# Launch Your Literary Career ### This page includes a comprehensive list of the Literary Career Program's current and forthcoming resources, as well as our motivation statement. Please see our "Mentorship" and "Professional Development Funding" pages for further details. ## Career Support Resources Open all sections Close all sections ### Professional Development & Publishing Funding for PhDs expand\_more PhD Candidates in Harvard's English Department are invited to apply for [**Professional Development & Publishing Funding**](/professional-development-publishing-funding-phds). This funding allows PhD candidates to replace one section of teaching with an internship or professional development project for one semester, while still maintaining their full Harvard salary. Students are also welcome to apply for this funding on top of their full teaching assignment, if they wish to take on an internship while still TFing two sections. ### Professional Development Mentors expand\_more Our Professional Development Mentors are students who receive LC's Summer Professional Development Awards and Term-Time funding for PhDs. Each fall, we invite our new class of Mentors to speak about their internships and projects at LC's Professional Development Symposium. Then, throughout the academic year, our Mentors work with the LC team to advise their peers and help us develop new career support resources. LC is thrilled to have already supported 50+ Mentors, many of whom have written essays about their summer professional development experiences for our [Mentorship page](/student-alumni-mentorship). ### Summer Professional Development Awards expand\_more Our [**Summer Professional Development Awards**](/professional-development-funding) support students' internships and professional development projects. Each year, students apply for funding in May, receive their award notifications in June, and serve as Professional Development Mentors the following academic year. Since LC's first summer award cycle in 2022, we have funded 50+ students, not including our 2025 cohort. ### Alumni Careers Database expand\_more This private database contains a growing list of alumni from the English Department's graduate program, their career fields, and contact information for any alumni who have affirmatively told us that they would not mind being contacted by students. If you are a current student or recent alumnus, and you want to find a mentor in your field from our graduate alumni network, please reach out to Gwen Urdang-Brown () for more information. ### Alumni Mentorship Events expand\_more Each academic year, Literary Careers hosts alumni mentorship events on campus and virtually. All current students and alumni of the Harvard English Department are invited to attend. Please see our [Mentorship page](/student-alumni-mentorship) for more information. ### Professional Development Symposium expand\_more Each year, Literary Careers hosts an informal Professional Development Symposium to kick off our year of mentorship events and welcome everyone back to the Barker Center. At this event, we invite undergraduate and graduate students to speak about their summer internships and connect with peers in their fields of interest. We also use this opportunity to introduce each year's class of Professional Development Mentors and share our calendar of alumni and *Literary Papers* events. ## Motivation The career prospects of our department’s students are changing. While technological innovations are creating new literary careers, Covid-19, among other factors, has interrupted the academic hiring process for tenure-track positions in the humanities. The department has already recognized these shifts in our panels and classes connecting current students with alumni who have developed successful, intellectually fulfilling careers. The training that we receive in English is marketable and in demand. Every organization needs communicators, scholars, storytellers, writers, designers, and project managers—and there are entire industries that rely primarily on humanities learning, such as curriculum design, EdTech, English teaching, nonprofit work, curating, and publishing. Yet, to equip ourselves for our new professional conditions, our responsibilities as a department have increased. The Literary Careers Program is designed to help students identify, pursue, and obtain intellectually fulfilling, gainful employment. We will expand the department’s ongoing efforts and offer more practical support: guiding students through the processes of resume and CV building, developing technological skills, and seeking internships early in the PhD. This program is part of our ongoing work to recognize that each student’s work towards developing their career comes with different challenges and degrees of urgency, due to inequities related to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. For younger graduate students in particular, what it means to be a scholar in the twenty-first century has changed. The Literary Careers Program is seizing this chance to identify, explore, and make space for English Department graduates in an increasing number of career fields that will leverage our training to support intellectually fulfilling lives.