Tomiko Breland – Editor

Currently a director of publications for an academic press, I'm an editor experienced in trade, nonprofit, and academic publishing, and I've worked with clients around the world. I focus on manuscript analysis and development, copy editing, and proofreading, and I've edited content across genres and formats, including novel-length literary and popular fiction, educational textbooks and academic journal articles, and short stories, but I specialize in English language teaching materials—I've worked on books for TESOL Press for 15 years as a staff editor and also a freelancer and managed the blind, peer-reviewed TESOL Journal and the TESOL Connections e-magazine. During that time, I've worked closely with native and nonnative English speakers to perfect their work, including giants in the TESOL field, like Luciana de Oliveira, Holly Hansen-Thomas, Judie Haynes, Don Snow, and Diane Larsen-Freeman.

I've also worked at length with nonnative-English-speaking authors to prepare their work for academic publication and with burgeoning fiction writers seeking their first acceptance letters. My experience in the publishing industry is varied; in my time as a publishing professional, I've been an editor, a senior editor, an associate publisher, a publications project manager, and a director of publications.

I have a BA from Stanford University in English, an MA from the Johns Hopkins University in Fiction Writing, and a TESOL Certificate from Anaheim University; as a writer myself, I am hyper aware of the need to retain an author's voice and style when editing. My own nonfiction has been published in publications such as TESOL Connections, the T.J. Eckleburg Review, and the iStudent Advisor Subject Guide, and my short fiction has been published in journals like Ploughshares and One Story, and was selected for inclusion in the Best American series (edited by James Patterson).

I look forward to meeting you and working with you to hone your craft and polish your prose!