Name: Katie Quinlisk
School: FCRH ’18
Major: English
Hometown: West Chester, PA
Campus Involvement: Culture Columnist for The Ram, Bricolage Editor
1. What is it like interning at NYLON?
So much fun. I’m in the print editorial department, so I spend most of my time transcribing interviews, fact-checking articles, researching for the editors, transitioning features from print to web, pitching stories, and assisting the editors. The office vibe is really west coast and laid back, which is really refreshing in the publishing industry. Also there’s free snacks, a giveaway bin, and sometimes the editor who sits behind me brings her Chihuahua named Esteban to work.
2. Is there any advice you have for Rams looking to score an internship in the magazine industry?
I can only speak to editorial, but my biggest piece of advice would be to build a portfolio. Every position you apply for will ask for writing samples, so it’s really helpful to have a variation of pieces on hand to send to editors. It’s also just good practice to write often—on various topics and in varying voices. During my freshman and sophomore years I focused on building my portfolio with the The Ram and MODE on campus.
I would also advise Rams interested in working in magazines to aim low in the beginning. You’re not going to get your first internship at Cosmopolitan or Vogue—probably not even your second or third. Apply to publications with lower student interest and less allure. Redbook Magazine and Popular Mechanics get far fewer applicants than Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar, so you’ll be luckiest there. Also having a less glamourous publishing internship will quickly reveal whether you are genuinely interested in working at a magazine or if you’re more into the idea of working at a magazine. My first magazine internship was at Esquire. At the end of the day, any publishing internship, glamourous or not, will be a great experience and a resume booster that will help you get to those bigger publications.
Also, get scrappy and find a decent paying part-time job. Paid magazine internships are rare.
3. What’s your favorite Fordham memory?
Under The Tent 2016. I was dancing, someone stepped on my foot, and it started bleeding…like a lot…like murder, crime scene, Red-Cross-Donation-truck-got-in-an-accident-on-the-freeway bleeding. I looked down, and there was just this huge puddle of blood on the dance floor. I terrified everyone around me, it was undoubtedly extra, but I think it’s a personally important anecdote.
If we’re talking sentimental memories, same weekend but all the other parts. My best friends and I are cute, and fun, and very good at Spring Weekend-ing.
4. Dream job?
Writer. My dream job includes both freelancing at the level where I don’t have to beg to be published and writing fiction, YA, romance, and children’s picture books under four different pseudonyms. Also illustrating my picture books under a separate illustrator pseudonym.
5. Name three celebrities you would want to join your squad:
Barack Obama, Tina Fey, Stevie Nicks.
6. Speaking of squads…Can you tell us about that one time you joined Taylor Swift’s?
Yeah, I didn’t list Taylor in celebrities I would want to join my squad because she’s already in my squad. One time she invited me to her apartment in TriBeCa to eat dinner and listen to 1989 before its release date. I held Olivia Benson, ate one of her homemade cookies, and we hugged and chatted as friends do. Her house smells like vanilla and those white Anthropologie candles with copper lids and old things, and she has a huge photo b&w close-up of Ed Sheeran in her entrance all freckly and flipping off the camera.
6. What are you currently watching on Netflix?
Love is my favorite TV show maybe ever and I just finished Season 2. I also recently binged 13 Reasons Why, and it was somehow simultaneously the absolute best and the absolute worst thing I’ve ever watched.
7. Go-to karaoke song?
Sk8r Boi.
8. Favorite NYC neighborhood?
The Bronx in the warm seasons, the Village in the cold seasons.
9. Is there anything people would be surprised to know about you?
I’m completely disinterested in the Kardashians (and Jenners). Not in a culturally snobby way. I wish I could be. I genuinely worry I’ll never truly succeed in media because of it. It’s a very real concern of mine.
10. What is one thing everyone should do before they graduate?
Study abroad, and visit Paris with your best friend. If you can’t, travel independently or make a promise to yourself to travel sometime post-graduation.