why i want this job

Dear John, Anne, and the Team at VOLUME 0,

Working for a literary publication makes me feel more invigorated and alive than almost anything. Sifting through submissions, dipping into different worlds, and feeling part of a conversation that spills out of bars & readings & into the streets of a city with a storytelling pulse. A pulse that VOLUME 0 clearly has its finger on.

I've had the privilege of working across editorial roles at BOMB, Flaunt, and Paste Magazine, all while nurturing my own fiction, essays, and poetry. More recently, I've worked as a professional ghostwriter for a range of founders building climate startups, viral marketing agencies, CPG brands, etc., supporting newsletters and shaping editorial strategy. I've learned an enormous amount from that world, and think more fluently about technology than I ever expected to. Paradoxically, it's deepened my conviction that nurturing a digital and personal world of contemporary literature is more necessary than ever.

I wrote and peer-edited short stories at Syracuse, then completed a summer seminar in the short story at the University of Oxford. Within that education, what mattered most to me was staying true to my voice, never domesticating my stories, or my peers' stories, or trying to fit them in a little box.

We need fiction that resists the typical mold, modern yet timeless stories that make language exciting again. It's time to untame the sentence. We need narratives that refuse optimization in favor of surprise, contradiction, texture, emotional risk. We need stories capable of making sense of what it feels like to live inside the world at this time. That's what excites me so much about VOLUME 0. You are building a scene around a particular kind of literary ambition, championing writers willing to push against inherited forms.

I also understand that literary magazines run on invisible work like maintaining submissions, proofreading, coordinating contributors, organizing events, answering emails, keeping production moving, making hundreds of mini editorial decisions that let great writing reach readers. Those are responsibilities I've truly enjoyed throughout my editorial career, and I'd be glad to take them on as part of a small, ambitious team, helping remarkable fiction find its readers, and contributing to the kind of literary community our cultural moment needs.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I'd be thrilled to contribute to the next chapter of VOLUME 0.

Warmly,

— Audrey Valentine Weisburd