Copywriting & SEO

  • Copywriting for Photogenic of Scotland [website launching soon]
  • Copywriting for Lena Grossman Photography
  • Copywriting for the West Port Book Festival
  • Copywriting for Edinburgh Books
  • Brand consultancy and copywriting for Most Entertaining, a music consultancy business
  • Copywriting for 5pm.co.uk
  • SEO for Big Mouth Media
  • Copywriting for bookbinder Isabelle Ting, Edinburgh
  • Consultancy, copywriting and html newsletters for Bedouina Tours and Mirage Village, Egypt
  • Editorial consultancy work for brand and design consultancy, Pointsize Wolffe and Co. clients included Kenmore and the Forestry Commission Scotland

Project Management

  • Project Manager for a joint Scottish Arts Council and National Association for Literature Development initiative
  • Co-founder of the West Port Book Festival in Edinburgh, which runs events throughout the year (westportbookfestival.org). Our main four-day festival takes place in October and uses local art galleries, pubs and bookshops as venues for a miscellany of bookish events. All our events are free, relaxed and innovative and we have a dynamic online presence. In 2009 we hosted the world’s first Literary Twestival. I don’t draw a salary for my WPBF work.

Editing and proofreading

  • Freelance editor for the Istanbul Foundation for Arts and Culture and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
  • Revision editor for Teaching English Abroad (574 pages, Crimson Publishing, 2009). Part I covers training, finding a job, preparation and problems. Part II offers a detailed country-by-country guide
  • Editing work for Meenagate, a marine transportation service based in Jordan
  • Proofreading for the American University in Cairo Press
  • Editing work for Cornerstones, a London-based literary consultancy
  • Assistant editor of Scottish literary magazine Textualities (textualities.net)
  • Editor of regional Scottish newspaper The Glenkens Gazette

Journalism & Writing

  • Writer, researcher and photographer for The City of Literature Trust [my work will be published online soon]
  • Researched and wrote a chapter on Europe for Your Gap Year, edited by Susan Griffith (Crimson Publishing, 2008) and contributed several articles to Susan Griffith’s best-selling travel guide, Work Your Way Around the World (Crimson Publishing, 2005).
  • Five months of intensive research and countless interviews resulted in the publication of my first book, 20something: The Ultimate Survival Guide (Discover Press, 2004), with contributions from Ian Hislop, Jamie Cullum and ‘Dear’ Deidre.
  • Commissioned to write articles for both the national and regional press on a freelance basis. Titles include the Sunday Herald (lead travel articles), The Telegraph, Edinburgh Review, BBC History, Real Business, Countryfile, The List, The Midgie, The Oldie, The Book Magazine, The Metro, The Bookseller Magazine, Scotland Magazine, the Scots Magazine, Countryman Magazine and The Lady.

Here are a few links to my articles: