The Short Story
My journey started on the stages of New York City working as an actor as well as a literary manager for an off-off Broadway theater company. After 15 years working with language and storytelling, I moved into publishing where my stage experience combined with my rigorous attention to detail allowed me to flourish.
I strengthened my skills by attending, and graduating from, the NYU Diploma program for Copyediting, Proofreading, and Fact-Checking. I moved to beautiful Providence, Rhode Island and began working freelance. My clients include publishers, fiction writers, digital content providers, and screenwriters. I love horror and dark fantasy but can work in any style. I'm also—don't laugh—a lover of indexing, especially works of literary criticism, religion, theater, and film.
The Long Story
Ever since I was a child I’ve enjoyed being taken away to other worlds. I was always daydreaming and getting in trouble for reading while I walked around everywhere. My love of storytelling led me to become a storyteller myself. I spent fifteen years as a performer in New York City as an actor and occasional dancer. For several years I also worked as the literary manager of a New York City theater company. Time after time I found myself working on new plays and developmental works.
During the rehearsal process for new plays, we had the benefit of having the playwright in the room. After each rehearsal, the script would update and morph a bit to adjust to what the playwright saw. As actors, we had the chance to speak with them directly, to give them our thoughts about our characters, the arc of the characters, and the structure of the piece. I had an even greater collaborative experience working with companies who created pieces together as a company. I had the opportunity to work in Russia to develop a piece on Hercules as well as the opportunity to create a movement and spoken-word piece in downtown Manhattan. These experiences gave me the skills to collaborate with others artistically this includes, constructing a narrative from the inside, listening to others' ideas and working to strengthen them, performing in real-time making adjustments on the fly, and being open to always trying new things and learning. During my years on stage, I also developed a keen ear for active dialogue.
My background working directly with books started in New York City slinging books at the Strand Bookstore. Eventually, I ended up as the assistant to the general manager Eddie Sutton. The stacks of books on my floors were goliath during that period of my life. The stacks on my floor have gotten smaller—no more deep employee discount—but my love of the written word has not. More recently, I spent two years working as an editorial assistant for Derrick Hussey at Hippocampus Press and was able to help facilitate and usher along publications by a few of my favorite writers including T. E. D. Klein and John Langan. I was given the opportunity to proofread and index works by H. P. Lovecraft, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mary Shelley, and Arthur Machen. After those two years, I knew the editorial path was the right one for me.
To strengthen my skills, I enrolled in—and graduated from—the New York University Diploma program in Copyediting, Proofreading, and Fact-checking. This program helped me polish my skills in grammar and syntax, and gave me plenty of additional practice editing. During my last semester, I began working at the organization I’m currently with as the digital editor for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization that protects our First Amendment rights not just in comics publishing but also in our libraries and schools.
In addition to my work at CBLDF, I have freelance experience assisting editors with reading slush, beta reading novels and short stories for writers, proofreading and editing books for publishers, and providing copy edits for short story submissions. I love genre fiction and I'm always reading several fantasy and horror books at once. Outside of the literary world, I clear my thoughts as a distance runner—traveling all over Providence—and occasionally, I spend my evenings running role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons as a Game Master.