The first time I went through the editorial process, I was 7 years old. As one of the students from my school chosen for a young writers book fair, I entered a biography about my grandfather. The way the teacher tweaked my phrases and helped me decide how to illustrate the story was fascinating. 

 

I was hooked. In fact, you might say: “That’s all she wrote.”

 

I graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Texas. After a year of writing newsletters for the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, I landed a job as a reporter at a weekly newspaper in Virginia. Without a separate staff of editors, we reporters read over each other’s work. I discovered a knack and love for editing — particularly copy editing — and spent the next couple of decades plying that trade at daily newspapers on the East Coast and in Texas.

 

They say newspaper ink never leaves your veins; in more recent years, I’ve applied the principles and discipline of deadline-driven newspaper editing to a wide variety of public relations roles, including for a law enforcement agency and a cultural magazine. 

 

Additionally, I’ve worked on the front end to help both fiction and nonfiction ideas take shape. My seasoned approach to communicating for a mass audience lends itself to keeping readers turning the page (or scrolling, as the case may be). Proofreading cookbooks and food blogs, job-recruitment articles, and academic and trade material rounds out my work.

 

One can’t be a good editor without being a solid writer and vice-versa. Honing my own words surely played a part in my winning awards for articles on a subject I’m passionate about: people with disabilities. 

 

I look forward to using the breadth and depth of my experience to continue delivering professional-quality text to inboxes and bookshelves.