What is your profession?
I’m a writer and an intern at Bullett magazine.
What do you do for them?
I’m an editorial intern, so I work with our editorial director, Nick Haramiss, researching, transcribing, writing for the online issue. I’m actually here with John Ortved, who’s a writer for the New York Times and Vanity Fair.
Wow, how fun. Are you shadowing him for the day?
Yes. He’s a mentor.
Good for you. That sounds awesome.
Yeah, he’s a really cool guy.
What’s your favorite thing about your job?
All of the amazing people I get observe my boss work with. The people I get to interview secondhand, working on their transcriptions. The general aesthetic of Bullett. It’s very trend-setting and on the verge of trend-breaking. I feel like I’m on the cusp of fashion and media in your twenties–everything that’s current and going on for my age, I hear about it first from Bullett.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
No, I didn’t. I was studying singing and songwriting until last year.
What changed it?
I got vocal nodes, actually, so I can’t sing anymore. I’ve always been writing, and I love writing. I had a blog, and I met someone from Bullett and he read my blog.
What’s the name of your blog?
It was The Manhattan Diaries, but I discontinued it. I think I might start it up again soon with a friend, but I’m so busy with school right now–I’m at the New School, in journalism, and I’m a senior, hoping to go on to Columbia Journalism School for grad school, so I don’t really have time to have a blog.
As a writer, what do you like to read?
I just finished reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids, which broke my heart. She’s such an amazing writer. You read what she’s saying, and [you know] she’s speaking from the heart. She really has the power to convey a feeling.
If you had a life philosophy–I know you’re rather young–but what would it be at this juncture?
When you think that it’s over, it’s not, that’s the point when it starts. And always to be really positive, because even if it’s the worst day in New York City–and everyone has those days when they’re like, I hate New York, I’m going home–and then the next day is the best day you’ll ever have in the city. It’s like Joan Didion’s quote about how she’s in love with New York, but not in the colloquial sense. I have days like that, and then I have days where my stiletto breaks in the subway grate, and it seems like the most awful thing in the world. But you don’t leave, you don’t go home. So [I would say] always stay.