Cellar Door

In the fall of 2019, I became an art staff member for the literary magazine, Cellar Door. Some of my primary responsibilities included distributing both physical and digital calls for submissions, filtering through artists’ submissions, and working alongside other staff members to choose which artist to feature in our bi-annual issue of Cellar Door. Working for Cellar Door sparked my initial interest in publishing, which led me to pursue coursework and projects that would allow me to learn more and dip my toes further into the world of publishing.

Writers as Publishers

A year later, I took a course titled “Writers as Publishers” as part of my concentration coursework in Writing, Editing and Digital Publishing. This course involved an intensive project where we partnered with a peer to edit, design, and produced a chapbook of their writing. 

For this project, I worked with poet Eli Hardwig to create a chapbook of his poems titled HEARTHEARTHEART: A Collection of Brackish Poetry. Some of the major processes involved in the making of his chapbook were the following: 

• Developmental Query

• Copyediting Query

• Cover Design 

• Interior Design

• Printing

• Assembling and Binding Physical Copies

• Developing Ebook in ePub and Mobi files using HTML and CSS

Getting to a final manuscript required revisiting older drafts, sending edits back and forth with Eli, tweaking design/formatting, and communicating daily throughout the project. It was more than worth it: having the final, physical copy in our hands was one of the most rewarding academic experiences for me to date.

Zines

The knowledge and experience I gained in my coursework led me to experiment with creating zines to distribute art and short form writing. I feel drawn to zines because their experimental form feels particularly apt for multidisciplinary practices like many of my own projects, which combine writing and visual media.

Copyediting Experience

Between my coursework in publishing and professional writing, as well as my position as a copyeditor for the student-led, digital publication Limeaid, I have considerable experience copyediting a variety of written forms including essays, poetry, creative nonfiction, and journalistic articles. I have experience building and following style sheets, primarily utilizing the Chicago Manual of Style.

The following example is an exercise from one of my publishing courses where I built a style guide and copyedited the following letter. The following style guide addresses elements relevant to most style guides including larger guidelines like which manual and dictionary is being used, as well as fundamental items like punctuation, numbering, heading format, and typeface. This letter contained numerous references to various companies, organizations, and professional titles, which is something thoroughly addressed in the style guide to ensure consistent use of spelling, capitalization, abbreviations, and acronyms.