My Full Cover Letter
Hi! I’m Colore Grace Lincoln—a creative individual and media professional, personally deep diving in music, books, and pop culture, geeking for local bookshops and live music in Austin, Texas. I’m writing to express my intention to WORK.
My Weird
Early interests include Music, Dance, Pop Culture, Nerdcore, and filling Notebooks. From Ages 2-16, one week during every summer break, I spent being measured and healing in therapy at Shriner’s Children's Hospital in St. Louis, MO for my bone disease, XLH.
Dance classes started at age 4 and I started competing with jazz solos at age 9 at local cheer competitions. I was active in competitive dance until I was 17. I was accepted to attend Classen School of Advanced Studies as a Performance Dance major, with international baccalaureate level school work, enrolled 6th grade through 12th. With the school company, I performed multiple showtimes of the Nutcracker every December, modern dance performances every spring, and a few performances at the annual Oklahoma City Arts Festival. I attended two years of summer workshops at the Oklahoma City Ballet. I was selected to be a teacher's assistant for a high school SPED dance class my senior year in 2009. My first real job was teaching dance classes to students in ages ranging from 4-16 at my competitive dance studio, Top Hat Talent, starting during my last few years of high school, for a total of 3 years.
During college as a full-time student switching my major, I worked as many hours as I could at the to-go counter for Oklahoma’s favorite pizza chain, selling it with a fresh fake diamond nose-stud and the branded tie-dye shirt, worked opening shifts and holidays for my college town’s corner Starbucks, volunteered weekly with my Catholic church’s youth group, I helped the store visuals team open the Anthropologie store in OKC, and frequently helped members in my community with care-providing work. In my final years attending college, I reconnected with a friend from competitive dance who owned a local stationery shop, Chirps and Cheers. My finale years in college, I worked many happy hours as their Shop-Girl, maintaining the shop’s neatness and product organization, opening and closing the shop doors, managing backroom stock and filing piling up paperwork, and fulfilling customer orders. While I was working in the shop, I learned how to practice calligraphy, do custom foil letterpress, and complete large custom ordered wedding stationery sets.
In my 2013-2014 academic year, I was a Staff Writer at The Vista Newspaper (UCO’s biweekly), publishing my assigned pieces for campus print circulation and the online blog. My proudest byline was when my peer editor-in-chief let my 1,000+ word personal essay on attending the Gentlemen of the Road tour in Guthrie, OK in 2013 (organized by Mumford & Sons, featuring Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Alabama Shakes, a new cool band named HAIM) run above the front page fold with little-to-no-edits and my iPhone 4 photos.
Move to Austin, 2014
I moved to Austin in the middle of summer 2014 after visiting once in spring to see Ellie Goulding on the Delirium tour at the Austin Music Hall, right before graduating the following May with my B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Central Oklahoma. This 24 hour road trip helped open my perspective on the way my professional and creative life could grow and expand in many directions within my career with no real intentions on how yet. When I had the opportunity to move here a few months later, I knew Austin was a clear yes and I took the leap!
Colore Grace, Freelance Artist and Blogger, 2014-2015
While I was completing my hours toward my journalism degree and advertising minor, my plan was to focus these acquired soft and hard skills on my blog and small business offering custom hand-lettering designs and calligraphy. To start 2015, I created a weekly Instagram project using the hashtag #coloregraceletters to increase my custom print sales, grow my Instagram platform, and connect with other local small business owners and creators. Within that time, I wrote a monthly column for the blog Jojotastic with a downloadable design, sold artwork to Workman Publishing for their 2017 Page-a-Day Calendar, sold special edition prints at Sara-Kate Studios in Oklahoma City and an online-only limited edition print with the blogger City Sage, created artwork with a visuals team at Trader Joe’s to help open Austin’s Seaholm location, and still have artwork on display in store, I was a featured hand-lettering artist for Creative Market’s 2015 SXSW event, and hosted a pop-up at Madewell during the 2015 holiday season to sell my work in store. I closed my lettering business at the end of 2015 to pursue my advertising career full-time and practice other creative outlets. (I kept blogging.)
Ad Specialist, 2017-2022
I was promoted internally at KSM South in 2017 to a Media Coordinator. I quickly took on the responsibility of trafficking the complete quarterly Broadcast and Cable TV and Radio buys for a few beloved big Texas brands, featuring Whataburger and Tito’s Handmade Vodka. In 2018, I was a finalist for the Traffic Coordinator of the Year Award, given by the Austin Alliance for Women in Media. In my last year with KSM, I was promoted to Senior Ad Operations Specialist and worked daily with the Chicago-based digital team to build programmatic ad campaigns.
In January 2020, I joined Nexstar Digital as a Ad Operations Specialist to expand my working knowledge in managing nationwide digital ads, specializing in high volume OTT and CSV video campaigns and display campaigns using with third-party tracking tags to measure deliverable data, before the company decided to close the Austin based office a few months into all employees working from home during the global pandemic.
A few months ahead of the 2020 Election, I was hired by Break Something to be the lead Senior Ad Operations Specialist on the Ads team to run Direct Donate, Acquisition, and Persuasion digital ad campaigns supporting Democratic and Progressive political clients and candidates, and PAC organizations nationwide. As the only Ad Ops Specialist, I executed all campaign set-ups and management for each client’s individually organized campaign with weekly changes to tactics, target audiences, simultaneous call-to-action messaging launches, and ongoing budget optimizations on Facebook Ads Manager (Meta and Instagram Ads), Google Display Ads, Google Search campaigns, YouTube ads, Snapchat Ads, and third-party DSP platforms to host programmatic buys with media and tags hosted in Google Campaign Manager, including direct media buys with Pandora (Sirius XM) and Hulu. Winning elections by converting undecided voters to be active in State and local elections, engaging target audiences to support our candidates and their political messaging, and exceeding projected fundraising goals made working on our client’s campaigns a meaningful success. I was an active member of the Break Something Worker’s Union, formed during the summer of 2021, until I was disqualified by accepting a “manager” role in the fall. I continued to vocally support the union internally up until I was laid off during the post-election-cycle agency reevaluations following the 2022 midterms.
I recently gained freelance social media management and consulting time with a select few small business clients.
Assistant Editor, 2019-2021
My reading habit started in 2016. I started reading more to improve myself, aid my mental health, and to help my writing. I picked up more books. I started reading between 30-40 books per year, peaking at 50 books read in 2018, and I volunteered with the Texas Book Festival the same year. By joining a few meetings of my friend’s sci-fi book club, I met the Founder/Editor of a local literary magazine, Fields Magazine, and started as a Reader in early 2019. This time and all my reading sparked a new life in me! In October, I was hired as an Assistant Editor for American Short Fiction, reading monthly assigned short story submissions and sharing my feedback to the editorial staff. Within weeks of being welcomed to the ASF staff, I felt lucky to be in the room with many members of the Austin Literary community, whom I still look up to, and making new friends at their annual Stars at Night. My happiest experiences were with my friends and good writers having fun during a reading series hosted at The Line Hotel and at the Austin Lit Crawl at the Empire Control Room. I learned a lot by reading submissions and left the magazine in April 2021.
In summer of 2019, I started a community based book club at Figure 8 Coffee Purveyors (where I’ve been a regular happy customer roughly since it opened for business; I still can’t be sure how I arrived at the copper countertop the first time, and I stay grateful to keep showing up). As I continued to read with iced coffee every morning I could, I organized monthly in-person meet-ups using my Instagram starting in July 2019 until March 2020, when we transitioned to Zoom and then a few outdoor/social-distanced meetings as reading friends. Since the first meeting for PKD’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, we have read about 20 books, ranging from new Literary Fiction cult faves, like Sally Rooney, Classics, like Louise May Alcott and Toni Morrison, new-weird fictions, in the mind of Jeff VanderMeer, and a few nonfiction needs too. Our group grew tighter, and since 2021 we rotate and collectively select our next reads. We are currently in-between books, preparing for our next summer meeting and future reading!
I kept a type of personal syllabus for my reading for three years, and I read these BOOKS IN 2019, BOOKS IN 2020, and BOOKS IN 2021!!! And then, I decided to STOP using goodreads and Instagram for tracking and sharing my reading habits.
To start the new year in 2022, I created my own insane google sheet to track every book I’ve ever read up to now and LISTS of books to be read. I love it!!!!!
I’m still reading—
My Blog
Xanga, 2003 > MySpace, 2005 > Tumblr, 2009 > Wordpress, 2011 > Squarespace, 2014 > TinyLetter, 2018 > Substack 2020 - Present
I will never stop blogging.
I moved to Austin with my blog, hosted on coloregrace . com from Oklahoma City, OK in July 2014, the summer after undergrad, and kept it with my calligraphy business through 2015.
April 2016, I recommitted to my blog, and posted almost daily through the summer as I was processing and healing my last stress fracture.
July 2018, I recommitted to my blog; Sending a mini series of melodramatic text-only essays through TinyLetter the summer I moved into my studio.
March 2020, the Wednesday after We were sent to work from home for “two weeks,” I sent HOW TO DO NOTHING from the flatlined newsletter and created my Substack the same day.
In my heart and my body, I have been slowly recommitting to my body work long-term, daydreaming to my end writing goals.
I sent studio prose pieces over the summer from here.
After the election in November 2020, I wrote SLICE, a 100 day poetry project, using interchangeable lines I wrote and rearranged into 100 unique four-line poems, photographed, archived, and posted everyday into February 2021.
I tried to write reports in the summer of 2021, and my work kept flying away from me.
New poems (and revised work) sprung up, online in 2022.
When I returned home to Austin after my first time in NYC, traveling solo for one week in late August celebrating my birthday, I started clipping notes and links for COLORE’S NOTEBOOK.
My head is full of notes, my body is feeling more centered than before, my mind is clear on what I do and love, and I’m happy to report!
My Personal Best Online Writing Samples
COLORE’S NOTEBOOK #2 MATERIAL GIRL and #5 BOCK BOCK
MY TOP 100 (2022) and QUEEN POP
LOCAL SHOW NOTES 2022, and this year @ the Friendly Rio Venue
How to Do Nothing (A PRE-REQ BOOK REPORT)
Poetry!
I’m currently writing poetry and submitting to journals and magazines, and self-publishing select pieces on my blog. I co-created a poetry reading in Spring 2022 at All The Sudden featuring five other Austin-based poets, with full support from Spend Time Zine Mart.
DJing!
Hard launched with a quick 20 minute changeover set during SXSW 2023 at Mohawk with Marshall Headphones for the Hair of the Dog showcase, dancing with my friends Queer Vinyl Collective! Now spinning some Sunday mornings at Try Hard Coffee.
My Time
I write in two notebooks, write personal narrative poetry, and love my blogs. I’m writing, rewriting, and editing other deep body copy work. I read 30-40 books per year. I practice a combination of yoga, pilates and dance at odd hours, and I warm myself up with long looping walks around my beautiful neighborhood. I value laying out like a lizard at Deep Eddy and Barton Springs to read and be with my friends in the heat all summer long. I <3 Burgers. I love NYC. I love watching movies, and going to the movies any day, any time. I keep a growing list of anime to watch on my projector at night. The time it takes to think about writing and take my notes soaks up a lot of the other time. I support every local artist and band I meet, and I’m at the venues they play weekly. I love pretending to read with iced coffee, next to my talented, funny, and good friends at figure 8.
Currently thinking of more creative and weird experiences I want to add—
Thank you for reading how I might apply,
Colore