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 Senior Editor, Grace Lucus-Pennington, and supported by the Stories and Ideas team. During this process, they learn as much as possible about the publishing and editing world.
4.	Placement with publisher:	This exciting opportunity allows for the interns to gain experience at the University of Queensland Press office. This experience can vary depending on what opportunities UQP has to offer and what the interns want to learn.
5.	Handover:	UQP will have the option to accept the manuscript and proceed to publication. Interns help facilitate this handover. This is an opportunity to learn a new stage of the publishing process, including writing synopses, blurbs 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 Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. We are proud to work with University of Queensland Press as the black&write! Fellowship publishing partner.

We acknowledge Magabala Books and Hachette Australia as previous publishing partners, and our collaborations that have produced outstanding First Nations titles for Australian readers.