Terri Lee Paulsen – Editor

Editing has taken me far from my Midwestern roots, but it has also brought me back home. I graduated with a journalism degree from a small liberal arts college in Minnesota in 1989 and took a job as reporter/agriculture page editor at a weekly newspaper in the middle of farm country. My boyfriend at the time decided he wanted to move overseas and randomly chose Hong Kong. I followed six months later, picking up freelance editing and writing assignments and traveling the region. A year later I was hired for a short-term assignment in Tokyo to edit annual reports for an investor relations firm. I worked there for six months, returned to Hong Kong to freelance and travel, went back to Tokyo, back to Hong Kong, and then back to Tokyo, this time to manage the staff of short-term editors. I even had the opportunity to edit a speech that Japanese Emperor Hirohito delivered to President Bill Clinton in 1996.

I returned to Minnesota for good in 1998, working in the editorial department of an accounting firm and the communications department of a Fortune 200 retailer. I found a part-time job close to home with the local medical center, writing and editing promotional materials, newsletters, and ads. A few years later I decided I could work from home and expand my client list. Now, 20 years later, I find myself a book editor, having worked for SAGE Publications/Corwin Press since 2009. I’ve also been working for 10 years with a small, Toronto-based publishing company with ties to many large publishers. I’ve lost track of how many books I’ve edited or proofread, but it’s more than 200.

My varied experiences allow me to edit a wide range of topics, from fly fishing to education, from alpine cooking to Native American memoirs. I love what I learn from each book and from each author. And I find great satisfaction partnering with authors—both novice and experienced—to create a work they are proud of, one that reflects their voice, is error-free, and speaks to the reader.