Editorial Projects
Shortly after graduating college and moving to Portland, Oregon, I had the amazing opportunity to intern with Microcosm Publishing and Distribution, an autism-owned, indie publishing house that "equips readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them".
​
While interning, I was able to gain experience within several departments, from publicity to marketing to editorial. Following are all of the projects I had the pleasure of being a part of the editorial team for and a short description of what I did for each.
As a collection of ten fictional short stories, this was the largest project I worked on during my internship. I even acted as the main editor for the first portion of the editorial process with light supervision from the head editor.
For each short story in the collection, I conducted the first round of developmental edits, followed by a review of the authors' responses and a second and final round of line editing. Throughout the process, I kept in contact with authors via email to discuss suggestions and answer questions.
Unfortunately, my internship ended before the layout, copyediting, and publishing stages of the project.
I received this manuscript as a handwritten, hardcopy sent to Microcosm from the prison where the author currently resides. Having written three zines for the publisher previously, Microcosm was happy to take on this author's new project.
​
My first step for this project was to simply transcribe the manuscript from hardcopy into digital, ignoring all needed edits. Once that was completed, I then moved on to the first round of developmental and light line edits, focusing mostly on structure and order since it was difficult for the author to edit the hard copy in that way.
​
While I wasn't able to communicate with the author due to the circumstances, this was still a very fulfilling edit since I was able to help make this project into a reality for the author.
When this manuscript first landed on my desk, it was in a standard zine format. Previously, the head editor and author had discussed making it into a workbook, which was what I was tasked with.
​
Focusing on structure, order of content, and redundancy, I began conducting developmental edits on the manuscript. I reworked the content into a workbook-friendly format and made notes about additional exercises for the author to think about including.
​
It was incredibly satisfying to watch this project change shape before my eyes.
A few years ago, the author of this book, Jo-Jo Sherrow, wrote a zine titled "Healing Your Magical Body: Crystal Quartz". With the big witch boom in publishing, Microcosm offered Sherrow a book deal to expand on what they covered in their zine.
I was tasked with helping Sherrow research this topic more deeply, to find roughly 35k extra words worth of content. I gave suggestions on what I thought they could expand on from their zine as well as entirely new information that they hadn't had a chance to cover.
​
As my first editorial task as an intern, this was a great introduction into the department.
