Tag: Jackleg Press

Praxis Course: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jamie Taylor

Community Partner: JackLeg Press

Praxis Site Supervisor: Jennifer Harris

Praxis Poster:

PIS Catherine R Utzinger

 

Further Context:

During the JackLeg Press Internship, I had the opportunity to work witha cohort in order to review submissions, network, learn the review and editing process, as well as how an independent publishing firm operates. During the semester, I was responsible for reading submissions that were around 30-40 page submissions through JackLeg’s submission portal and ranking each submission on a scale from 1-5. I then wrote 350-word reviews to justify my ranking and explain whether I thought that each submission should proceed in the submission process. If accepted, the author of the piece would submit their full manuscript for further review.
Every few weeks, we had team meetings with Jennifer Harris and the rest of the JackLeg editorial team to discuss techniques and build our critical skills.

We also got to attend the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Baltimore where we tabled for JackLeg and had the opportunity to speak with authors that the press has published! I also got to network with other independent presses at the Bookfair and exchanged
information with many different people. Listening to panels and readings such as Carmen Maria Machado reading her new short story was so amazing and I also got to meet Maria Pinto, the author of a book that I’ve been reading for my thesis!

Overall, interning at JackLeg has been incredible. I’ve learned how the submission process works at an independent press and I developed important submission review techniques such as how to identify professional craft and sentence variation. I will be continuing to read
submissions for JackLeg over the summer and I look forward to continuing to work with them!

Praxis Course: JackLeg Press Editorial Internship    

Semester: Spring 2026  

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Daniel Torday   

Community Partner: JackLeg Press 

Praxis Site Supervisor:  Dr. Jennifer Harris 

Praxis Poster:   

PIS LeeCheeseman

 

Further Context: 

This semester, I served as an editorial intern for JackLeg Press, a small independent publisher of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama. I’d been trying (and failing) to get a publishing/editorial internship since the summer before my freshman year of college so I was so excited this opportunity came along! My work consisted of reading through JackLeg’s backlog of fiction and creative nonfiction queries, short excerpts authors submit from longer completed manuscripts. I rated and reviewed each piece based on JackLeg’s specific standards and gave my recommendations for whether I believed they should move on to the next round of evaluation. While most of the pieces I read were not to my taste or not up to JackLeg’s standards, I still felt like I was learning from everything I read. In almost every piece I found an element of syntax, style, or language that I could incorporate into my own writing. I also encountered genres and types of writing that I never would’ve sought out on my own, broadening my horizons and understanding of what literary fiction and creative nonfiction can be. 

In my coursework, I read The World She Edited by Amy Reading, a biography of Katerine S. White, a Bryn Mawr alumna who went on to become an incredibly influential fiction editor at The New Yorker. I went on to apply many of the things I learned about her editorial process to my own work with JackLeg. It was also just fascinating to learn about the life and legacy of a Bryn Mawr alumna who I hadn’t before heard of, I even found out we shared many things in common! For example, she was an editor for the Tipyno’bob, Bryn Mawr’s student literary magazine during her time and I’m an editor for Nimbus, Bryn Mawr’s current literary magazine!   

One of the coolest aspect of my internship was that I got to go to AWP, the largest conference for writers and publishers in North America! It was an amazing opportunity to feel for the first time that I was surrounded by a community of writers and artists all supporting one another. I went to panels on a wide array of topics hosted by writers I deeply admire such as Deesha Philyaw and Richard Siken.   

In my time with JackLeg I absolutely felt myself grow both as a writer and an editor. The skills I learned from reading and critiquing so many pieces are absolutely valuable in their own right but they also helped me bring a more critical eye to my own creative writing which will be incredibly useful to me as I prepare to begin my creative writing capstone next semester. 

Praxis Course: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Daniel Torday

Community Partner(s): JackLeg Press

Praxis Site Supervisor: Jennifer Harris

Praxis Poster:

PIS TallulahStallvik

 

Further Context:

As my poster details, my work as an intern at JackLeg Press was very focused, consisting of practically the same repeating task for the whole semester. This level of consistency allowed me to dive incredibly deep into how I was approaching my reviews and how I was reading the poems in the first place — hence why I chose to focus on the reading process itself and the “craftsmanship” of the poetry for my poster. Centering the idea of craftsmanship in my reviewing played the largest role in controlling
aesthetically-driven bias. It was a challenge, though, to make this dissection. To a certain extent, all aspects of poetry — even the ways formal craft elements are utilized — are subjective, and therefore victim to overlaid aesthetic bias. Growth in this area was truly a by-product of the sheer amount of time dedicated to the repetitive motions of reading submission after submission. In terms of a life progression, this internship worked in tandem with and built off of my time as an intern for the online poetry magazine Poetry Daily last summer. I bring this up because of the way in which reading as an eye of a press differed from that preliminary experience evaluating poetry for individual publication to a magazine. I felt my opinions were imbued with a more significant weight, which led me to be even more intentional with every thought and review. Publishing a poetry book is introducing the world to someone’s work in the exact form, order, and overall presentation that the artist intends for the work; it is allowing space for this person’s work. Aside from this feeling of responsibility, being a part of this process was somewhat out-of-body; I kept asking myself why does my opinion of someone’s work matter? But, of course, the literary community is built on this massive web of “peoples’
opinions.” In good faith, it is the thoughts and contributions of a whole array of people that make arts communities strong.

Praxis Course: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026 

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jamie Taylor 

Community Partner(s): Jackleg Press 

Praxis Site Supervisor:  Jennifer Harris 

Praxis Poster:

PIS KathrynGentry

 

Further Context:

My main goal for this internship was to learn about the world of book publishing and independent presses. As a Literatures in English major at Bryn Mawr, I have spent my academic career looking at published material, but had not had the opportunity to work with the raw material of written work. Before embarking on this internship my goals were to develop editorial judgement and literary evaluation skills. I was thrilled by the prospect of working at Jackleg, and with Jen, to fulfill these goals. 

As editorial interns at Jackleg, my cohort worked with Jen and the Jackleg team to evaluate submissions for publishing. Interns would read submissions, rate them, and write a brief blurb about the work and our opinions. This review process was incredibly rewarding—it provided me with new perspectives on how writing develops. I enjoyed reading critically and noting areas in pieces that could be improved. Through this internship I also developed my ability to write concise reviews on pieces. For each submission that we read, interns would write a 350-word blurb about what we liked and didn’t like about the piece. Through these writing submissions I learned how to think critically about writing style. Perhaps more importantly, I also learned how to saturate my own opinion into these blurbs. It is easy to write off a piece as objectively ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but it was harder to figure out exactly what I liked or didn’t like about a writing sample.  

Through funding from Bryn Mawr’s Praxis program, my internship cohort had the opportunity to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Baltimore. This event was an incredible opportunity to network and learn more about the industry. My fellow intern/friend Catherine Utzinger ’26 and I were attended a reading by author Carmen Maria Machado and caught up with Bryn Mawr alumna Quinn Christensen ’24. This conference was a great opportunity to see what future careers in publishing might resemble. I am so grateful that through Jackleg and Bryn Mawr I was able to attend this conference, it was a fantastic networking and learning opportunity.  

At the end of the semester, looking back on my time with Jackleg, I can say that I have gained perspective into independent publishing and have developed my editorial skills. I felt that I got a hands-on experience of evaluating submissions. Writing these reviews has gotten easier and I have gained industry vocabulary that will help me as I seek out other jobs in publishing. I have also begun building a network of publishing professionals: Jen, my internship cohort, the folks at Jackleg, and people I met at AWP. Ultimately my internship gave me a fantastic opportunity to gain work experience in the industry, meet mentors and peers, and develop essential skills for a career in publishing.