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Meet Our Interns: Spring 2026

Filed under: Interviews, The Schooner Blog |

Each semester, we work with a group of talented UNL undergraduate students who assist with all aspects of the Schooner‘s production process. Get to know each of our five interns for the Spring 2026 semester below!

Jacey Kent

  • What is your major? Double majors in English + Classics/Religious Studies, minor in History.
  • What made you want to intern for Prairie Schooner? I’ve worked in publishing before at a newspaper, and I’ve always wanted to work in more creative publishing. My advisor encouraged me from the very beginning of freshman year to eventually intern at Prairie Schooner.
  • What has been your favorite piece from the Prairie Schooner archive and why? My favorite piece so far has been “Washing My Hands of the Ink” by Linda Pastan. I also really liked “Bruised and Glorious” by Keya Mitra. I honestly can’t decide between the two. I love “Bruised and Glorious” because it is the most visceral description of chronic illness that I’ve ever read. At the same time, I love “Washing My Hands of the Ink” because of the mix of poetry and essay, and also because of how relatable it is (or will be?).
  • What was the book/story/poem that got you into reading? When I was in second grade (I think), I started reading the Thea Stilton: Mouseford Academy series. I then progressed quickly to Magic Tree House, then Harry Potter, and then my reading era boomed.
  • What is a passion project you’re working on/ have worked on? With two internships, an on-call position, and classes, my time for passion projects has become limited. However, I have a document (left untouched for embarrassingly long) of a novel started. And recently, I’ve gotten into rewriting the stories of Greek mythological women — specifically villainized women. I’ve reimagined Helen of Troy’s, Clytemnestra’s, Medusa’s, and Pandora’s stories from their own perspectives to humanize them (since most accounts of these women are written by male Greek scholars/poets, who overwhelmingly portray these women as “a curse for mortal men, evil conspirators,” to quote Hesiod’s “Theogony”).

Jesse Nguyen

  • What is your major? English and Women’s and Gender Studies
  • What made you want to intern for Prairie Schooner? I wanted to learn about the world of publishing and have the chance to work with lots of great staff/writers/poets who I look up to at UNL.
  • What has been your favorite piece from the Prairie Schooner archive and why? CMarie Fuhrman’s “A Story about a South Fork Salmon River Logging Road and What It Means to Be a Good Ancestor” (2023 Winter Issue). It’s a great essay that navigates grief, accountability, and hope during the climate crisis. By encouraging the reader to examine the past and present of one road, Fuhrman exposes a “geography of hope” underneath the colonial extraction of the woods.
  • What was the book/story/poem that got you into reading? The poem that got me into poetry was Joy Harjo’s “Remember.” The book that got me into essay writing was Tiffany Lethabo King’s Black Shoals.
  • What is a passion project you’re working on/ have worked on? My passion project is an archival project about zines and Willa Cather, “Willa Cather in 1970-90s Women’s and LGBT Print Culture.”
  • What is the weirdest research rabbit hole you’ve gone down? “Is too much korean jelly actually dangerous,” “How does the principle of non-intervention destroy women’s and indigenous movements?,” and “top 3 red flags in men.”
  • What is the last thing you wasted money on? Those hot topic t-shirts that shrink after one wash.

Shelby March

  • What is your major? English
  • What made you want to intern for Prairie Schooner? I toured the office when I was in Junior High, which likely planted a seed of interest. My more recent self was drawn to how eclectic working for a journal can feel. As I branch out in writing a wider range of genres, I find expanding what I read to be helpful.
  • What has been your favorite piece from the Prairie Schooner archive and why? I read an excerpt from Slow Guillotine by Teo Rivera-Dundas and instantly became so attached that I got my hands on a copy of the full novel as soon as I could. The depiction of chronic pain made me feel disturbingly seen. It is equal parts unnerving and validating to see the aching, overworked, queer, aspects of the state of my life reflected.
  • What was the book/story/poem that got you into reading? Fairytales and folklore were my first loves, and I believe their influences continue to shape what I write and read. I’ve had a life-long flirtation with adaptation, and I would often read different versions of the same story instead of moving on to a different one. A recommendation informed this set of influences: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The film adaptation has been my favorite movie for as long as I can remember, and the novel reads like a mind-stretching fairytale for existentially-concerned adults. It’s whimsical, philosophical, and endearingly self-aware. I heavily recommend it to anyone who is even a little bit interested in fantasy and/or what it means to be mortal.
  • What is a passion project you’re working on/ have worked on? My honors thesis is a cookbook-memoir-photography-book reflecting on my rural femme identity and experiences of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence). Getting to this point has been a long road with a number of detours, but now I have homemade pickles and broth in my refrigerator and an idea of how to move forward with this part of my life, so I would say it was worth it. 
  • If we started a Prairie Schooner band, what instrument would you play? Manager and merchandise designer. I have a Canva Pro account and a dream.

Cole Oie

  • What is your major? English
  • What made you want to intern for Prairie Schooner? I wanted to learn more about publishing and meet different people who love reading/writing in the industry.
  • What has been your favorite piece from the Prairie Schooner archive and why? “Zutko” by Robert Fontaine in the Winter 1953 issue from the archive was hilarious, albeit a little dated, but so fun to read.
  • What was the book/story/poem that got you into reading? My earliest memory was reading the Harry Potter books well past bedtime with my tiny reading light in elementary school (I’d always eventually get yelled at from across the hall to go to bed).
  • What is a passion project you’re working on/ have worked on? I’ve started and stopped a few different fantasy novels. Nothing has gotten too far off the ground, but I’m revisiting an old one I had workshopped in my fiction writing class.
  • What was the last thing you wasted money on? Last thing I wasted money on? Trading cards…
  • Is a hot dog a sandwich? A hot dog is a hot dog, its own class. Get it straight.

Sarah Farritor

  • What is your major? English and Dance
  • What made you want to intern for Prairie Schooner? I was interested in learning more about the publishing world through an accessible journal.
  • What has been your favorite piece from the Prairie Schooner archive and why? I am always thinking about Colette Sartor’s “Lamb” from Spring 2008. It is absurd and slightly suffocating. 
  • What was the book/story/poem that got you into reading? The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides was the first book that got me thinking about perspective and the importance of narrative voice, which is an aspect of writing that intrigues me.
  • What is a passion project you’re working on/ have worked on? I am interested in the relationship between poetry and modern dance. I have choreographed a few pieces based on poems I have written to study how words and movement can be in conversation with each other. 
  • What was the last thing you wasted money on? I am always buying dresses thinking I’ll wear this to my next fancy event! despite never going to fancy events.
  • Is a hot dog a sandwich? I feel like hotdogs are in an untamed category of their own, which is what makes them so special, but if we are in the business of defining, my vote is on sandwich.