Born and raised in and around Chicago, I have lived in three time zones and four countries. I now cool my heels on Bainbridge Island, Washington with my two sons and the world’s friendliest ninety-pound hound. My favorite US poet, Theodore Roethke, died here, and like him I try to learn by going where I have to go.
Work
As an editor, I draw on decades of experience as a technical writer, business writer, research librarian, and occasional journalist.
I started as a librarian because I thought of myself as an arch-generalist. That was a young person’s thinking: still more comfortable asserting what I wasn’t than what I was. Years at the reference desks of research universities, private colleges, and law schools made it clear that I took my greatest pride in being a sort of snap expert. I didn’t have all the answers, but I knew how to find them–and far more importantly, I knew how to convince students that asking interesting questions was more important than simply documenting their initial assumptions.
Life took me to New York, and New York took me to publishing for a while, as the acquisitions and development editor at a small professional publisher. Like half of Brooklyn at the time, I also designed databases and websites for a bit, until I realized that I’d need to make that sort of work my life’s business or leave it to others. I flew to Dubai the day after Barack Obama won his first term as president, which was great timing…but after having left my job to serve as a short-term consultant at a Dubai university while the global economy crumbled, which wasn’t as hot.
After returning to the US, I wrote business proposals at Pearson Education and took my job and my young family to the Cayman Islands, as one does. Pearson sold my division to another company while I was overseas, and the deal stipulated that all employees would work exclusively in the US. My kids were in school, and I wasn’t eager to move them again. Not being authorized to work in Cayman, I turned to freelance business writing and editing, working mostly with European clients. We returned to the US, where I began editing manuscripts while working as a technical writer at a local utility.
Not Work
Five years as a freelancer nearly convinced me that leisure time is a myth. But I do enjoy hiking, coaching my sons’ sports teams, cooking, and hacking away at my guitar.
Aside from those things, I’ve always enjoyed studying the work of professionals I admire and trying to follow their lead in my own small-scale way. I’ve renovated houses in that spirit and mixed hardcore albums, brewed beer and built furniture.