I’m a writer and editor based, since 2002, out of the little town of Livingston, Montana.

I grew up on the north shore of Chicago, went to Beloit College, and then left for the bright lights of New York City to pursue my dream of working in publishing. After two years of starving as an editorial assistant, I left New York, grateful for the experience, and knowing I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering “what if?”

I spent the next winter in Taiwan where I taught English, and lived with my best girlfriend from college and her husband, Emil Chau. Then after a season guiding rafts at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, I moved to Telluride and spent three fun years skiing, and working as an editorial jill-of-all-trades for Western Eye Press.

Although I was heartbroken to leave a place as beautiful as Telluride, the Creative Writing Program at the University of California at Davis was my next home. For two wonderful years I honed what were to be the first few chapters of Place Last Seen, and had the chance to work with writers as diverse as Gary Snyder, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tom Jenks. I also helped organize the first two years of the Art of the Wild Summer Writers Workshop where I worked with Louis Owens, James Houston and Gretel Ehrlich. After earning my MA from UC Davis, I headed back to the Rockies where I did my PhD in the Creative Writing program at the University of Utah.

While I loved teaching, after earning my PhD I decided it was time to find a job that might allow me to pay off the debt I’d accumulated during eight years in academia, so I headed back out to the Bay Area where I was hired by Cisco Systems.

For the past eight years I’ve worked as a technical editor, technical writer, and localization coordinator at Cisco. In 2002, having worked for a year with my manager to demonstrate that I could work remotely and remain a core member of my documentation team, I became a full-time telecommuter and moved to Livingston, where I bought a 100-year old house and made sure it was wired for high-speed DSL. For the past five years I have worked remotely for two different documentation groups at Cisco. I also made the transition in 2004 from technical editing to technical writing while working from Montana (although I returned to editing in 2005).

In 2000 Picador USA published Place Last Seen, my first novel (which was also my dissertation). I am currently working on a screenplay of the novel, and a non-fiction memoir. I also have a weblog, LivingSmall, that chronicles my move to Montana and the garden I have built here.

You can contact me at cmf at charlottemcguinnfreeman dot com