84 Writing Jobs, Internships, Lit Mag Opps, Fellowships, Pitch Calls, and More

Jobs for Writers (6.13.25) | Remote roles at PRH and Princeton University Press, pitch calls paying up to $2,500, and how a memoirist broke into radio!

Jun 13, 2025

∙ Paid

Welcome to Sub Club’s Jobs for Writers!

I don’t know where you are, but where I am—the armpit of the Eastern Seaboard, aka Washington, DC—it is as hot and as swampy (I assume) as actual hell. The AC? Blasting. The will to do anything outside of lying down in cool sheets that smell like too much detergent? Diminishing. I am in my element, baby. And yes, “my element” is “sweating in unbearable humidity.”

Enough about me, though. Let’s talk about jobs! A good batch this time around, including pitch calls paying up to $2,500 (again!), some remote publishing gigs, some jobs for our friends across the pond (the UK, I’m talking about the UK), and a fair deal of lit mag opps too.

But first, let’s get into our weekly How to Break In with a publishing-adjacent career: writing for radio. Because if you’re open to it, your writing career can blossom in unexpected ways—like, I don’t know, over literal electromagnetic waves. Much to see, much to do, much to learn!

How to Break In and Become a Radio Producer with Polly Hansen

This week, I had a nice little chat with Polly Hansen, memoirist by day and Associate Producer at American Urban Radio Networks by night. Well, actually, that might be the other way around. I don’t know. Don’t mind me.

Often, I think a lot about how writers can apply themselves to fulfilling work that isn’t just straight-up traditional publishing. And Polly—who has a Master’s of Music in Flute Performance, and whose first job was as an editor at a literal flute magazine (!!)—is proof of that. “I love my current job and have been doing it for 25 years,” she writes. “My radio writing is certainly fulfilling and informs the public about important issues, plus I get to interview all kinds of fascinating people.”

Ahead, Polly and I chat about how she went from keyboard editor to associate producer; getting into radio without going to journalism school; and the advice she has for folks curious about whether radio can scratch their creative itch.

As always, you can submit your own How to Break In story here.

rachael vaughan clemmons: What's your background?

Polly Hansen: Master’s of Music in flute performance. My first job was as an editor of a flute magazine. My writing career took off from there.

rvc: Can you walk us through starting at flute magazine (very cool) to working in radio? Was there something in particular that interested you in the radio format?

PH: After graduating with a master’s degree in flute performance, I was living in Chicago and waitressing at a pizza joint while auditioning for orchestras. I needed extra money, and when I saw this classified ad for a keyboard editor, I was intrigued and wondered, “What's a keyboard editor?” I called and bluffed my way into the interview, saying I could play piano, which was true, but barely.

During my interview, the first thing the publisher asked me was, "If you sat down at the piano right now, what would you play for me?" I said, "Absolutely nothing." He smirked, then slid a four-page publication across his desk and said, "What do you think of this?" It was a newsletter called Flute Talk. I gave him an analysis on the spot, told him how he could improve it, and after several editorial tests over a course of two weeks, he hired me as the editor.

I expanded it into a four-color, 48-page magazine and increased the advertising inches by 700%. I interviewed great flutists like James Galway, Jean Pierre Rampal, and dozens of others. I honed my natural writing skills and improved my editing skills on that job. I moved on after five years to become Director of Communications at a corporate gig, then later started my own newsletter on corporate sponsorship of the arts, called The Muse: Sponsorship Review, which I ran by myself from my basement for three years at $69 per yearly subscription. This was back in the 1990s. My subscribers included The Smithsonian Institute, The Atlanta Zoo, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Minnesota Orchestra, and many other major arts organizations. I launched it at an American Orchestra League conference. Jane Alexander, who was president of the National Endowment for the Arts at the time, said my newsletter was "good, really good."

The way I got into radio was because a friend of mine had started a radio syndication company. I had just sold my newsletter—it was exhausting to run as a solo venture—and he was looking for a part-time person to promote the public affairs show he and his partner produced. I started working for him, and after a couple of years, I said, “Hey, I have writing experience interviewing experts. I'd like to produce some shows.” I wrote one, he liked it, and I became an associate producer. I’ve been doing that part-time by choice for 25 years, averaging about three to four segments a month.

rvc: What does your day-to-day look like?

PH: I’m a producer of two nationally syndicated shows—Radio Health Journal, covering current health, research, and medical news, and Viewpoints Radio, which covers current affairs, but no politics. They’re heard on a total of 1,700 commercial radio stations across the country with 3.5 million weekly listeners per show.

I come up with story ideas and then pitch them to the executive producers. For story ideas, I read newspapers, magazines, subscribe to various news outlets, plus Publishers Marketplace for new book releases, and search social media. I interview non-fiction authors, but also researchers, doctors, and college professors.

Topics that grab my interest are always issue-related. For example, John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis. I interviewed him recently for Radio Health Journal. I’ve also interviewed several memoirists whom I learned about when I was still on Twitter/X—I have since deleted my X account. For example, one memoir by Casey Mulligan Walsh, The Full Catastrophe, is about losing family members to hypercholesterolemia and having it herself. Perfect topic for Radio Health Journal.

For book authors, I request a review copy from the publisher, arrange the interview through their publicist, or if they don’t have one, by contacting them through social media. If a book isn’t involved and it’s a research paper or article I read, I contact the various people cited in the article through the institutions or universities they’re affiliated with, or research the subject for entirely different potential guests for a different angle. Or if I hear a story at a social gathering or learn of someone with a medical condition or someone who has an interesting job in a field I didn’t know about, I might interview them and build a story around it.

I interview and record guests via Zoom, transcribe the interviews, and then write the scripts incorporating soundbites. The executive editor edits my work, then hands it over to the voiceover talent and sound engineer. I get a byline at the end of each segment: “This story was written and produced by Polly Hansen.” Each segment is anywhere from eight to thirteen minutes long. My stories air on terrestrial radio but are also available for download as a podcast.

Recently, we’ve begun doing podcasts of my full interviews. For example, the Radio Health Journal segment with John Green was thirteen minutes on radio, but the podcast-exclusive episode, “One on One: Author John Green’s Mission to End Tuberculosis,” is twenty minutes and features our full conversation. An example for Viewpoints Radio is my interview with author and BBC correspondent, Hayley Campbell, who wrote a terrific book called All the Living and the Dead. We had a fantastic conversation, but you miss a lot of what we talked about in the scripted version. We recently reissued it as a one-on-one podcast—you can hear that version, “One on One: Hayley Campbell delves into all things death,” wherever you listen to podcasts.

rvc: I feel like radio is a place that can still scratch a creative itch for writers—it feels like it exercises some similar muscles. For folks interested in working in radio, or as a producer in some facet, what advice would you offer? How can others, well, break in?

PH: Most radio producers go to journalism school. My story is unusual in that I didn't. That being said, you could pitch (NPR) with a story idea. However, right now their very existence is threatened.

Syndicated shows like the ones I produce hire staff to do the writing and producing. In other words, they don't work with freelancers. That would be the case for radio stations owned by iHeart Communications, Audacy, etc., which have their own syndicated in-house shows, or they take our AURN syndicated programs.

I got lucky in many respects, but I also had a lot of guts and put myself out there even when I wasn't sure what I was doing. If you’re burning to get into radio, you might contact your locally owned radio station, a small one that is owned by an individual who serves the local community, and see what they do to fulfill FCC requirements for public affairs programming. If you scroll to the bottom of the station website, there’s usually an FCC public file link. Some stations that are strictly music-oriented fulfill that requirement by airing news and weather, others use public service announcements, and still others, even if they are music-oriented, might have a dedicated public affairs show.

Maybe you could be the person to create that show. Would you get paid? Probably not, at least not at first, but maybe someday you would become indispensable. Or you could do it because it's fun? You might run into brokered stations. That’s where you pay to have your program on the air. My radio writing is certainly fulfilling and informs the public about important issues, plus I get to interview all kinds of fascinating people.

Writing for radio is my main paid gig today, which I got into through a back door and made a career of it. With ingenuity, a little chutzpah, and maybe breaking into a niche market, you may do the same. There are a gazillion niche trade magazines out there. My getting into radio, though? Pure luck.

Polly Hansen is the winner of Memoir Magazine’s 2022 Memoir Book Prize in the coming-of-age category for her as yet unpublished memoir NASTY GIRL. She is a producer of two nationally syndicated radio programs Radio Health Journal and Viewpoints, and has a master’s degree in flute performance. She blogs about self-love and intimacy at pollyhansen.com.

Is your job—or a friend’s job, or a friend’s friend’s job—looking for a writerly person to do something… writerly?

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