Launch your career in book publishing
The Milkweed Fellowship
About the Milkweed Fellowship
The Milkweed Fellowship is grounded in our belief that books have the potential to change the way we see the world, and that equity is essential to a vibrant, diverse, and empowered literary ecosystem.
This paid, one- to two-year immersion program is designed to offer the tools, experience, and exposure necessary to pursue a career in book publishing. Intended to provide an alternative route to leadership in an industry where the prerequisite to an entry-level position is typically an unpaid internship, this learning-oriented position seeks to provide entry to those historically underrepresented among workers in book publishing—Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, and those with disabilities—so they may advance, discover, and champion transformative literature for years to come. This position is based on-site in our Minneapolis office and is full time (non-exempt, 40 hours per week, for 12–24 months). Compensation includes a salary, generous paid time off, and health and dental benefits.
2024-2025 Milkweed Fellows: Alex Guerra & Brianna Reed
Alex Guerra is a Mexican-American designer and illustrator from the Chicagoland area. Prior to obtaining the Milkweed fellowship role, Alex worked as a Graphic Designer for Molex. He created and independently published a two-book series focused on medicinal plants and the Tarot—Tarolixir 2022 (Books 1 & 2). His creative works usually focus on plants, nature, and culture. He also received his BFA in Illustration and Design from the Cleveland Institute of Art.
From the Navajo Nation, Brianna Reed is the Diné author of multi-genre works that have appeared in Leonardo Fine Arts magazine, The Tribal College Journal, The Yellow Medicine Review, and Into the Unknown Together: A Climate Sci-Fi Anthology. By gaining her BFA in Nonfiction through the Institute of American Indian Arts, she has earned opportunities to present work across the nation, in Mexico, the Fine Arts Work Center of Cape Cod, and now through the Milkweed Editions fellowship. Now pursuing her MFA in Fiction through IAIA, she has also entered her third year penning her column, “The Moccasin Millennial” with The Tribal College Journal.
Congratulations and gratitude to our extraordinary Finalists for the 2024-2025 Milkweed Fellowship: Cody Kour and Rachel Blood
Who We Are
Milkweed Editions was formed in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our mission is to identify, nurture, and publish transformative literature, and to build an engaged community around it. As a mission-driven independent book publisher, we publish 25–30 new books of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction each year, as well as continuing to print and support authors published in prior years such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ada Limón, Jos Charles, Elizabeth Rush, and J. Drew Lanham. Our books have recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and been named finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Milkweed Editions is located in Open Book, a literary and book arts center that also houses Milkweed Books, our independent bookstore. Open Book is accessible by light rail and bus lines.
By turns poetic and lucid, sinuous and accessible, this verse translation of the Mayan epic—the first of its kind, and the first in the Seedbank series—breathes new life into an essential tale.
Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons.
Rising weaves the firsthand accounts of those who are living through sea level rise today with eyewitness reporting from our shoreline’s disappearing places.