My name is Stephanie Sykes. I’m a freelance editor based in Northern Virginia with twenty-five years of professional editing and proofreading experience across multiple genres and academic platforms. I work with clients all over the United States and around the world, including many authors whose native language is not English.

I’ve been editing since college; I never wanted to do anything else. I was editor in chief of the school paper and I’ve been editing professionally since I graduated in 1997. I’ve worked for and with organizations ranging from the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Endowment for Democracy to university presses (including Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others). I also work extensively with individual authors across academia, with a particular concentration in history, international relations, and law. I’ve had opportunities to work with scholars, dissidents, and even leaders, among them Lech Wałęsa, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Larry Diamond, and Wei Jingsheng. I even once had the privilege of proofreading an article by the Dalai Lama.

But none of that matters—what matters is your project. If you choose to hire me, you will get the same level of meticulous care and attention that I give to everything I do, be it a tome on democracy, a symposium on gun control legislation, an in-depth look at ISIS and central Asian politics, an essay on xenophobia in America, or a book of poetry about environmentalism, feminism, and resistance.

When I’m not reading, writing, or editing, I love spending time with my husband and son, traveling and scuba diving, gardening, volunteering, playing board games, binge-reading or watching historical fiction, and enjoying the beauty that is all around us in this world.

Reach out to me and let’s talk about what I can do for you, or click here for my resume and an abridged publications list.