Giving your all: reflections of a Pulley administrative outreach intern

The minute I read the Pulley Press intern job description, I knew I had to apply. As an English literary major with a love for place-based literature, I had a weakness for the romantic, and the idea of helping a small press research and promote rural poets was an idea that seemed very romantic to me. Though I hadn’t grown up in the countryside, I had always loved reading about small towns and rural places in books.

So when I was assigned to be an administrative outreach intern, tasked with preparing agendas for our weekly meetings and overseeing the completion of each week’s work, I admit I felt a little down. Intrinsically, it seemed like the job most distant from the creative work at the heart of the publishing process — reading submissions (editorial), designing graphics for social media (marketing), researching rural places to sell books and form relationships with local poets, etc. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

As the administrative lead intern for Pulley Press, I learned from watching the team develop and grow that great work comes from everyone finding their niche. When we each find that one thing (often many things!) that we’re good at and go hard after it, everyone benefits. I used to be worried about stepping on others’ toes, staying inside my defined role, etc, but working with Pulley showed me that so much more gets done well when you just go for it. Just start somewhere, and find out what you’re good at as you go!

By the end of the quarter, we had each found our niche. This niche was carved naturally, gradually, from our backgrounds (some of us grew up in rural areas and had lived experience and connections to offer, some of us didn’t), our schedules (some of us were working other jobs, while others had more time), and our skills (from graphic design to event planning). Rather than a team where everyone puts in “equal effort” or does their “fair share” — the vocabulary I used to use when discussing team projects — it was simply a team where everyone gave their all. Everyone gave the best of what they could give, towards the goal of celebrating America’s rural poets and leaving Pulley a little better than we found it.

When I got to meet some of my fellow interns in-person for the first time at the AWP Conference, that professional collaboration we had been working on became something stronger, a bond that grew as we got to know each other as people and soon friends.

I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to witness this team unfold, and I’ll miss our weekly meetings. Just like the beauty of hearing many community voices in a poetry collection created using the pulley technique, the balance created in this team of Pulley interns isn’t something I’ll soon forget.