Mary Newberry

Profile

Since 2000, with a BA in political science and an MA in English, I've happily worked as a freelance editor, indexer and teacher. My early passion was dancing, and it’s the self-discipline I learned then that is probably my greatest indirect asset now.

My work is in the humanities, on academic, government, literary, creative arts and general interest texts and, lately, in memoir. My clients are individuals as well as publishers, governments and institutions. I have a long-term relationship with social justice and diversity and enjoy working in these arenas.

Scholarly editing is one of my specialties, as a copy editor and for substantive and stylistic work. I enjoy complex materials, helping to bring clarity and concision to emerging ideas.

"Gratitude to Mary Newberry for being such a brilliant editor for the structure and content, helping turn my Frankenstein mess into something that was eminently more readable and coherent." — Shakil Choudhury, Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us vs. Them (Between the Lines 2015)

About half of my time is spent indexing for books and online. I teach indexing in a course I developed for the Ryerson’s Publishing Program and have a contract with the Alberta government, editing and updating metadata for one of their websites.

In 2016, I won the Ewart-Daveluy Award for excellence in indexing.