In fact, arts administration itself encompasses more tasks than meet the eye. As the summer intern for the Literary House this year, I had the opportunity to learn about the field of arts administration and to plan an event from start to finish.

During the first half of my internship, I did a lot of brainstorming and a lot of research. I looked through records of old events, evaluated the type of events given in the last couple of years, wandered through the house looking at the older posters for ideas. Then, in the beginning of July, Penguin and Random House merged and I was struck with a thought: there has been no one from the publishing industry in years. Students at Washington College have wonderful writing opportunities and meet many authors, but what about the other side? What about the editors, literary agents, and publishing executives?

I talked to Lindsay about my desire to hold a lecture related to publishing. We talked about the different aspects and decided having by an editor would be best as it would apply to students interested in working in publishing as well as students interested in getting published. We came up with a list of editors to invite, and Mary Biddinger replied immediately. 

With the guidance of Lindsay and Jehanne, I went through the steps of putting together the event: evaluating the budget, refining the event topic, issuing a formal invitation, securing the date through Campus Events, and corresponding with Mary on various minor details. 

Mary was a joy to correspond with, and within a couple of weeks everything was settled. She will be coming in February 2014 (link to event), and we couldn’t be more excited. Mary Biddinger founded a literary magazine, Barn Owl Review, for which she serves as Editor-in-Chief and works as the Series Editor for the Akron Series in Poetry. Plus, she’s a published poet and a professor at the University of Akron. 

I am excited to meet Mary in February and even more excited to see the event I’ve planned come together. There is still more work to be done—designing the poster and determining travel details, for instance—which I will get to work on even after my internship ends.