Interns have often been part of the inner workings at Modern Memoirs over our 30+ years. We don’t have an intern currently, but I am sure we will host them again in the future—perhaps even next semester—and in the meantime, I’ve been reflecting on how rewarding it’s been to engage with them in the past.
“My own internship experiences in college and graduate school had been greatly important to my professional development, and I hoped to provide the same sort of experience to students here.”
Company founder Kitty Axelson-Berry supervised several interns and volunteers during her time leading Modern Memoirs. When my husband, Sean, and I bought the company in 2019, I knew I wanted to do the same. My own internship experiences in college and graduate school were greatly important to my professional development, and I hoped to provide the same sort of experience to students here. I also enjoyed mentoring interns and teaching assistants during my previous nonprofit, library, and academic positions, so I knew I would get personal satisfaction from welcoming undergraduates and graduate students to Modern Memoirs.
As a parent of teens and twenty-somethings working hard to make their way in life, I made a commitment that each internship here would be funded since I wanted young people working with us to have the clearest possible indication of our business’s investment in them. Modern Memoirs is located in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a region home to the Five College consortium (comprised of my alma mater, Smith College, as well as Mt. Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and UMass-Amherst), so I knew there would be a large pool of internship applicants. In the fall of 2019, I set my sights on hiring someone the following year.
The pandemic put the brakes on that aspiration, however. Director of Publishing Ali de Groot and I shepherded the business through remote work arrangements, then we moved to new offices in summer 2020, I hired Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg to join our staff that fall, and my two youngest children spent afternoons in the office for remote schooling. Internship plans were decidedly on the back burner.
Lauryn Small
Then, in late spring 2021, I received an email from a Smith College student, Lauryn Small, hoping to work with us that summer. It was an easy decision to give her an internship, and she set the bar high for all who followed. The initiative Lauryn displayed in reaching out to me carried into her performance at the office, where she helped us launch our monthly newsletter, aided me in managing social media, worked with Ali to write a blog post, and also supported the staff in many client-facing tasks.
When Lauryn left to return to Smith for her senior year, I focused on recruiting not another intern, but a new staff member, Book Designer Nicole Miller, who joined Modern Memoirs in November 2021. She fit right into our team, with marketing expertise to boot.
Emma Solis
Given the positive experience we had with Lauryn and the full plates I saw my growing staff managing, I decided to recruit another intern in summer 2022. Like Lauryn, Emma Solis joined us with funding through the Smith College PRAXIS program, which required them to complete over 200 hours of service. We found plenty of work for them to do! One of Emma’s first tasks was to process our summer solstice mailing, and we quickly realized that she was ready for more substantive work, as well. Her strong writing chops made me encourage her to contribute to our blog, and her eagerness to learn about all parts of the business allowed her to support staff in tasks related to all phases of the publishing process—editorial, design, production, and marketing. We were very sorry to see her go at summer’s end.
Charlie Mark
In the fall of 2022, students from two different schools applied for internships. Charlie Mark was finishing up high school in an alternative program called Light House, based in nearby Holyoke, while Cori Garrett-Goodyear was enrolled in Bay Path University’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. Both started in January 2023—and the timing couldn’t have been better! That was the month Sean and I decided to move offices again, and I honestly don’t know how we would have managed the move without help from Charlie and Cori, who packed up and then reshelved our entire library of client books, and much more.
Cori Garrett-Goodyear
Once we were all set up in our new digs, both interns threw themselves into any task we sent their way. Though they had more limited hours per week than either Lauryn or Emma did as PRAXIS program students at Smith, they helped with administrative, client-facing, and marketing tasks, while also contributing to our blog. Particularly memorable is Cori’s mature, can-do attitude. In one massive book project, she assisted Ali de Groot with the complicated structural edit of a manuscript, turning our conference room wall into a veritable map of pages as they refined the sequence of vignettes and images to the author’s supreme satisfaction.
Modern Memoirs conference room wall with mock-up
I had planned to hire a summer 2023 intern, but just as Charlie and Cori were wrapping up their time with us, former intern Emma Solis contacted me for advice about her post-college plans. As we sat together over lunch, she shared that she had decided to stay in the Amherst area, and I couldn’t resist asking her if she might be interested in working with Modern Memoirs again—this time as a full staff member, not as an intern. How lucky we were that she said yes! She already knew our systems and our staff, and we had great confidence in her abilities. Her too-short tenure as Publishing Associate was a bright spot for Modern Memoirs. (Here she writes about lessons learned before moving on to New York City in October 2024.)
Olivia Go
Another Smith student, Olivia Go, joined us for a fall 2023 internship while Emma was still here. If you haven’t read Olivia’s blog posts, I hope you will take the time to do so—she truly has a gift. Like all of her predecessors, Olivia displayed great eagerness to engage in all parts of the business, and she worked closely with Emma to update our photographic archive of client projects while also cheerfully helping with any task passed her way. In fact, I offered to extend her internship through the spring 2024 semester. Happily, she agreed.
Lily Fitzgerald
I did not hire a summer 2024 intern, instead setting my sights on recruiting someone who could work with us for the full 2024/2025 academic year. Olivia’s continuity with the business had been a real help, and I wanted to replicate that stability with a new publishing intern. UMass-Amherst senior Lily Fitzgerald fit the bill. A student in the university’s Honors College, Lily brought a passion for writing and marketing know-how to her role. Her support around social media postings and a revival of our LinkedIn presence were especially helpful. I also always knew I could count on her for runs to the copy shop or FedEx box—once she pulled up just in the nick of time to meet the delivery person’s truck with an urgent, time-sensitive delivery. She texted me triumphantly after the handoff, “Just made it! It was kinda exciting. I felt like I was in a movie! (laughing-crying emoji).”
Cecelia Allentuck
Our most recent intern, Cecelia Allentuck, was home for the summer of 2025 after her first year of studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Cece’s sunny enthusiasm filled the room when I interviewed her, and she brought that attitude into all she did. She offered great support in boosting our social media presence, and she seemed to especially delight in working with me on her blog posts.
My teaching background makes me grateful for the chance to work with student interns, especially when they are interested in writing blog posts and newsletter content for Modern Memoirs. Helping them home in on a topic, editing their drafts, and then seeing them get to share their work with readers is greatly satisfying. In that way, working with interns dovetails nicely with the editorial work I do with Modern Memoirs clients. What a joy it is to help people find their voices and share their stories, whether they are people I hire, or people who hire my staff and me.
Do you know a student who might be interested in a spring 2026 publishing internship with Modern Memoirs? If so, send them my way!
Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.