black&write! Editing Internships

As part of our writing and editing program, black&write! provides internships to aspiring First Nations editors.

Our internship program offers talented young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders valuable career pathways, and fosters the development of new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing.

Our black&write! interns get hands-on experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors by helping the winning black&write! Fellows develop their manuscripts for publication. They also receive support, training and mentorship from the black&write! team.

black&write! also partners with Griffith Review and Kill Your Darlings to give our editor interns and junior editors further training and experience. These partnerships involve getting insight into how these publications work, editing shorter pieces of work and editing and commissioning for digital.

The Internship Process:

1.	Application and Interviews:	The application to apply for the internships will be available on SmartJobs.
2.	Judges Meeting & Winners Ceremony:	At the beginning of the program, interns are asked to read all the entries to the fellowship program (or as many as possible). From here, interns will be able to sit in on the Judging Meeting and learn how a winning manuscript is chosen. The winners’ ceremony will follow this (a wonderful celebration!). During this time, the interns will also assist with creating structural reports for the winning manuscripts.
3.	Manuscript development:	Interns will work with the black&write! winning Fellows to develop their manuscript. This process is highly collaborative and can take 6-12 months or more depending on the author’s individual circumstances. Interns are mentored and supervised by Editor, Grace Lucus-Pennington, and supported by the Reading, Writing & iDEAS team. During this process, they learn as much as possible about the publishing and editing world.
4.	Sydney Trip to Hachette Australia:	This exciting opportunity allows for the interns to fly to Sydney (3-10 days) and gain experience inside the Hachette Australia office. This experience can vary depending on what opportunities Hachette has to offer and what the interns want to learn.
5.	Handover:	Hachette Australia will have the option to accept the manuscript and proceed to publication. Interns are usually able to help facilitate this handover. This is an opportunity to learn a new stage of the publishing process, including writing synopses and official editing reports.

If you have any questions that aren’t answered here, feel free to contact the State Library of Queensland at Indigenous.Writing@slq.qld.gov.au or on (07) 3842 9985.

black&write! is supported by the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. We are proud to work with Hachette Australia as the black&write! Fellowship publishing partner.