Thomas received a PhD in English from the University of Iowa, where he is Special Assistant to the President for Communications and Research and teaches interdisciplinary courses. He has taught writing, literature, and interdisciplinary subjects at Cardinal Stritch College (Milwaukee), Michigan State University, and Moorhead State University (Minnesota). Tom has published essays in regional and national publications. Books include The Grace of Grass and Water: Writing in Honor of Paul Gruchow (edited collection, Ice Cube Press, 2007) and Under a Midland Sky (essays, Ice Cube Press, 2008). He has edited and proofread for Ice Cube Press and the Minnesota Historical Society Press, and he has served as manuscript reader for numerous academic journals and publishers. Tom is married and has two high-school-aged children who are active in band and other musical activities. The family also includes three rescued and retired racing greyhounds.

Maggie has an MA in English literature from the University of Northern Iowa and a BA in English teaching (grades 7–12). She has taught and tutored many junior high and high school students about the writing process. Teaching allowed her the opportunity to score thousands of standardized essay tests geared for those ranging in age from fourth grade to high school. Maggie's most recent work was as a full-time proofreader of standardized test booklets, teaching manuals, pamphlets, and online documents. However, she considers her most exciting new project to be the care of her one-year-old daughter, Louise.

Julia has a PhD in English literature from Tulane University and started writing her first novel (lamentably unfinished) at the age of ten. After a twenty-year stint in academia, she became a full-time freelance editor several years ago in anticipation of the demand for professional editing services expanding greatly with the new publishing opportunities offered by her favorite thing in the world, the Internet. She has experience editing novels, dissertations, research papers, government documents, legal briefs, scientific articles, blogs, reviews, sermons, application essays, and pretty much everything in between. When not editing, reading, or writing, she can be found knitting or attending the current cultural festival in New Orleans.

After obtaining a BA in culture and linguistics, Lori traveled extensively and became fluent in Spanish. While overseas, she wrote and published a grammar book in English, Spanish, and a tribal language to assist in the ongoing culture study of the area. Lori is currently pursuing a degree in professional writing and maintains a 4.0 GPA; several years ago, while pursuing her degree in computer information science, she was awarded several honors, including the Outstanding Student Award for her graduating class, and several certifications. She has published various editorials and has worked as a professional editor for three years. Her hobbies include photography, freelance writing, and the advertising industry.

Arnold is a retired award-winning newspaper editor and journalism professor who has been freelancing since retirement. His experience runs the gamut from academic presses to fiction, from dissertations to educational and professional discourses. He is a graduate of Syracuse University and prides himself on being a nitpicking editor who always strives to hone the writer’s words rather than rewrite them. He grew up in New York and lived in the Northeast until retiring to Louisville, Kentucky.

Ted is a native of Boston, Massachusetts. He earned a BA in English literature from the University of Michigan, an MA in creative writing from Boston University, and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. He was an instructor at the Boston Arts Academy, an admission-based public high school for gifted students. He taught fiction writing at Boston University, and literature and fiction writing at the University of Iowa. His fiction has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly and Damnation Books, and he was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Award for Best New Writing. He worked as a restaurant critic and music writer for Boston’s Weekly Dig. His interviews with national acts can be found on band web sites.

Andrea is an editor and a translator from Spanish and Portuguese. She holds an MFA in literary translation and an MA in Spanish from the University of Iowa. As editor and translator, she specializes in literature, literary and film criticism, history, and art history. When not mucking about with language, she loves cooking and traveling.

Katie has a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She has traveled abroad with the Creativity Workshop to Dublin, Ireland. Katie enjoys writing fictional short stories, but oftentimes finds it easier to draw upon her own life's adventures when writing. She continues to learn about the craft of writing by taking online writing workshops. Also an avid reader, Katie enjoys reading collections of short stories and memoirs. She lives in Champaign, Illinois, and enjoys spending time reading and journaling in the many sidewalk cafes in the downtown area. She is currently employed by Carle Hospital as a project management assistant in their facilities department. Katie also enjoys baking, taking long walks, hosting dinner parties, and watching movies.

Sharon has been a professional editor for over 25 years. She has a BA in modern languages from the University of Toronto, a BEd from the University of Toronto, and is currently part of the humanities MA program at the University of Western Ontario. She plans to begin a doctorate in theory and criticism. A long-time investigative journalist and book coach, Sharon loves to help writers and has a special interest in working with scholars. She is a writing tutor to university students, a teaching assistant in the humanities, and a teacher of creative writing. She is a member of the Editors Association of Canada and of the Canadian Society for Discourse and Writing.

Karen has a BA in art history from the University of Massachusetts, where she also received the Distinguished Scholarship in Art prize. Upon graduation, she worked for over ten years at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she managed archival information for approximately 50,000 black and white photographs. She has a published book of poems and is currently working on a book on the life of the artist Joseph Cornell. Karen also enjoys painting, reading, and walks with her bull terrier.

Susan first recognized her interest in words and grammar in the third grade. Since then, she has traveled widely, attended Boston University and the University of Iowa, married, and worked in medical transcription, event planning, construction, art consulting, and freelance editing. Working for over ten years with a local historical preservation firm, she edited hundreds of archival documents distributed to individual, city, county, and state clients. She appreciates the variety and creativity of editing and usually learns something from each text. Susan lives in Washington state with her husband, Chris, and also enjoys studying jazz piano, painting portraits, doing yoga, and dancing.

Beginning his career as a writer/editor for different trade magazines, Steve altered course to pursue a passion for international affairs, completing a master’s degree at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, where he was also associate editor of the Journal of International Affairs. He later joined a multinational corporation in New York City as an analyst/writer of sovereign risk, and for the past decade he has managed a team of sovereign risk analysts. Steve is once again altering course to leave the corporate world behind for a freelance writing and editing career and entrepreneurial endeavors. Steve has lived in Italy, speaks and reads Italian fluently, and is an avid reader of classic and contemporary Italian literature. Although hailing originally from New Jersey, he is a New Yorker for life and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young daughters.

Ruth has a BA in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a teaching certification in secondary English. She also holds an MA in administration from Goddard College in Vermont. She is a contributing author to the anthology series Not Your Mother’s Books, published by the same folks who created the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. She is the author of Living with Ghosts, a non-fiction narrative that examines the PTSD legacy of the Holocaust through three generations. She is a graduate of New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Maberry’s Short Story class. She has been proofreading and editing for over 25 years. Outside of work, Ruth enjoys playing volleyball, traveling, reading, knitting, writing and cooking. Ruth lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Erin was born and raised in east-central Illinois. As an adult, she has lived in Northern and Southern California and southern New Mexico. After twenty years, she returned to Illinois and has lived there since 1994. Erin worked as an in-house assistant editor for a midsized publishing company in Champaign, Illinois, where she learned about the publishing industry and acquired her proofreading and copyediting skills. Since 1994, Erin has been self-employed full-time as an editorial freelancer working for several publishers and professional organizations, including McGraw-Hill Professional and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She obtained her Specialized Certificate in Copyediting from the University of California, San Diego, in 2012.

Mike has spent ten years as an award-winning daily newspaper reporter and editor, a career highlighted by the receipt of first place in the United States in the William Allen White opinion writing competition. He has also worked for more than twenty years as a freelance writer and a high school and college writing and literature instructor. He has published more than 10,000 newspaper and magazine articles and six books, including the first novel ever published about the University of Iowa’s Nile Kinnick (2006). Mike holds an MA and a BA from the University of Iowa and is married to the former Mary Guernsey of Waterloo, who is also an Iowa grad. Their son, Matt, works as a sound editor for an Academy Award-winning studio in Hollywood. Mike and Mary have taught in American international schools in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, traveling nearly one million miles, visiting more than thirty countries, and working with students from more than seventy nations. And they have worked with Habitat for Humanity in India, Hungary, and the Philippines.

Sara was born in Minnesota. She completed an MFA in Comparative Literature–Literary Translation at the University of Iowa in 2010 where studied as an Iowa Arts Fellow. While at Iowa she co-edited eXchanges Journal of Literary Translation and she is one of the founding editors of Anomalous Press. She lives in Seville, Spain with her husband and young son.

Ernesto has over twelve years of experience working with writers as an editor, teacher, and coach. Many of the writers with whom he has worked have gone on to publish their work at major houses like Knopf, Harper Collins, and Norton. He is the author of three novels—The Lazarus Rumba, The Second Death of Única Aveyano, and the forthcoming Sacrificio—has translated four Latin American novels from Spanish, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is currently an assistant professor of fiction at Brooklyn College and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and City College of New York.

Barbara has an honours bachelor of arts degree in French and German, and an honours bachelor of education degree. Barbara taught English, French (core and immersion), and German for thirty-one years; she enjoys reading a wide variety of subjects in all three languages. Barbara’s many interests also include running, swimming, cycling, triathlon, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, kayaking, teaching Pilates classes, and gardening.

Eric has been involved in the field of English for over twelve years, formerly as an educator, and now as a full-time editor and proofreader. He enjoys editing all sorts of texts, from research studies in psychology to science fiction short stories. In his spare time, he likes to hike, bodyboard, play cards, and collect antiques with his wife and son. He earned a bachelor of arts in English from Western Carolina University and a master of school administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Heather was born and raised in Southern California. After attending UC Santa Barbara, where she studied political science, she traveled east to Washington, DC, where she worked for several members of Congress, including the Democratic Majority Whip. Heather was responsible for drafting press releases, legislative memos, and constituent correspondences. After leaving DC, Heather spent time abroad working as an editor for the English version of Israel’s largest daily newspaper in Israel, Ha’aretz. Back in Los Angeles, Heather produced and hosted a book show in which she had the unique opportunity to interview some of today’s great writers. She has spent the last several years working as a freelance writer and editor for a variety of clients, large and small.

Cynthia is a freelance journalist and editor living in Miami. A Brooklyn native, she loves books, old school jazz, all of the Caribbean, more books, and yoga. Her works of fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines, and chapbooks. With a vision of teaching English and reading abroad, she is currently working toward her MFA in creative writing and English at Southern New Hampshire University.

Born and raised in western New York, Leslie lives in the rural town of Freedom and works at a weekly community newspaper in Arcade. Over the sixteen years that she’s worked as a reporter/columnist, Leslie earned (through New York Press Association) three first-place awards and one third-place award for her humor column entitled, “Motherhood…What Was I Thinking?” She has a passion for both reading and music. When she is not reading, she can usually be found motorcycling or antiquing with her husband, spending time with her children and grandson, playing with her cats and/or dogs, or any combination of the above.

Katrina grew up in rural Montana with books as her companions. She started writing stories at a very young age and clung to her love of literature and writing throughout high school. She has published poetry in the Montana AGATE magazine and essays in Rural Montana. Her research on the impact of livestock grazing on Hordeum jubatum was also published in a collection of science papers for the Intermountain Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. Now Katrina is furthering her passion for literature at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where she is double majoring in classics and English with a focus on creative writing. She takes pleasure in peer editing and frequently proofreads essays and stories for her fellow students. Although Katrina enjoys serving customers as a barista and waitress while she works to offset the cost of university, she always looks forward to spending her off hours reading, writing, and proofreading. Her other interests include hiking, skiing, and, above all, traveling.

Sarah is an editorial associate at The Paris Review and a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday Book Review and The Atlantic. Her writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, Bookforum, The American Scholar, the Believer, TIME, and The New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 12th Annual Poetry Prize and the Avery Hopwood Award for Literature from the University of Michigan as well as grants and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Puffin Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Corporation of Yaddo. She holds a PhD in English and an MFA in creative writing. She recently completed her dissertation, which is the first history of the American tradition of the literary interview.

Nicholas has a BA in English and creative writing from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver as well as CELTA certification in ESL teaching. He’s currently teaching English words to cute babies in Incheon, South Korea. He enjoys writings stories, reading stories, accumulating travel stories, locking stories in his basement until they talk, and other story-related enterprises.

Gina has worked in the publishing industry as a proofreader and copy editor for over thirty years. Her diverse experience includes editing scientific journals as well as consumer magazines. She has also consulted with public relations firms and advertising agencies on their collateral portfolios.

Sarah holds an MEd in elementary education and a BA with honors in both Russian and Slavic linguistics and English language and grammar from The Ohio State University. In addition to teaching in the U.S., Sarah has taught English at a Czech public school. Sarah is an active member of her community and has served as an elected and appointed library board member and preschool board member. When not busy proofreading, Sarah cares for her two young children and enjoys yoga, running, cooking and doing home repairs.

Ruth has a PhD in marital and family therapy from Loma Linda University, where she concentrated on research methodologies and writing. Ruth also has a BS from UCLA in electrical engineering and an MS from USC in electrical engineering. She has written a number of published works, including book chapters, papers in peer-reviewed academic journals, clinical updates, and more informal works. She enjoys the rewards of editing, which she has done professionally for over a year. Her other interests include reading, travel, cooking, long walks by the ocean, photography, and great conversations. She currently resides in Hermosa Beach, California, with her husband (the real photographer), two bright and beautiful high-school-aged daughters, and one very demanding but adorable Siberian Husky.

Brian Kaldenberg has over ten years of experience in eCommerce business management. He holds a BS in marketing and is a graduate of Iowa State University. Brian has started several successful online businesses. He accredits ProofreadingPal's success to "hard work, great people, and excellent customer service."

Greg has more than ten years of experience as a successful business leader. He holds a BS in finance and is a graduate of the University of Iowa.

James comes from a small town in Ohio called New Knoxville. He holds a BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. He has taught literature and creative writing courses and served as a coordinator of teaching assistants for the Writers' Workshop. He is the co-editor of LVNG, a journal of poetry and art. His poetry has appeared in SET Magazine and was shortlisted for the Ahsahta Press Chapbook Competition. He currently lives with his wife in Iowa City.

Chad Vollrath has a PhD in communication studies from the University of Iowa and holds an MA and BA in English. His area of academic emphasis is the history and philosophy of technology. He recently completed his dissertation, entitled "After Progress: The Image of the Future in the Age of Sustainability." He has taught writing and composition, rhetoric, literature, and media studies classes at the university level for over ten years.

Raquel Baker currently lives in Iowa City where she is working on a PhD in English Literary Studies at the University of Iowa. She is specializing in Postcolonial Studies with an emphasis in African Literatures in English. She received a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, California. She teaches literature courses. Her short stories have been published in The Womanist literary magazine and the anthology Crux. Her essay “Trauma and the Desiring Subject: The Spatial and Temporal Poetics of Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins,” was published in Emerging Perspectives on Yvonne Vera (Africa World Press, 2012). She is currently working on her dissertation on postcolonial gender performance in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s novel Wizard of the Crow.

Sasha has over ten years of customer service and business management experience, and is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a BA in English. She is also employed at the University of Iowa College of Law and is very passionate about providing the best possible service to our clients and proofreaders alike.

Mark has an MBA from the University of Iowa and over twenty years of experience as a Fortune 500 business development executive at Bridgestone.

Mallory Hughes grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She attended North Dakota State University for her freshman year of college and then transferred to the University of Iowa in the fall of 2011. She is a journalism and English major who hopes to become a book or magazine editor when she graduates. She has played the viola for ten years and currently plays in the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra. She enjoys a good cup of coffee, a great book on a rainy day, and pop-punk music.