I am a rigorous yet flexible editor, with one hand on the AP Stylebook and the other holding firm to the Chicago Manual of Style, the result of a twenty-five-year career spent split between book publishing and journalism. Currently I am the senior acquisitions editor for the University of Illinois Press‘s regional trade imprint, 3 Fields Books, as well as titles in Chicago politics, architecture, food, and natural history. I am also a senior editor with South Side Weekly, a nonprofit news outlet dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on Chicago’s South Side, and to developing emerging journalists, writers, and artists.
I am available for select freelance editorial work, at both the developmental and line-editing stage. My areas of expertise are memoir and personal essays, urbanism, Midwestern history and culture, and food—but I am fundamentally a generalist. For more, see my resume, or get in touch at martha.bayne@gmail.com.
Bonus content! Got some time to kill? I am fond of this audio piece—about the olden days at the Reader, about the death of newspapers, and about being edited by me—written and performed by Christopher Piatt for his weekly variety series, the Paper Machete.