Andrew Hilleman was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he earned his MA in English from Creighton University with a concentration in creative writing. This summer he will receive his M.F.A. in fiction from Northern Michigan University where he taught creative writing, composition, and narrative and descriptive writing. He has been published in Fiddlehead magazine and was a finalist for Glimmer Train's 2011 short fiction award. Andrew's tastes are wide and varied, with a special interest in historical fiction, crime fiction and literary fiction, as well as anything and everything political. He en...

Andy Meisenheimer has been working in books since 1999—first as a retailer, then a sales rep, then an acquisitions editor for a division of Harper Collins. He now spends his time as a freelance editor working with both published and unpublished authors on fiction and non-fiction projects. Andy's appreciation for writing was shaped by an early love for Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Michael Crichton, Chaim Potok, and Ray Bradbury. In addition to his work here at TED, he is also a fiction editor for Red Fez Publications, an online literary journal, and the creator of storypraxis, a creative ...

Beth Jusino is an editor, marketer, writer, and former literary agent who loves words and the people who write them. Beth joined The Editorial Department in 2010 after five years as an agent with Alive Communications in Colorado. There, she supported and represented a diverse and active list of best-selling and up-and-coming authors in a variety of genres. She was nominated as “Agent of the Year” in 2008 by The American Christian Fiction Writers, and for three years she judged the Genesis contest for unpublished novelists. She enjoys teaching the crafts of writing and book marketin...

  Doug Wagner is a longtime journalist who spent nearly 25 years polishing the work of others as a copy editor and serving as a movie critic and feature writer. Since the Rocky Mountain News closed in 2009, he's ghostwritten two nonfiction books and co-written the history of a charitable foundation in Colorado. Oh, and he's finally "finished" his first novel. Doug's writing and editing work has spanned subject matter as diverse as wildlife biology, business, weight loss and the grieving process. He's also put the flesh on bare-bones fiction concepts and developed book proposals ...

Jen Howard was born in Escanaba, Michigan, and pursued a PhD in literature with a focus on literary criticism before shifting gears and setting her sights on a career as a writer, writing teacher, and editor. With an MA in English and an MFA in Fiction Writing, she teaches creative writing (both fiction and nonfiction) at Northern Michigan University. She is the editor-in-chief of Passages North, and her own stories and essays have been published in Crab Orchard Review, Blue Mesa Review, Redivider, Sycamore Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Southeast Review, Quarterly Review, wigleaf, Literary M...

TED's Director of Development John Robert Marlow is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and adaptation consultant whose nonfiction articles have appeared in the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market and the Screenwriter's and Playwright's Market (both published by Writer's Digest Books), The Writer, Writers' Journal, Backspace, Women On Writing, Writer's World, Urban Muse, Fellow Script, Parade, and numerous other print and online publications. His first novel, Nano, was immediately recognized as cinematic ("Marlow's debut is a real page-turner"—Kirkus Reviews; "Reads like a big...

Kate Joy Steele joined TED in the spring of 2008.  Kate has been researching, writing, ghostwriting, and teaching in business and professional settings since 1979 and has, in that time, translated innumerable pages of corporate-speak to cogent English and written "how-to" manuals on a number of business and academic subjects. Along with being our go-to consultant on business and academic books of all descriptions, she is also a skilled proofreader and copyeditor who has helped bring a number of TED authors to print readiness. Kate is a native of Oklahoma and now resides in the Pacifi...

Penelope J. Stokes is a published writer, prolific editor, and former college professor with a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature. More than twenty years ago she left the classroom to pursue a career in writing and editing, and since then has worked with dozens of writers on more than 150 novels and nonfiction books. In addition, she is the author of eleven novels, including The Blue Bottle Club, Circle of Grace, and Delta Belles, and has also taught fiction seminars at writing conferences around the country. She is represented by Claudia Cross of Sterling Lord Literistic in New York. Penny ...

Peter Gelfan has been editing and ghostwriting both fiction and nonfiction for the past 17 years. His clients range from beginners to published and bestselling authors and celebrities. He also edits screenplays and has sold two he wrote under his own name, one of which was produced and recently released in France. While experienced in most every genre from crime through mainstream to literary, he specializes in analyzing and strengthening underlying structure—plot, character, and scenes in fiction, and organization and argument in nonfiction. Peter has published a feature-length article...

Shannon Roberts has always had an interest in the world of media and publishing. In 2007, she graduated as a Mass Communication major from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where she had worked during her senior year as a writing tutor and consultant. Using that experience, she began offering her editing services freelance to a number of small clients locally. After a year of this, as well as an internship at Front Street Books (an extension of Boyds Mill Press), she began working closely with Editorial Department founder Renni Browne as an editorial assistant and manuscript co...