Editor | Communications Strategist | Writing Coach | Admissions Advisor | Community Educator

WORDS ARE MATTER.
MAKE THEM MATTER.

There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. ~ Bryan Stevenson

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and beheld that service was joy.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” ~ Angela Davis

I help issues find audience, ideas gain traction, stories discover shape, and people build voice, meaning, and connection. I believe that words sculpt selves, build movements, change minds, transform lives, and sustain communities. I want my words to matter, and I want to help others make theirs matter, too.

For over twenty-five years, I have served in various roles and environments to empower individuals and communities through critical inquiry, political engagement, historical understanding, literary appreciation and literacy enrichment, resource sharing, and creative exploration. All of my work stems from an effort to cultivate compassion and curiosity, catalyze social change and racial equity, and center direct service in my professional life ~ in the classroom, on the page, and in my community. 

Write You Are! represents the culmination of this journey and the synthesis of broader aspirations to ask questions, share ideas, and expand the boundaries of my orientation and our collective understanding and commitments. You can learn more about my background, approach, and ambitions through the “Who I Am” section of my website. If you are a librarian doing amazing things in your community, I would love to hear from you as part of a current project: Libraries Make Great Partners: A Multimedia, Resource-Rich, Interactive Guide to Public Library-Community Partnerships and Initiatives. Please get in touch!

My practice centers joy and liberation in the process of creative discovery and composition and guides people toward greater confidence, momentum, and expressive fluency. I raise my voice in service to others and help you find yours in service to self. Grounded in a strengths-based approach, my goal is to add value to your value and help amplify your animating vision. Many of the clients and students I work with have powerful stories to tell; they do not need my assistance to find, shape, or express them. What they need is a conduit ~ someone who sees the value and significance of their story and paves a throughline to other people and places who need to hear it. Sharing our stories makes us vulnerable; it also makes us incredibly powerful.

The quality of my work is distinguished by the ethic of care and integrity that I bring to every project, cause, client, and student. I excel at setting attainable goals, providing constructive feedback, and serving as a sounding board to inspire, clarify, organize, and refine ideas. I meet people where they are and help to get them where they want to be through measurable, concrete, reasonable steps. Throughout our collaboration, I remain open to your voice, centered on the premise of your work, and committed to the value of your vision.

My work as an educator, editor, writer, and activist hinges on a continual effort to see and to listen and to make seen and make heard. I have always recognized that intersectional issues demand multifocal maneuvering and multivocal responses, which has organically driven the range of my professional practice, stretching across education, strategic communications, direct service, organizational consulting, development/fundraising, coaching and mentorship, and creative arts facilitation. My talent for interdisciplinary, holistic, and systems-level thinking continues to inspire my livelihood and animate my professional trajectory. Clients, students, and families seek me out for complex projects that call for a unique, multi-angled lens and multi-faceted approach. To enable access, ensure opportunity, and achieve equity, I serve in numerous voluntary roles and perform abundant pro bono work, both for individual clients and organizational entities.

A sampling of recent projects registers the breadth of my work, professional expertise, and genre range. Topics and projects include: Indigenous Librarianship and Indigenous-led cultural stewardship; racial equity toolkits; higher education partnerships to support first generation students; representations of Indigenous characters and history in U.S. children’s literature; trauma-informed mental health care and its impact on undocumented immigrants; Antigone as an icon of Justice; Just Transition frameworks and pathways; a social benefit platform to enhance immigrants’ economic and social inclusion; conflict mineral trade in Central Africa; homelessness and public libraries; references service to prisons and arts mentoring to formerly and currently incarcerated individuals; the impact of Black Lives Matter in the corporate sector; the impact of 1990s Caribbean art on the discipline of art history and the global art scene; formal declarations in honor of African American History Month; memoirs of authors ranging in age from mid-thirties to mid-seventies; national and local civil rights histories; policymaking with an equity lens; spiritual journeys and personal transformation; sites and histories of Black economic empowerment; environmental regulations and corporate climate commitments; guaranteed income programs as a transformative social justice, racial equity, anti-poverty, pro-opportunity agenda; and geographical manifestations of racial inequity and harms.

I take very seriously my name’s derivation from the root “to heal.” And I regard as doubly significant that the person I am named for, my father’s father, was himself a physician, known for making house calls long after his office hours had ended. While critical distance and illumination is a “precondition” for my work, as a diagnosis is for a doctor’s, performing this role means nothing if I cannot apply analysis toward prescription. When I move through a manuscript or work one-on-one with a client or student, it is always with an eye toward respectful remedy. We collaborate to “get at the roots,” lift up the vital essence, and attend to areas of dis-ease or disharmony. We move together toward healing and wholeness. 

EDITING
As an editor, I utilize my critical distance to amplify your insights and the integrity of your vision and cast a penetrating beam of comprehension and perspective on your composition. I align my approach with your professional orientation, methodology, disposition, and audience. I specialize in academic editing and literary fiction and nonfiction and provide a range of services, from light copyediting to substantive and developmental editing. With meticulous attention to clarity, accuracy, and precision, I ask questions that help shape inchoate thoughts, unify fragmented ideas, and magnify impact to yield a more engaging and vibrant manuscript. Together, we create a final product that reflects the spirit of origin and the essence of your intent as its author.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
My extensive background and expertise in diverse campaigns, platforms, and venues centers purposeful, meaningful, and authentic communication. I am highly skilled at engaging with multiple stakeholders, balancing and blending different perspectives, and crafting messaging that moves and mobilizes. Whether your desired content is political, promotional, academic, biographical, or educational, I can help articulate your voice more fluidly and forcefully. I am versatile in both print and online formats and experienced in co-creating websites; marketing & public relations materials; social justice, education, and political advocacy toolkits; grant proposals;  annual reports; job materials; newsletters; blogs; conference presentations; and more. I have worked with clients and organizations to shape their identity, sharpen their focus, express their passions, and frame their purpose to reach a wider audience. My editorial expertise guides the evolution of content, and clients receive the benefit of two services in one. 

COACHING
I offer targeted support to assist adults and young adults with building creative fluency and confidence. Guided by individuals’ interests, capabilities, and experiences, I employ resources and techniques that facilitate more captivating, lucid, and dynamic literary expression. In private sessions and group classes, we harness curiosity, remain open to inspiration, and attune ourselves to the mechanics and mysteries of the written word. In all of this work, I initiate conversations and activities that challenge interpretive, expressive, and experiential horizons to explore the edges, gaps, and margins of human connection and communication.

COMMUNITY-BASED EDUCATION

My teaching approach is based on individualized attention, interdisciplinary breadth, and place-based engagement. My goal is to nurture a love of learning, a passion for justice, and a pathway toward transformative creative expression. I mentor individual students (both youth and adults), lead group classes, and facilitate workshops in community spaces, like public libraries. I design curricula and programming that fosters our innate curiosity and expands its reach. I am accessible, resourceful, and flexible, and my background and teaching expertise are thoroughly multidisciplinary and multi-dimensional. You can read about upcoming community offerings on my events page.

ADMISSIONS SUPPORT
The college and graduate school admissions process demands consolidation and concision. The essays present an opportunity to distill and distinguish. Together, we work to demystify and enliven the journey of reflection, expression, and revision. I guide you in a stepwise manner: we dig, expand, organize, synthesize, draft, whittle, refine, polish, then submit. My feedback is targeted and strategic, drawn from an experiential base at elite institutions from the vantage point of both student and teacher.

MY WRITING
I have published a diverse collection of essays, reviews, resource collections, and other pieces in varied forums and platforms. You can find some examples in the writing samples portion of my website.

I devote as much time as I can to honing my craft and pursue projects generated by diverse streams of inquiry and inspiration. I am currently plodding through six works-in-progress:

– Libraries Make Great Partners: A Multimedia, Resource-Rich, Interactive Guide to Public Library-Community Partnerships and Initiatives
– Fierce Illumination: Elemental Ravelings and Revelations
– Flight of the Beautiful Days: A Chronicle of the Radical Women Who Ignited Bay Area Cultural and Social Movements
– “Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong with the Way She Moves”: The Experience and Influence of Women in the Grateful Dead
– Ivy Grows in the Garden of Eden: A Branch Leaves a Family Tree
– An Apprentice to Words: Why I Write, Why I Teach

Note: I reserve a portion of my client roster for pro bono and sliding scale work. Please reach out if you need assistance but lack financial means to obtain it.

“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” ~ Toni Morrison

“I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central.  I claimed it as central and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.” ~ Toni Morrison

“Compassion is a verb.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” ~ Martin Luther King

 

© Rachel Rosekind, PhD, MLIS