Join the APW Team for 2013

Yesterday we published the final Wedding Graduate post from our 2012 writing interns. And while our current batch of interns still have a few posts left in them (perhaps of the Reclaiming Wife variety?) that means it’s officially time for us to put the call out for—you guessed it—next year’s intern(s).

But first, a debt of gratitude to this year’s intern team. Zen, Madeline, and Elisabeth came on board during a year of big, unexpected growth for the site (and the staff, cough, unexpected-national-book-tour-and-pregnancy) and they rolled with the punches throughout. Not to mention, their weekly contributions enriched our content and made me personally fall in love with each of them a little bit. It was a genuine learning experience getting to work with them each week, and I sincerely hope the feeling is mutual. Here’s what they had to say about their experience this year:

It’s been brilliant—a lot of fun. Meg and Maddie were totally accessible, responsive, inclusive, and helpful. We got to learn all sorts of behind-the-scenes know-how and I really looked forward to reading great comments from readers each time I post! Can’t recommend it enough.

—Madeline

Elaborating on that:

The internship has helped me develop as a writer and it’s taught me a lot about what it’s like to write for such a large, diverse audience—an audience that doesn’t necessarily know where you’re coming from. It hasn’t always been easy or perhaps possible to acknowledge the breadth and experience of that audience in the space that we get for posts, but it’s been educational in itself to have to grapple with that issue, and figure out a way of dealing with it without diluting my own voice.

I’ve really appreciated the freedom that Meg and Maddie have given us to write about whatever interests us, and also their commitment to inclusiveness and respect for the fact that sometimes people with broadly the same goals will reasonably disagree.

To summarise—being given the space and opportunity to connect with Team Practical has been invaluable, and it has all been super interesting! Oh, plus, I didn’t come into this with much interest in the business side of things, but learning more about how a blog makes its money has actually been one of the funnest parts of the experience, just because it’s not something there are many opportunities to find out about.

—Zen

So, given what we learned from this year’s interns, we’ll be doing things a bit differently this round. We’re opening the internship program to not one, but two different kinds of intern positions. First, we will once again be looking for a writing intern. For this position, you should be someone who is in the middle of wedding planning, who will be getting married in mid/late 2013 or early 2014, and is interested in writing about planning at least every other week (possibly more) over the course of the next year.

We’ll also be opening up a spot for a business intern. This position is for anyone, married, pre-engaged, engaged, just lurking for fun, etc. who is interested in learning the business of running a blog and who can make a commitment of at least ten hours per month for the next year. Both are unpaid positions, but you’ll be joining an awesome team and you’ll get to learn a whole ton about online writing and publishing. We’ll work to make your resumé better and your life a little more fun (our staff email chains are epic). We’re committed to teaching you what you want to learn and letting you dive into projects you’re passionate about. That, and if you happen to be in Northern California, you’ll get to come to our super fun photo shoots and APW staff parties (they are good ones).

We’re accepting applications until December 1st (so you can work on them over Thanksgiving), and we’ll be offering slots in January. Then, come next year, all of you will get to meet the new intern(s)! You can email applications to team at apracticalwedding dot com. We can’t wait to read them. Now. The details.

The Writing Internship:

• This is an internship position for someone who is in the trenches of wedding planning, who is getting married in mid/late 2013 or 2014, who wants to write about it.
• The intern will be responsible for at least bi-weekly writing (possibly more) on wedding planning and will need to meet deadlines and accept edits with grace.
• We expect you to understand, and be on board with, the APW voice and mission. Bonus points for writing that is both funny and deep.
• That said, you can be dyslexic (Meg is). You just have to be a good writer.
• We’ll ask you to tie in the APW book to your posts now and then, as you work through the planning process.
• This is an unpaid internship and won’t necessarily result in a paid position.

What we’re offering:

• A chance to work with the (awesome) APW team for a year. You will love them.
• Opportunity to learn about the business of online publishing, and build your social media resumé.
• The chance to showcase your work (design work, writing work, social media work, etc.).
• Any perks we can throw at you. Staff parties. Cocktails. Trips to Maddie’s pony farm.

What you need to include in your application:

• A cover letter that includes
  • Which internship you’re applying for
  • Your Twitter handle if you have one
  • Your blog URL, if you have one (Don’t worry! You don’t have to have one!)
  • What you hope to learn
  • Writing Internship: What experience you will bring to the role
  • Business Internship: What kind of work you are interested in contributing to the site
  • Your relationship with APW
• A resumé
• Writing Internship: Two writing samples of posts you would write on wedding planning (These can include posts you’ve already written for APW.)
• Business Internship: Any samples of recent graphic design work (optional)
• Links to any past APW posts, if you’ve written any (again, not mandatory)