Four fabulous new interns have joined the Press for our second session of 2025—remotely, from around the country—and it’s our pleasure to introduce you to each of them here. We’ll share their 60-second Q&As every #MeettheInternMonday in the coming weeks, so check back!
P.S. Interested in joining the team as a Copper Canyon Press intern from January to June 2026? We are now accepting applications through November 1st. Learn more here.
Meet Ollie
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
O: How much I’ve gotten to learn! I’m gaining new skills by the day, including manuscript coding, e-book formatting, and newsletter design. It’s all super interesting, and reminds me to appreciate how much care goes into publishing a book. I’m also glad the work is preparing me for various future publishing avenues!
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
O: I Was Bonnie & Clyde by Laura Kasischke. I had the privilege of reading this collection as I was coding it for copyeditors. It addresses feminist topics with no filter, which is thrilling to read. Kasischke has a great, even fun, sense of musicality, and fills her poems with unique imagery. I’d love to hear her work read aloud!
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
O: “Why Bother?” by Sean Thomas Dougherty: “Because right now, there is someone / out there with / a wound in the exact shape / of your words.”
In just four lines, Dougherty manages to illustrate exactly the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be a writer who patches the wounds of the queer, the genderfluid, the neurodivergent, the outcasts.
Meet Bleah
CCP: What’s
your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
B: I’m really grateful for valuable one-on-one opportunities with members of staff as well as hands on experience working in various departments, even outside of our titles. Everyone has been so warm and open about teaching us anything we’re interested in learning about, which is so important.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
B: Accidental Devotions by Kelli Russell Agodon. Kelli’s style is just so comforting, exciting, heartbreaking in the most necessary way, and I’m so excited to get to read her newest collection!
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
B: From Horace’s Ode 1.5, I can’t stop thinking about the ending lines: “As for me, the sacred wall, / with its votive tablet, shows that I have hung / my dripping clothes for the god who holds power over the sea.”
Meet Anaiah
CCP: What’s
your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
A: Definitely the learning opportunities and how patient everyone is! Being trusted to execute tasks, make mistakes, ask questions, and improve has been so wonderful. I’ve gotten to learn so much, including how to send permission requests to publishers, use the database app FileMaker, and format an e-book in InDesign.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
A: Godspotting by Aleksandar Hemon. I’ve gotten the opportunity to familiarize myself with Hemon’s work and see the manuscript, and I’ve just been blown away. His writing is so often rooted in beautifully complex memories of his homeland and family, and the images he crafts are effortlessly enchanting.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
A: “(There’s never been equality for me, / Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’)”
—from “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes
In this poem, the speaker contrasts the idea of the American dream with the realities that marginalized groups face. America has always been said to be a place of opportunity and freedom, and this poem considers what it would take for that to be true for everyone. As a Black woman, these lines have always cut deep.
Meet Summer
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
S: I am so totally joyed to be able to be a part of and learn from a community at the Press that dedicates itself to language with so much energy, joy, and care. This internship has allowed me a peek behind the curtain into the mysterious world of publishing, given me many useful new skills, and shown me that a life centered on art, language, and community is both possible and necessary.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
S: Cocklebur: New and Selected Poems by Erin Belieu! I’ve gotten the joy of familiarizing myself with Belieu’s new collection for my work at the Press and have taken huge pleasure getting to immerse myself in such an expanse of her work. Belieu’s work bites! And it kisses! So intimate, funny, and melancholy all in turn. I can’t wait to have the physical book in my hands.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
S: Gutted lately—and continuously—by these ending lines to Brendan Joyce’s poem “Value Form”:
“Lord, boil my wages into / rain. Burn my poems into chicken. Lord, / let me eat my car, let me drink the gas, / let me swallow the asphalt that separates / me from my love.”