Elaine Feinstein

I've just found out that I've been successful in my application to the internship at the John Rylands library this summer. I'll be working with the Elaine Feinstein archive for two weeks in June, and I couldn't be more excited at the prospect.

Lots of the archive is stored in boxes that haven't been looked through yet. I've seen some of the stuff that's already been archived and it was a book-geek's picture of heaven. Elaine Feinstein seems to have corresponded with every author you've ever heard of, and several that you haven't but you should have.

For my internship I get to pick a box of the unarchived stuff and work my way through it. It's like being invited to sit and browse in the best bookshop ever, and nobody's going to frown at you, or tell you to buy something or leave.

The internship was open to postgraduate creative writing students at UoM. The reason for that being that it's hoped that the archive work will inspire something creative. That's probably the part I'm most nervous of. I've never done anything like this before so I just don't know how this will inspire me. I'm already worrying that I'll be too overwhelmed to be able to get my head around writing something creative.

Wish me luck.