Written by Lisa Krause, outreach assistant, Summer 2025
This internship was offered in partnership with the University of Florida Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere as part of the Center’s 2025 Public Humanities Internship Program for Graduate Students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
As a newsletter subscriber to the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida, I had seen the internship opportunity at the University Press of Florida in previous years and always thought it was an awesome opportunity. Being a PhD student in the Department of History often meant that I was doing research over the summer and could never make the internship fit into my summer schedule. Now that (most of) that research is done, I was very excited to see the call for the internship at the Press a few months ago and even happier to have been selected to be the outreach assistant for six weeks.
As always when starting somewhere new, I was pretty nervous, but it quickly proved totally unnecessary. Everyone at the Press was very welcoming and made me feel part of the team, especially in the marketing and acquisitions departments. My main focus was assisting the marketing team with tasks to prepare the launch of a new publishing focus in creative nonfiction. For this, I could draw from many of my skills as a historian, such as doing research and detail-oriented work, but also refine my design skills by creating graphics. If you are curious about the graphics, take a look here and watch for the release of Julie Marie Wade’s Other People’s Mothers, the first book in the new creative nonfiction line.
I attended weekly marketing meetings but was also able to sit in at joint meetings with the marketing and acquisitions teams. I was a bit of the fly on the wall in these and particularly enjoyed the discussions about book proposals and updates about publications at different stages. For instance, I got a better understanding of the factors that influence whether a proposal is accepted and why. My big takeaway is that sometimes a rejection has nothing to do with the project idea or quality of work but rather internal considerations such as that the press has a different publishing focus and the proposal would be more suitable with another press. This was a good reminder that “no” is usually less a statement about one’s work but often shaped by other factors.
Before the internship, I had a general idea about (academic) publishing and knew it is a long process, but beyond that, I had never really thought about how many people are involved in the process. It is not just the author and the editor but also the editorial, design and production team along with the marketing and rights team who all bring in their expertise to make a published book as good as possible. Think, for instance, about book covers. Who does not like a nice book cover, but have you ever wondered what is taken into consideration for a single book cover? For example, from a marketing point of view, one cover should not be too similar to another book published recently.
One of the highlights for me were three short career interviews with Rachel Doll, my internship supervisor; Stephanye Hunter, editor-in-chief; and Vanessa de Bueger, sales and marketing director at Amsterdam University Press. These conversations were very insightful and inspiring; everyone had a different path to their position at a university press but they all shared similar thoughts on entering the field, besides the obvious passion for books—stay intellectually curious and be open to learning new things.
My plan is to graduate next year, and, like many recent and prospective graduates, I will walk into a challenging academic job market. The opportunity at the Press showed me that many of the activities (or skills) I have been practicing in graduate school are valuable in many fields, making the prospects of applying for non-academic jobs a little less daunting and more exciting.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to explore the publishing field in a way that bridges academic and non-academic work nicely. On a personal level, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Rachel Doll for being an outstanding internship supervisor—clear in communication, always available for questions, and genuinely appreciative of the work being done. Thank you, Rachel! And, of course, thank you to the entire team at the Press!
Lisa Krause is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Florida.
The Florida Bookshelf 