Meet the Emmas: Two Interns, Two Febs, Two English Majors. 

Emma Crockford: Hi, Emma! 

Emma Tzotschew: Hi, Emma. Fancy seeing you here, in person, in the New England Review office. Don’t you love the windows in here?

Emma Crockford: I’m also a huge fan of the seating. I love our window seat and our butterfly chair. Where are you from? 

Emma Tzotschew: Well, Emma, I’m from down south, from the land of the pines. North Carolina to be exact. What about you?

Emma Crockford: I’m from the south shore of Massachusetts.  

Emma Tzotschew: What brought you to the New England Review?

Emma Crockford: I joined the student submission group over Zoom a while back and I’ve been volunteering as a fiction reader for a little while now. I really wanted to learn more about how the New England Review and magazines like it operate, and the internship felt like the right way to do that. What about you? 

Emma Tzotschew: I think I became aware of NER during my Febmester while I was trying to discover organizations on campus. Last fall, I joined one of the Zoom submission groups and stuck with it through the spring and summer. I’ve wanted to learn more about academic and literary journal publishing, so I was pretty excited about the in-person internship this fall. What else do you do on campus? 

Emma Crockford: I’m a producer for the Middlebury MothUp, which is a student org that puts on live storytelling events on campus. I’m also a member of the sketch comedy club Middlebury Discount Comedy. 

Emma Tzotschew: I have a radio show about horse rhetoric in music, art, and literature and sometimes I even show up to MiddRuns. Right now, I serve as Editor-in-Chief at the Local Noodle, Middlebury’s only news source. We’re going to print this week if the printing press ever responds to my multiple e-mails. Now, speaking of the printed word, what’s your favorite NER story?

Emma Crockford: I heard an NER Out Loud episode where a Midd student read Jerald Walker’s essay “Breathe” and immediately bought a copy of his book of essays, so maybe that one. What’s yours? 

Emma Tzotschew: I keep returning to Lisa Taddeo’s “Forty-Two,” which I actually wrote a paper on for one of my English classes. In the nonfiction realm, I really enjoyed Ryan Dennis’s essay “Naming Fields: The Loss of Narrative in Farming.” It reads as a responsible portrait of the intimate relationship between labor, land, and purpose. What are you reading right now?

Emma Crockford: I just started Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and I just finished Octavia Butler’s Blood Child and Other Stories. What about you? 

Emma Tzotschew: This semester, I’ve read a ton of geographic theory. While I haven’t had time to read much for pleasure, I’m working my way through Aria Aber’s poetry collection, Hard Damage. What’s your favorite thing about working at NER? 

Emma Crockford: I absolutely love reading submissions. I recently had a story that I found, Sam Wachman’s “The Right Way to Drown,” picked for publication and that was really exciting. I got to interview him. I also love when Oscar the dog comes to work. I’m going to miss the clicking of his little dog nails on the wood floor. What about you? 

Emma Tzotschew: The office has such a wonderful selection of black tea. And I, of course, enjoy laughing with Carolyn and Eli. 

Emma Crockford: I almost forgot about the emergency dark chocolate! That’s a big perk. 

Emma Tzotschew: It nearly makes up for the lack of a 401k! 

Emma Crockford: You have a really cool joint major. How did you end up combining the English major and geography?

Emma Tzotschew: Well, I came to Middebury under the impression that I’d be a French major. When I realized that I’d rather discuss books in English, I did some shopping around in other departments and experimented with economics, math, Arabic, anthropology, computer science, and art history. Ultimately, English and creative writing won out, though I wanted some quantitative skills, which brought me to geography. It’ll definitely spice up my joint thesis. Now, Emma, you’re an English major, too. Was that always the plan?

Emma Crockford: I took a class on the gothic novel my second semester and loved it. That was probably still my favorite class that I’ve taken here. Do you have a favorite Middlebury class? 

Emma Tzotschew: What a hard question. I really appreciated my art history class last semester, which was concentrated around the medieval Bayeux Tapestry. It definitely took me out of my comfort zone, and it was about an entirely different monument than I thought it was, but it was fun, funny, and rewarding. 

Emma Crockford: All right, Emma, I know leaving NER is gonna be sad, but what are you most looking forward to next semester? 

Emma Tzotschew: Hmm, a fresh semester. It’s been a long one. This internship has given me some skills and insight in how to run my own publication a bit better. Oh, and I am looking forward to enjoying lunch with friends on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

Emma Crockford: I’m excited for my classes—I’m taking one on folk fairy tales. Also, I love spring here, so I’m looking forward to that. 

Emma Tzotschew: That folktale class sounds really interesting! Keep me posted on it. Emma, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today. Ciao!

Emma Crockford: Bye, Emma!