Writing the Land Summer Internship

Internship: Writing the Land–poetry and land protection

· Available as a a summer semester (June, July, August) internship. 20 hours per week.

· Location: Online

· Company: NatureCulture is a small, woman-owned business in Northfield, MA whose goal is to strengthen the connections between humans and the rest of nature. The company provides online event production for the environmental, non-profit, and creative communities including the Authors and Artists Festival: Honoring Nature; produces anthologies of poetry and other environmental writing; teaches workshops on writing and nature; and directs the Writing the Land Project.

· Project Description: Writing the Land is a project which connects poets with land trust protected lands. We create a yearly anthology with a chapter for each land trust. Sales of the book support the land trusts’ work. In our first year we are already very successful having filled the anthology even before starting our first calendar period. However, we have found that our poets are not very culturally diverse, and our lands are mostly rural. Thus…..

· Internship duties and responsibilities are to help formulate an innovative strategy of outreach to urban land trusts and to poet communities of color and cultural diversity (both urban and rural); then implement that strategy by contacting land trusts and poets and enlisting them into the project. We have basic strategies of outreach to share, and then hope that the intern will be able to adapt these and help us find better ways to reach a wider audience. As a rural company, we are attempting to promote protected lands to all communities–especially those who haven’t traditionally felt welcome. We hope that this internship explores the many ways people relate to land from the perspective of urban and city life, so that together we create a workable plan to expand this project’s reach.

· Requirements and qualifications: A strong commitment to promoting social and environmental justice through land protection and fair/inclusive access to lands; an interest in and familiarity with urban land protection; membership within a community of color or of cultural diversity is an advantage, as is experience writing poetry, and experience working online (zoom required; extra credit for squarespace). Candidate must be very organized, reliable and willing to progressively take on more independent work while professionally and relatively enthusiastically representing the project.

· Benefits of the internship: Unpaid. Benefits include learning project planning and management skills with opportunities to help expand a successful project into its next phase; excellent networking opportunities; experiences with a variety of technologies; and the chance to increase cross-disciplinary communications skills.

· To apply please email a short cover letter addressing the requirements and qualifications paragraph above along with a resume and/or short statement about your major, your relationship with nature, and how this internship fits in with your goals.

Contact Information:

Lis McLoughlin, PhD

Annondras@gmail.com

https://writingtheland.org

Writing the Land map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=12MQIpWxfB780UMxoBbCd24teXC_Me7DP&usp=sharing