“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” ~ writer Elmore Leonard
I’ve been making a living writing and telling stories for a few decades, launching my career on a glamorous note during college, when I worked as a reporter and columnist (“Sharing Recipes”) for a small-town weekly newspaper in Rural Hall, NC.
In the years since I shared recipes and reported small-town news, I’ve found my English degree and that early on-the-job training to be a ticket to many great opportunities, including:
Editing magazines for research institutes full of PhDs.
Editing the official fan club magazine for New Line Cinema’s blockbuster The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
Editing dispatches from many non-native-English-speaking correspondents about political, economic and cultural developments in former Soviet bloc countries for a magazine in Prague.
Profiling resilient, graceful cancer patients and writing about cancer research.
Marketing software for business analytics.
Writing copy for party games.
Working with an internal comms team on effective, clear employee communications at a large pharma company.
Overseeing all web content, blogs and social media for several small companies.
My experience ranges from writing a few paragraphs of cut-to-the chase marketing copy to creating glossy magazines. I can tackle serious, complex topics or strictly entertaining features.
Over 30-plus years, I've worked with news organizations, businesses and nonprofits from home bases that included Washington, Prague and several cities in the Southeast. Clients, past employers and collaborators include the News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), Duke Cancer Center, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS (business analytics software), New Line Cinema, the Open Media Research Institute, Public Citizen and Worldwatch Institute. (See more.)
Flying solo
Since 2010, I’ve been working for myself at ATKINSONWORDS.
You can hire me to write your web copy, create marketing pieces, proofread your materials, ghostwrite your blog and post eye-catching content on your social media pages.
And thanks to all this virtuality and digitality, it doesn’t matter where you are. I'm based in Raleigh, NC, but some of my clients are on the West Coast, and I’ve never met them face-to-face. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t keep us from doing great work together.
If you need the expertise of a seasoned storyteller and editor, let’s work together soon. I’ll make your company/organization/good cause/product/[fill-in-the-blank] more compelling, easier to understand and harder to resist.
Want more details? Take a look at my resume.
~ Carla Atkinson