Barbra Rodriguez is a certified editor and certified book coach with decades of experience and a big picture vision; she draws on an eagle eye and skills learned over decades as an award-winning writer to ensure that content is engaging and accessible. Her nonfiction subject areas include: memoir, narrative nonfiction, historical nonfiction, books of journalism, psychology, self-help, spirituality, health/wellness, nature, bioscience, sustainability, landscape design, and lifestyle topics. Editing and proofreading clients include MIT and Counterpoint presses, covering books on big ideas, self-help, health topics, and more. She also edits print and digital educational materials for W. W. Norton, and assists self-published authors of memoir, spiritual self-help guides, and other content. Other clients have included The Nature Conservancy, the ecosystem sciences division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, an engineering construction institute, and non-profits focused on mental health and diversity.Whether shes providing developmental guidance, ghostwriting, line editing for voice and style, or suggesting line-by-line grammatical edits, Barbra helps the authors voice shine through. She ran a creative nonfiction writing group for several years, and has judged two book competitions for the Writers League of Texas, and a national one for the National Association of Science Writers. She also edits and provides feedback on book proposals.After receiving a certificate degree in Science Communication from UC, Santa Cruz, she undertook writing internships at The Dallas Morning News and Kansas City Star. Barbras interests often center broadly on the intersection of science with aspects of healthy living. So, she has freelanced since the late 90s about public health challenges, climate change, and other topics for publications of the AARP, the journals Science and Nature, and magazines such as Texas Co-op Power. She won two national awards for a feature about aging well mentally, and a Texas writing award for profiling plant conservationists. The latter award came during a public relations career of assisting faculty at a top-ranking medical school and an R1 research university to communicate their work. That career until 2016 included managing magazines about cancer treatment advances, natural science discoveries, or the value of sustainable landscaping. In 2017, she attended the World Conference of Science Journalists on fellowship, and also received a journalist travel grant to an Ecological Society of America conference.Barbra looks forward to helping authors express their intelligence, passion, and personality on the page. She is undergoing certification as a book coach, and reboots her passion through writing workshops. Barbra uses an organized, thorough approach to developmental edit, copy edit and ghostwrite manuscripts.
Book proposal coaching or evaluation. Pitch package: Assist nonfiction and historical fiction authors with developing query letters and with starting a literary agent list for their proposal or completed manuscript, as well as helping understand how to pitch.
Book coaching through Author Accelerator: certified with three clients in nonfiction in spring 2025; and certified in memoir and fiction, fall 2024. Certicicate in copyediting through UC, San Diego, acing all courses: 2019.
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