My first week as a Chautauqua intern has been an interesting one. I thought that I would have a harder time getting used to how things work around here, but it has surprisingly been the contrary. The main reason for that is that everybody here has been really friendly with me, starting with my supervisor Stephine Hunt. Stephine has not only trained me during this week, but she also took other people and I to buy groceries on a Monday, because the cafeteria did not open until Friday. She has also organized dinners with me and other interns so that we can all get to know each other better. Thanks to this, I’ve been able to create a little community around here. Finding myself in a community of writers has helped sparked again my love for reading and my desire to become a published author.
Being surrounded by creatives has motivated me to give the best of myself when it comes to not only my personal writing but also the writing that I have done for my job. For example, during my second day here, I wrote two prompts (and the poems that will help as their examples) for the Chautauqua Community Poem. Another way in which I have let my creative juices flow has come from working in the Chautauqua Poetry Makerspace, where people can come and (like the name explains) write poetry in different ways. During my first training to learn how to manage the Poetry Makerspace, I found out that one of my favorite ways to contribute to the community poems is by creating erasure poems, which is similar to blackout poetry. But not everything in the job involves writing. My supervisor has encouraged me and another intern to try the board games that we have at the Poetry Makerspace. Additionally, we have enjoyed other perks of the internship, such as getting free books.
My first day in Chautauqua, Stephine Hunt gave me a tour where she took me to the places where I will be spending most of my time. While on this tour, she gave me Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor, the novel that won the Chautauqua Prize of 2025 and was gifted by the institution to all of this summer’s interns. Likewise, I also ended up with the book Saying it Plain: An American Patchwork in my possession one day when I was working on putting the contributors' copies together for the aforementioned book. Since all of the contributors' copies were in their packets and we were finished and realized that there had been some copies left, we were allowed to take one if we wanted. Being allowed to take or enjoy things for free has quickly turned into one of my favorite parts of this internship.
This does not only limit itself to the books that I’ve gotten, since I was given a pass that allows me to enter
different shows for free. For example, this Friday I went to see the band “Counting Crows” sing live. Despite not being a fan of that band (and keeping in mind that the only song that I know from them is “Accidentally in Love” from “Shrek 2”), I still wanted to check them out and hear them sing sing the only song that I know from them (spoiler alert: that one was not on the setlist). So I went there and listened to the music, while making sure to add some important information to a calendar that I carry around with me, in this case, information such as at which hours the workshops that I will be attending are going to be happening.
I am very excited to take each and every single one of these workshops, considering that every single one of them will be taught by a published author. This makes it exciting for me because one of my goals in this life is to make it into the industry, so having people that have not only gone through that experience but who also offer classes that focus on very different writing styles, makes it an opportunity that I’m glad I get to experience. Knowing that I will get to dive into literary genres and writing styles that I haven’t interacted with much before will help me to become a better writer, which is the reason why I was so interested in this internship in the first place. I am especially curious to see how this first week goes for me, because I will be taking both a poetry class about how to give voice to the poem inside with Deanna Nikaido; and during the afternoons, I will take a class on invoking speculation and folklore in writing with Sally Wen Mao.