About Me
Experience
Four years as a secondary-school English teacher
Assistant publicity director at E.P. Dutton Publishers
Copyeditor at Character LLC, where I edited over 150 brand books
Freelance editor of six novels, a mid-level chapter book, a memoir, and a business plan
I don’t want to limit my editing practice to any specific genre or field. I am, however, particularly interested in literary fiction, young adult fiction, and memoir.
Biographical Details
I earned a BA in English literature and an MS in education from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
For four years, I taught English—my introduction to copyediting—at The Day Prospect Hill School in New Haven, Connecticut. Then, after a three-month sojourn in Europe, my husband and I moved to New York City, where I worked at E.P. Dutton Publishers as assistant publicity director.
In 1971, my husband and I, our two-year-old daughter, and our soon-to-be-born son relocated to Portland, Oregon. Subsequently, I worked for four years at Lewis and Clark College and for eleven years at Oregon Health and Science University in administration positions.
In 1991, I joined Will Vinton Studios, home of Claymation and of the animators who brought the California Raisins and the M&Ms to robust life, as executive assistant to the president.
My experience at Vinton led directly to my position as office manager and copyeditor at Character, where I worked from 2002 until 2019. Character evolved from an offshoot of the animation studio to an independent and successful brand consultancy. The product of a Character engagement was a book summarizing the insights about brands and their characters developed by our team and the client’s team at Character “camp.” Between 2002 and 2012, I copyedited approximately 150 of these books of about sixty pages each. Our clients included, among many others, Amazon, Target, Deschutes Brewery, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, and Discovery Channel, with characters as varied and iconic as the Pillsbury Doughboy, Cap’n Crunch, Mr. Mayhem, and Juan Valdez.
While at Character, I also honed my freelance editing skills. I have copyedited six novels, a mid-level chapter book, a successful business plan, and a book celebrating the life and art of a friend’s husband.
Community Service and Interests
I belong to the Editorial Freelancers Association, the Northwest Editors Guild, Willamette Writers, the Jane Austen Society of North America, and a book group.
I’m a sustaining member of the Junior League of Portland. My most rewarding experiences as an active member of the JLP were participating in creating and publishing the second edition of a guide to handicap access in Portland—Circling the City—and chairing the Arts Advocacy Committee.
I have been a member of the boards of several Portland theater companies and of the board of the Friends of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts.
I’m enthusiastic about exercise and fitness and have been an avid runner, completing a number of Cascade Run Offs, fourteen Hood-to-Coast Relays, and two Portland Marathons. My husband and I continue to jog together.
I love travel, both domestic and foreign.
I knit!