Karen Aroian began her career in the iconic editorial offices of Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, working with America’s finest editors and authors. She has since led teams of editors and copy writers at major publishing and marketing firms. Today she is an independent fiction and nonfiction writing coach, book editor and ghostwriter. She is also a trusted content editor for businesses.
Many don’t realize an editor’s role extends far beyond correcting grammar. The cornerstone of Karen’s business, Aroian Editorial, is providing comprehensive editing for company websites, white papers, manuals, newsletters and email marketing campaigns. She helps subject-matter experts develop better content and outcomes for lead-generation and training workshops.
Her happy place is coaching and encouraging fiction and nonfiction writers. She delivers detailed editorial feedback on early chapter drafts, polishes final manuscripts and offers guidance on creating book proposals. Karen excels at identifying and solving organizational, structural and literary issues. She helps writers navigate literary roadblocks, writer’s block, reluctance and fear.
Her niche in nonfiction genres such as self-help, how-to, memoir and leadership seeps into most fields — psychotherapy, architecture, engineering, art, science, health, wellness and travel included. As a fiction editor, she excels in coming-of-age, multigenerational saga, historical fantasy, detective, mystery and adventure for authors of adult, young adult and children’s books.
Karen recently contributed to In Each Other’s Care: A Guide to the Most Common Relationship Conflicts and How to Work Through Them by bestselling couple therapist Stan Tatkin, PSYD, MFT, and Cooling Our Environment: An Architect’s Vision for Combating Global Warming by first-time author Kalpana Sutaria, two books she helped develop and edit.
Growing up as the granddaughter of genocide survivors, Karen worked after school and college summers at the American Antiquarian Society to pay for her junior year abroad in York, England. She interned in New York under the phenomenal mentorship of Leta Bostelman at art book publisher Harry Abrams and graduated with a B.A. in English from Connecticut College, having received the college’s top prize in poetry.
These days Karen begins each weekday on a three-mile walk and ends every year having traveled somewhere in the world with great architecture, music, food and backroads. She is in the midst of co-writing a children’s book series and publishes LinkedIn articles every Wednesday for new and reluctant writers on all aspects of publishing.
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