The Benefits of Interning at Literary Journals

I have worked at two literary journals: The Indianola Review and Limestone Journal at the University of Kentucky. This doesn’t make me the ultimate authority on literary journals, but I’d say that I can offer some knowledge regarding these kinds of internships.

Interning at a literary journal means reading. Lots of reading. The work is unpaid, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial. All of that reading means exposure to different stories and techniques. For creative writers, this is sometimes a source of inspiration, but most importantly you quickly learn what makes a story publishable. As a reader for Indianola, for example, I read every one of the hundreds of short stories we received and had to quickly and efficiently determine acceptance or rejection of the story. This decision was made through thorough discussion with my team, and from those discussions I came to understand what works and does not work in fiction.

However, I would argue that these internships are not only beneficial for creative writers. I’m not much of a creative writer myself, but in my pursuit of an editing career I still found these internships relevant because of a key factor: personality. Every publication has a certain personality that leads to formatting and style choices. Limestone is a smaller journal that seeks concrete, refreshing content, and sometimes chooses a story even if it is not entirely quality writing. Indianola had a much darker personality that preferred ambiguous stories with no room for writing errors. The search in stories for these traits mimics the guidelines, manuals, and style sheets I follow in my current work — which is just proofreading, but I think it’s a good start for copyediting. Without these internships at Limestone and Indianola, I would have no credentials or practice for the efficient reading pace and attention to detail that is required for the work I do now.

Internships, especially at literary journals, may seem fruitless to most students, but I encourage people to consider working at a journal if they’re interested in a profession in writing.