Freelance Writing

I've been working as a freelance writer off-and-on since I graduated from college in 1996, so this is one of my most familiar and cherished ways of working in the world.

Samuel Johnson said, "If you want to be a writer, then write! Write every day!" I do my best to live up to his exhortation. My literary career, in the proverbial nutshell, goes like this: I'm a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. In June 1999 I received my MFA in Writing and Literature, with a concentration in poetry. I write a lot of poems, some of which have been collected in four chapbooks over the years (and my first full-length collection is due in early 2011; more on that soon.) I also maintain a Judaism-focused blog. These days I'm shopping around a couple of poetry manuscripts, and also have a nonfiction book proposal making the rounds. You can read more about my creative writing here.

From 2000 through 2006 I served as executive director of Inkberry. Inkberry is nonprofit literary arts organization which offers writing workshops, book groups and a reading series to the Berkshire region, plus a bunch of online workshops and message boards for writers worldwide. As of September 2006, though, I shifted focus toward rabbinic studies and poetry (with the occasional freelance article here and there.)

I'm also an editor. Over the years I've served as a contributing editor at Storey Books, and as associate editor for online literary journal Pif Magazine . I'm also the former editor of The Women's Times, a monthly publication for women in Western Massachusetts and environs. These days I'm a contributing editor at Zeek, a Jewish journal of thought & culture.

And last but not least, I'm a freelance writer. I write essays and articles, which appear in places like Lilith and Bitch. I've written about poets whose work I admire for Woman This Month, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry (Facts on File, 2004). I've even made a foray into the wild world of children's textbooks. I'm interested in almost anything, so if you've got something that needs writing, feel free to pitch me. Most of the writing I do these days is either about Judaism, about poetry, or about the intersection thereof.



If you'd like to hire me to write or edit, you might find my resume and bibliography of published works useful; writing samples are listed below.

Writing samples:

Please note that my writing is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Thanks for respecting it!