editor—writing coach—teacher

Joanna Rutter-Bent

My love of language and the written word found its first expression in a career teaching English literature, poetry, writing at colleges and universities in the Boston area. Frustrated with the traditional model of college writing classes, I explored the alternative model of intensive one-to-one writing conferences and founded the Brandeis University Writing Center based on this method. The careful attention to the individual writer that is at the center of this teaching method led organically to a career in editing, where I continue to give painstaking personal attention to each of my clients, with the aim of empowering them as writers.

Since starting Editor@work in 2001, I have served as an editor and writing consultant to publishing scholars and scientists at leading universities and research facilities including: Harvard University and the Kennedy School of Government, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Whitehead Institute, Boston University, Bentley University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the University of Kentucky. I provide editorial support across the academic lifespan from young scholars turning doctoral dissertations into books to established scholars with numerous publications to their names.

I have provided editing services to law firms in Boston and New York, and to top executives in the high tech sector in the metropolitan Boston area.

I also have decades of experience teaching English to non-native speakers (ESL, ESOL, EAL) at all levels of proficiency, and have served as writing and speaking coach and editor to many students and scholars whose first language is not English.