I have a Ph.D. in English and thirty-four years of experience teaching college English and Women's Studies courses, most of which have required a considerable amount of writing. As a result of my teaching experience, I have developed strong analytical and editing skills. I have especially enjoyed working with students individually to improve their writing skills. I bring to my reading of any manuscript a knowledge of what are considered the "classics" of American and British literature in addition to a special interest in and familiarity with nineteenth and twentieth century as well as contemporary women writers, many of whom I have taught in both my Women's Studies and English courses. I am especially interested in women's memoirs and I am currently writing a memoir of my own. A life-long journal-keeper, I am also very interested in the role writing plays in personal growth, healing and spirituality and have found my own journals to be critical to these processes. The search for identity and autonomy is in my experience greatly facilitated by the keeping of journals, which may then serve as rich sources for personal essay and memoir. The issue of identity is especially interesting to me within the contexts of gender and ethnicity, specifically Italian American ethnicity. Reading and writing are central to my life, both my work and my pleasure.    More About Roseanne What I like most about editing: I love to read and I love to interact with others around the written word. Editing intensifies both experiences because it demands that I pay close attention to what I am reading and that I enter into a dialogue with the writer. I also love language, playing with word choices, phrases and sentences so that they most effectively express what is intended. It is a joy and a privilege to participate in another writer's process, to facilitate another person's self-expression. My best advice to writers: In my experience, writers tend to stop themselves by being overly concerned about mistakes or what their reader might think about what they're saying. I always tell people to set those concerns aside and just write what comes to them in the moment. The important thing is to get their thoughts down on paper or on the screen. Then they can go back and cut out what doesn't belong, correct errors, re-organize, etc. But with a first draft one should allow oneself total freedom. My favorite genres to edit: My favorite genre to edit is creative non-fiction: autobiography, memoir and personal essay. Number of years I've been editing: Thirty-four years, primarily through the reading and editing of student papers, with some additional work on contemporary scholarship. Edit hard copy or on-screen: I prefer to edit hard copy. My "must have" writing reference books: A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker Favorite background music when I edit: Although I enjoy music, I prefer quiet when I am editing. I find that music interferes with my concentration. Scene outside the window where I edit: I like to do my editing work sitting in my favorite spot in the living room, a cup of coffee or tea at my side and my cat, Joey, wandering in and out of the room or curled up next to me. Outside my window I see the trees, barren now against a late winter sky but soon to bloom with a mist of green, and in the distance, the brick house of my neighbor across the street. Favorite quotes: "Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change." —Katherine Mansfield Memorable fictional character: Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Most recent blog/website I bookmarked: Penguin reader's guide to The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan Currently reading: Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon and Called Out of Darkness by Anne Rice