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Join Electric Literature

Do you have a keen eye, unique perspective, and a desire to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive? Are you interested in joining Electric Literature’s editorial team? You might be a good fit for an internship or a volunteer reader position. 

Internships

Electric Literature accepts internship applications with deadlines three-times a year: Aug 15 for the fall semester, Dec 15 for spring, and April 15 for summer. Due to overwhelming interest, we are no longer accepting applications for Summer 2024. Our four-month internships introduce undergraduate (junior and seniors with prior internship experience are preferred) and graduate students, emerging writers, and aspiring publishing professionals to digital publishing and the New York literary scene. Because we are a small, not-for-profit publisher, we provide unique opportunities for professional development and resume-building. 

This is a part-time, remote internship (10–20 hours/week) with a $200 per month stipend. Candidates must be able to work at least two days per week during East Coast business hours. Though this internship is remote, we can only consider applicants who reside within a 3 hour time difference from New York. Interested applicants can visit the application portal for more information and instructions on how to apply. 

Volunteer Readers

We are always accepting applications for volunteer readers to join our editorial team in one of three capacities: 

  1. Recommended Reading, EL’s weekly fiction magazine, publishes one story a week: a mix of original work, forgotten classics, and forthcoming excerpts, each with a personal foreword by today’s best writers. Readers must commit to reading ten stories per week, ranging in length from 2,000 to 8,000 words.
  2. The Commuter, EL’s weekly magazine of flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narratives, publishes one piece of original work per week, as well as occasional forthcoming excerpts. Readers must commit to reading ten pieces of flash prose or poetry per week.
  3. EL publishes a selection of original creative nonfiction nearly every day of the week on wide-ranging topics, including but not limited to culture, literature, industry, craft, and personal narrative. Readers must commit to reading ten essays per week, running in length from 2,000 to 5,000 words.

Electric Literature receives a large volume of submissions in all categories, and a committed corps of volunteer readers is essential to helping the editors find new, unknown, and/or overlooked talent.All reader positions are volunteer and require a commitment to complete reading assignments on a weekly basis for approximately six months. Readers will work remotely and on their own schedules (as long as they meet the weekly deadline). Current readers are not allowed to submit their own work for consideration in the category they are reading in. For more information and instructions on how to apply, visit the application portal.