About Karla Hess

Hello! I’m Karla Hess. I’m a professional copyeditor and proofreader, specializing in English language teaching resources and travel writing.

Word Nerd Game = Strong

My editing is informed by experience as a teacher of English, which means I know my grammar, y’all. I’m a dedicated teacher of English to speakers of other languages. I taught English in Japan and Australia, while living overseas for five years. I hold an MA of English from California State University, Fresno, where I taught college composition and tutored writing groups. I later obtained a Core Certificate from the TESOL International Association. I’ve taken multiple courses in copyediting and proofreading through organizations such as the Editorial Freelancer’s Association, Knowadays, and Proofread Anywhere. I’ve also taken courses from the Australian Writers Centre, including feature writing, content writing, copywriting, and profile writing.

I’m bilingual in English/Spanish, and I studied a bit of Japanese, too.

Basically, I’m the sort of person who appreciates the power of language and who finds the details of it all endlessly fascinating.

An International Perspective

In 2018, my family of five moved from Texas to Australia. From the moment we landed, I was a keen student of the differences between the Australian dialect and my native US dialect.

My children were educated in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales; I studied the ways their language diverged from my own.  Navigating the American and Australian dialects was (and is) an ongoing part of my life. You might be thinking, but it’s all English, isn’t it? 

Sure, but there’s considerable variety within our common language. My radar is heightened to nuances that others might miss, which makes me an ideal localization editor of written work bridging between cultures. Are you an Australian publisher printing a US edition of a manuscript, or an Australian small business owner tweaking copy to suit an American market? We might make a good team.

These days, I live in Wisconsin, USA, but I welcome the opportunity to work on projects with an international or intercultural angle. We might also make a good team if you require a post-editor of previously translated documents from Spanish or Japanese into English.

Writer to Writer

I write, too. A handful of my articles and personal essays have been published in magazines and literary journals in the US. This means that as an editor, I treat your writing as I’d like my own to be treated. I understand the courage it requires to share something you hold dear. Even if you don’t hold it dear, that writing you’ve hours or weeks on can still benefit from collaboration with a good editor. As a copyeditor and proofreader, I suggest only necessary improvements while respecting my clients’ voices, ideas and words.

Let’s Get to Work!

Use this form to tell me a bit about your project. I look forward to hearing from you!