Project Pitfalls (Sept. 10)

When: Tuesday, September 10, 2019, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Where: Southdale Library (Helen Young Room), 7001 York Ave. South, Edina, MN 55435

Join in this timely discussion with topnotch area professionals who will speak about how to prepare, as much as possible, for problems that may arise with a client or a project. Professional Editors Network members Lynn Cross, Sherri Hildebrandt, and Jacqueline Hilgert will share some of the taxing situations they have faced, as editors and writers, when projects or clients caused insurmountable challenges. Learn how they overcame setbacks to achieve intended results/goals. Get information about preliminary questions to ask, plus learn ways to disengage from difficult situations.

Lynn Cross works with novelists, memoirists, self-help authors, and non-native English authors. Her services also include fact checking, rewriting, and assisting with book proposals and query letters. Her website, Wings for Your Words, draws attention to her tagline: a "word nerd" who brings out the "full beauty and power" of the written word. Lynn has a BA in English, doctoral study in experimental social psychology, and advanced study in editing. She also has extensive experience in editing dissertations, theses, and scholarly articles for individuals and under contract with Educational Testing Service and Hazelden Publishing.

Sherri Hildebrandt has worked as a copy editor for newspapers, books and magazines for 30 years. She has worked for both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and after being laid off from the Star Tribune during "the great copy desk purge of 2010" she began freelance editing and writing. Other stints include teaching journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism and working as a reporter and editor for a Gannett newspaper in the US Virgin Islands.

Jacqueline Hilgert is publications director at NFR Communications, a Minneapolis-based B2B media company that produces print and digital products for the banking industry. She is also editor-in-chief of BankBeat, the company's flagship monthly journal. For nearly a decade, Jackie owned Traditions Communications, a B2B publishing consultancy where she wrote and/or edited corporate or institutional history books. Jackie has a BA in business writing and a MFA in literary nonfiction.