New England Review

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Elisse Ota

Elisse Ota ’11 talks to NER intern Bel Spelman ’23 about the influence learning Japanese has on her writing and storytelling.

Bel Spelman: Where are you now, geographically and professionally? 

Elisse Ota: My husband and I have been waiting for the past year and a half to move to Japan, but, unfortunately, due to the pandemic and the closure of Japan’s borders, we’ve been held in limbo. Currently, I am living in California and am at work on a collection of short stories that I hope to finish this year.  

BS: What was one skill you developed as an undergraduate—either in school or through internships—that most benefits you today in your professional work?

EO: One of the greatest gifts I received at Middlebury was learning a new language, specifically Japanese. When you’re learning a new language you wade clumsily towards meaning and you don’t always get there via words alone. You find that you need other things to help you—body language, facial expression, intonation—and, as you gather up every clue you can find to understand what is being said, you realize that communication is not merely a matter of grammar and words, and that what is said reveals as much as it conceals. Often, what’s unsaid is the most important thing, especially in a high-context culture like Japan’s in which politeness dictates certain verbal acknowledgements that conceal one’s true feelings to preserve group harmony. As a learner of Japanese, I both learned how to speak Japanese and how to pay close attention to things other than language to understand what a person truly thought and felt. This ability to both use language and to read the subtext of a conversation has helped me tremendously as a fiction writer. People are complex. They don’t often say what’s truly important to them, and this is the reason I love storytelling. It is a way to show the truth when it’s too difficult, or painful, or coarse, or simplistic to tell it directly.     

BS: Do you have any book recommendations?  

EO: I recently finished Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, which I thought was fantastic!  It’s a beautifully rendered portrait of a small farming community in Kentucky, and I appreciated Berry’s elegant and heart-wrenching exploration of what it means to hope while shedding expectations. I also love William Trevor’s work, especially his short story collection After Rain, and Mary Yukari Waters’s collection The Laws of Evening is one I go back to again and again. Tessa Hadley’s book, Bad Dreams and Other Stories, is also a gem!

BS: Is there a past project that you’re particularly fond of?

EO: Out of all the stories I’ve written, “Girl From the Moon,” which was published in Narrative, is one of my favorites.  I am also looking forward to the publication of another story called “The Paper Artist,” that will come out as a Ploughshares Solo this fall.  

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Camille Kellogg

Camille Kellogg ’17 talks to NER intern Bel Spelman ’23 about editing manuscripts, books as mirrors, and reading widely.

Bel Spelman: What do you remember from your NER internship?

Camille Kellogg: I remember my time at NER vividly. I was so excited to intern there. At the time, I was writing my thesis, so I would leave the library and tramp through the snow over to the NER office, which is this lovely, cozy building full of books. It was a very warm place, in every sense of the word. Everyone who worked there was so kind and friendly and put me at ease right away.

At NER, I got to sort query letters, format website posts, choose art for the website, proofread pieces, and read submissions then discuss them with the team. One of my favorite tasks was editing audio recordings of authors reading at Bread Loaf: I got to listen to incredible readings from Garth Greenwell, Natasha Tretheway, Peter Ho Davies, and more.

Interning at NER convinced me that I wanted to work in publishing. I looked at the NER team and saw a life I wanted to lead. It’s a lot of work and it’s not all reading and editing (there’s plenty of paperwork!) but the work was inspiring and exciting. When I got the issue of the magazine we’d worked on and held it in my hands it made me very sure that this was the kind of future I wanted.

BS: What were some of the steps that brought you to Bloomsbury Publishing?

CK: Once I graduated from Middlebury, I attended the Columbia Publishing Course to get an overview of the publishing industry. When the course ended, I crossed my fingers and moved to New York without a job. I actually had a broken arm at the time from a rugby injury, so I only brought one suitcase with me! I applied to as many editorial assistant jobs as I could find and got hired at HarperCollins Children’s Books. A few years later I moved over to Macmillan, but I was only there for about a year before my entire imprint was shut down during the pandemic. They say if you work in publishing long enough, you’ll eventually get laid off, so I’m hoping that was my one time! While I was unemployed, I spent my time working on a book of my own, which is being published by Penguin Random House next year. After four months, I was hired at Bloomsbury Children’s Books. I’m now an editor here, working with the wonderful Bloomsbury team and acquiring books from truly incredible authors.

BS: How does your work challenge you?

CK: Editing a manuscript is always challenging, no matter how many times you do it, because every book needs something slightly different. The first time you read a manuscript through, you know there are parts that you love and parts that feel off. Then you have to sit down and figure out why things feel off. Is it the pacing, the character development, the plot? Once you can identify the problem, then you can work with the author to come up with a solution.

The biggest challenge in publishing, though, is always time management. There’s so much to do! There’s always paperwork to fill out, emails to send, and submissions to read. The job is never really “done.” I always wish I had more time, especially for reading.

BS: Bloomsbury has a focus on publishing children’s and young adult stories. What do you enjoy about working with these stories?

CK: I decided to go into children’s books because, as a queer person, I didn’t see myself in books growing up. It’s so important for kids to see themselves in the stories they read—it helps them develop confidence and feel like they can be the hero of their own story. I wanted to help make sure every kid gets that experience. Being a kid or teen can also be really scary and overwhelming, so I tend to be drawn towards books that don’t shy away from the darkness of childhood but instead show readers how to find light when things get dark.

Kids and young adult books are also fun. One of the goals of every book I publish is to teach young people to love reading, to publish stories that they don’t want to put down. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you’re editing chapter books about dragons or YA novels about K-pop stars. There’s always a note of fun in the work I do.

BS: Any advice for college students looking to enter the publishing industry?

Camille Kellog (right) and a fellow intern in the NER office.

CK: The best advice I can give to anyone who wants to work in publishing is READ. Read a ton of books in the genre you want to work in and read RECENT books. When you go to an interview, you want to be able to talk about books published in the last two to three years, not just the books that you read in your English classes. Read a really wide range of books, too: commercial books, literary books, bestsellers, flops, everything. When you finish a book, think about what worked in the book, what didn’t, and what you would suggest changing if you were the editor. Doing this helps you get to know the current publishing market and also develop your editorial skills.

BS: Do you have a long-term goal for your editorial career?

CK: My long-term career goal is to publish a lot of wonderful books, do my absolute best for my authors, and help to put more stories out into the world for people who might not have seen themselves in stories before. That’s also the same goal I have for my career as an author: my debut novel, which is a queer adult romcom, comes out in 2023 and is for queer people who feel lost or uncertain about how to navigate the world. It’s the book that I desperately needed when I was younger to tell me that things were going to be okay.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Brita Fisher

Brita Fisher ’15 talks with NER intern Hannah Frankel ’22 about social justice organizing, teaching, and following your interests.

Hannah Frankel: What did you study at Middlebury and where do you live now?

Brita Fisher: I majored in Literary Studies and minored in French. I’m currently living in Calais, Vermont.

HF: Tell us a bit about what you did after you graduated and how you decided what to do.

BF: Right after college I taught English in France for a year, and then taught high school French and a literature elective in English at a private school in southern Vermont for two years. Throughout my time teaching, the curricula I was writing focused on both literature and issues of social justice. For example, we studied immigration, racism in France and the US, decolonization movements and how they intersected with the Civil Rights movement in the US, as well as mass incarceration and the Movement for Black Lives.

During that time I got involved with community organizing through the Root Social Justice Center in Brattleboro, the Vermont Workers’ Center, and Resource Generation. The Root focuses on local racial justice organizing, the Vermont Workers’ Center is an economic justice organization with a campaign for health care as a human right, and Resource Generation organizes young people with access to wealth and/or class privilege for the equitable redistribution of resources to social movements.

After two years teaching in southern Vermont, I thought that I wanted to do something more aligned with organizing for work, so I got a job through AmeriCorps at Vermont Legal Aid in Burlington doing community legal education and community outreach. In the end, I found that working at a nonprofit felt very different than the organizing I felt more passionate about. When my contract ended after a year, I got a job baking to prioritize mental and emotional space for the unpaid community organizing work I had continued to do. I baked for a year and a half before getting a job delivering packages for FedEx. This fall I started a two-year program through Goddard College where I’ll get an MA in teaching and a license to teach English in high school. The program is self-designed so I’ve gotten to center an intersectional social justice lens.

Brita during her time as a literature student at Middlebury College.

HF: How has your professional life changed between then and now?

BF: My professional life has gone through a lot of changes since I graduated. I suppose where I am now—in school for teaching, working part time in food service, and deeply involved in the Vermont Workers’ Center and Resource Generation’s Vermont chapter—represents a blend of where I’ve been since graduating. The biggest changes have been orienting my life around community organizing and then making the decision to go back to teaching in a school. I really value what I’ve learned and accomplished in different organizing contexts, especially in developing and facilitating political education workshops as part of campaigns, and I am excited to add teaching back into my life.

HF: What’s one thing you remember about your time as an intern with NER?

BF: I remember the feeling of being in the cozy and welcoming office and the awe I felt at getting to be involved, in any small way, in the work NER was doing. For Literary Studies we were reading almost exclusively books published before the 1930s, so participating in the active publishing of new material, and seeing how that happens, felt exciting and inspiring to me. The generous way that Marcy and Carolyn brought me into the different processes feels central to my time at NER.

HF: What would you say you learned as an undergrad that really benefits you today, either personally or professionally?

BF: I would say what I learned about my own analysis and writing process—how I like to approach it and what works for me.

HF: What advice do you have for current students that have similar interests and goals as you had when you were a student?

BF: The most concrete advice that comes to mind is to not wait until senior spring to take an intro level class you’ve been wanting to take. I write poetry for myself and waited until senior spring to try to take an intro level creative writing class. I wasn’t able to get into it because I was a senior and wasn’t able to take any of the upper level classes because I had no prerequisites. I’d known for a while that it was something I wanted to do, so I wish I had prioritized taking that class earlier.

HF: What are your favorite ‘guilty pleasure’ reads and what have you read lately that you enjoyed?

BF: I came across the books Daughter of the Forest and Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier when I was in eighth or ninth grade. Something about the way she writes about trauma, healing, and the power of myth and storytelling in a fantasy context really moved me then, and I read them multiple times. I periodically return to them when in need of a comfort read. As for what I’ve enjoyed recently, last week I read Passing by Nella Larsen, which is a short and intensely powerful novel about race, racism, and power.

HF: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my questions! I hope school goes well and wish you happiness and fulfillment in the future.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Lucas Gonzalez

Lucas Gonzalez ’10 talks to NER intern Bella Cady ‘22.5 about his current work as an educator and what it means to “go boldly” into the literary world.

Bella Cady: What was the highlight of your experience as an NER intern?

Lucas Gonzalez: I had the unique chance to be the very first summer intern and totally immersed myself in the role. There was so much to do, and every little detail of my job felt new and exciting: riding my bike up to the old office at the Kirk Alumni Center in the mornings; wandering through the stacks of NER back issues; sifting through dozens of submissions, all of which were snail-mail back then. It sounds more and more romantic as the years roll on. I remember driving with Carolyn Kuebler to a storage facility outside of town to find obscure editions of the magazine in the cavernous NER archive. I recall that an entire garage-full adjacent to the archive was filled wall-to-ceiling with Stephen Donadio’s books alone, a detail which still staggers me. For years, I kept one of the coffee machines office manager Toni Best found for me at a local yard sale to make sure I was caffeinated enough to read through submissions and still work on my own writing at home. Thanks, Toni! Ultimately, understanding how NER—the writers, editors, and staff—worked together to create a standard-setting literary journal gave me a sense of the road map for my own journey.

BC: You were a co-creator of Blackbird, which is still in print today. What was your motivation for bringing an arts journal to Middlebury? 

LG: My motivation for bringing a new arts journal to Middlebury was to shine a light on our literary and artistic community. Blackbird was manifested through a collectivist mindset of good friends. We realized a print publication was the perfect medium for creating a focal point for literary and artistic life at the college. It took the effort and dedication of a large group of multi-talented people who had the motivation, communication skills, technological know-how, and discerning aesthetic sensibilities to put it all together. After months of planning, discussion, content review, and production stumbles, we held the first issue in our hands. We knew we had accomplished something special by bottling the collective lightning. The fact that Blackbird continues to publish today goes to show we struck a nerve, and says something encouraging about the enduring vitality of literary magazines in our culture.

BC: Are there any particular skills that you developed as an undergraduate–in school or through internships–that you believe most benefited you in your professional work? 

LG: I learned great project management through my time at NER. When I graduated, I was hired at 826 NYC as an intern, managing publication projects and volunteering as an after-school tutor. In my graduate years at Columbia University, I served as Community Outreach Editor at Columbia Journal. When I co-created the Incarcerated Writers Initiative at the journal, I remembered NER’s ethos and commitment to publishing regional, emerging, and marginalized writers. After months of outreach to currently-incarcerated writers, activists, and community organizations, we received over three hundred submissions from writers in over 30 states, everything by mail. It was like being back in the Kirk Alumni Center. The pieces we published I often reread and teach in the classroom. 

I feel the resonance of my NER days in my current role, where I serve as faculty advisor to an amazing literary magazine, Stone-cutters. The magazine is an institution at Harvard-Westlake School, where it has been published for 27 years running. Much like Blackbird, the literary magazine operates as a literary/arts collective on campus. We publish a Winter Tabloid, a Spring Annual print publication, and release online content to our website, www.stone-cutterscollective.com. We also run student-led craft classes and workshops for all genres and mediums, visual, literary, and beyond. I also help organize Wider Than The Sky: A Young People’s Poetry Festival (www.widerthanthesky.org). Guided by a group of stellar faculty and organized entirely by our students, we’ve welcomed poets like Richard Blanco, Claudia Rankine, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and Kaveh Akbar to our midst, focusing specifically on outreach to the wider Los Angeles community, especially underserved communities and schools. 

BC: You’ve pursued both an MFA and MA since your time at Middlebury. Do you have any advice for students considering advanced degrees in the literary world?

LG: My advice would be to go boldly. If you’re thinking about a career in teaching and writing, the degree is a tangible way of getting a foot in the door and making your way in the literary world. Across the journey through both my MA and MFA, I made valuable connections with teachers and friends who guided and supported me towards realizing my ambitions, and continue to be my network and support system as a writer and educator. 

Lucas during his time as a student at Middlebury College.

BC: What brought you to teaching? How do you employ your experience as a writer to encourage aspiring writers?

LG: My very first informal teaching gig was on a dairy farm a few minutes south of the Middlebury College campus. A friend and I volunteered as English language instructors, teaching a group of men from Mexico employed as seasonal workers on the farm. The men ranged from aged 24 to 60. Each had traveled across the United States across the southern border to provide for their families. We hoped to offer language as a tool for access and agency in the complex odyssey of working undocumented in the United States. I came to realize something new and very real about the power of literacy. Writing brought me to that farm, and that farm brought me to teaching. Connecting it all is the hope that through education, we work alongside our fellow human beings with a common purpose towards bettering our world.

In terms of how my experience as a writer informs my work as a teacher, it’s easy for me to relate to the experience of struggling to find, refine, and hone one’s writing voice. As a practitioner of my craft, it’s much easier for me to know how to guide students with specific techniques at the level of their prose, creative expression, or exploration of a text. My hope is that my students can tell that I’m a genuine geek, and that my own sense of curiosity rubs off on them when it comes to the subject matter. I remember all my best teachers had truly awe-inspiring levels of nerdiness at the core of their persona in front of the classroom; they cared about their subject, but also cared about you and your own rapidly-expanding mind. As an educator, I hope to instill in my students a sense of interest in my academic discipline, while also affirming the infinitely nourishing feedback cycle of taking your own passions seriously.

BC: What have you read recently that’s moved you? 

LG: Aside from various literary magazine subscriptions like Rattle, Fence, and Crazyhorse, I like to read through as much of the National Book Award long lists in poetry and fiction as I can. I also like to follow the work of my friends and former teachers closely. I was floored by Timothy Donnelly’s collection, The Problem of the Many. I have also recently been stunned by Barbara K. Fischer’s Ceive, Jay Deshpande’s The Umbrian Sonnets, Emma Cline’s Daddy, and Joseph Fasano’s The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing. This year, I’m most looking forward to the publication of my thesis workshop mate’s first collection of poems, Alexis Jackson’s My Sister’s Country.

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