tales we see today, however many still cling to the idea of role models of behavior, instruction, and morality (Zipes 152).

It is unclear whether or not children stories will return to their original form, seen in the eighteenth century, but recently there has been an increase of films and television series based on fairy tales that are of a much darker nature than the Disney film adaptations. One popular television series is Once Upon a Time, which contains material from many tales and myths including: Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. In this show many women are damsels in distress or villains, but there are also many more who are strong women who save the day. Red Riding Hood in this enchanted world is actually the wolf herself and her grandmother is one tough old lady who comes to the rescue of many of the characters (Once Upon A Time). Another current TV series is Grimm, which is a spin on the Grimm brothers themselves. This show is set in current society and is a cop drama with a fantastical twist. In this show a Grimm is someone who collects tales and information about magical creatures and then uses that information to hunt them down (Grimm). The Grimm TV series includes many of the details of the tales collected by the Grimm brothers and reflects more of the original versions, especially the violence the Grimm brothers were known for describing in their tales.

Walt Disney Pictures is even embracing the return to the darker versions of fairy tales with the musical fantasy film, Into The Woods, which was produced in 2014. In the introduction of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales you find this description of fairy tales:

Fairy tales are up close and personal, telling us about the quest for romance and riches, for power and privilege, and, most important, for a way out of the woods back to the safety and security of home. Bringing myths down to earth and inflecting them in human rather than heroic terms, fairy tales put a familiar spin on the stories in the archive of our collective imagination. (Tatar xii)

The film Into The Woods embraces this description of the classic fairy tales literally and figuratively. Much of the material used in this film comes from the original versions of the Grimm tales. Red Riding Hood in this film is a clever girl who tricks the baker and his wife out of many of their goods, however she does end up needing rescuing. The wolf is represented by a deviant man like the original version and includes instructions like “do not wander from the path and beware of strangers” (Into The Woods). After the encounter with the wolf Red Riding Hood becomes more independent, a girl who wears a cape made of wolf skin and carries a knife to protect herself with (Into the Woods).

The tale of Rapunzel in this film is a mixture of the old and new versions, it does contain the sexual content that the original version did, but it contains many of the other details. Some of these include: the enchantress getting Rapunzel because her parents stole from the enchantress’ garden, the enchantress locking Rapunzel in a tower, thorns blinding the prince, Rapunzel being banished to a swamp, Rapunzel’s tears healing the prince (Into The Woods). The tale of Cinderella in this film adaptation contains the violence of the original Grimm version, where the stepsisters have their toes and heels sliced off to fit into the slipper and Cinderella’s birds blind the stepsister for their cruelty (Into The Woods). Also, from the original Grimm tales the theme of wish fulfillment, of wanting riches, children, and a different life are included in this film.

What would literature, culture, and society be like today if the readers of the 18th century had not called for the Grimm brothers to edit their collection or if the Grimm brothers refused to do so? The Grimm collection of tales have changed many times over for the past two centuries, but that is the nature of fairy tales: “Fairy tales are never fixed and always changing from one region to another, from one teller to another, they still preserve a stable core” (Haase 31). Even though the fairy tales we know today may not reflect the original Grimm collection, their legacy lives on through the adaptations and the inspiration they passed on to other authors, scholars, and collectors.

Works Cited

    Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany: Excelsior Editions, 2009. Print.

    Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Grimms’ Bad Girls & Bold Boys: The Moral & Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Print.

    Ellis, John M. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago, University of Chicago, 1983. Print.

    Grimm. By Stephen Carpenter, David Greenwalt, and Jim Kouf. NBC Universal Television, 2011. DVD.

    Haase, Donald. The Reception of Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1993. Print.

    Into The Woods. Dir. Rob Marshall. By James Lapine. Walt Disney Pictures, 2014. DVD.

    McGlat, James M. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1991. Print.

    Once Upon A Time. By Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. ABC Studios, 2011. Digital. Netflix. Web.

    Paradiz, Valerie. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic, 2005. Print.

    Peppar, Murr B. Paths Through the Forest: A Biography of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Print.

    Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.

    Zipes, Jack. Grimm Legacies: The Magic Spell of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Print.

    Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to Modern World. New York: Palrave, 2002.

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An Interview with Allie Sipe

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Allie Sipe is senior in the SOU Honors college. An English major, writer, coffee aficionado. She was the first student ever from outside the University of New Mexico to join its honors journal Scribendi.

EB: Tell us a little bit about your internship at Scribendi.

AS: I attended the University of New Mexico last term semester (Fall 2016) to work as a staff member for the honors literary arts magazine Scribendi.

EB: What sort of things did you do?

AS: During class time and in projects outside of class, I worked on a little bit of everything: staff teambuilding, typography and design practices, fundraising and community outreach, critical assessment of creative works, and copy editing. I’ve designed a flyer calling for submissions to the magazine, created a modern book cover for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and read through hundreds of creative works to narrow down what belongs in the magazine. I’ve also gone to Santa Fe to ask local businesses to consider donating items to our magazine’s silent auction and spent hours making sugar skulls to sell as a fundraiser at the Marigold Parade. Some of my favorite time is spent in the office with the other staff members, working on design or copyediting assignments for class and sharing ideas and laughs.

EB: What did you learn?

AS: What’s become most clear to me is that the production of a magazine takes a whole range of skills, ideas, and hard work. Each staff member contributes their unique perspective to what should be in the magazine and how it should look. Every single person is essential – there’s an enormous amount of work and collaboration involved in the production of a magazine. Even when we have different opinions from one another (especially during the debates about which pieces belong in the magazine and which do not), I have learned the value of listening to each individual and respecting their opinions. Scribendi is one of the most tangible examples I’ve ever seen of a diverse range of thoughts and ideas coalescing into one successful creative effort.

EB: How did the work complement or expand on your academic studies?

AS: Almost everything I’ve been doing with Scribendi has complemented my academic studies in English in some way, which is incredibly rewarding. Specifically, I’ve learned tons about critically evaluating literary works. Reading through so much creative nonfiction and articulating to others what is effective has given me the confidence to pursue my own writing. This couldn’t be better timing right before I graduate from Southern Oregon University and hope to pursue graduate school.

EB: What was the most interesting aspect of the internship? Any surprises or revelations?

AS: I honestly didn’t expect to find such a welcoming, accepting community through Scribendi. Coming in, I didn’t know if it would be possible to find a close sense of community at UNM, a school with about 30,000 undergraduates. I’m excited to know that a healthy, inclusive community is achievable in many, if not all, environments and places.

EB: How did you like Albuquerque?

AS: I think Albuquerque itself is one of those places where, if you’re from there, it’s a family member: only you can insult it and no one else can because, deep down, you love it. That being said, I’m not from here, so I think I should keep my mouth shut. I do love the people I’ve met in Albuquerque, and New Mexico is a beautiful state. The green chile is also excellent.

EB: Any advice for other students thinking about internships?

AS: If you’re even considering an internship or study abroad opportunity, find a way to make it happen. Meeting new people and collecting different experiences is invaluable, and it just gets more difficult to take these kinds of opportunities the older you get. Apply, commit, and tell everyone your plan so you can’t back out. I almost talked myself out of this, but I am so glad I didn’t. I’ve made friends and professional connections that will change the course of my life.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. Congratulations on a successful internship.

AS: Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience!

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