Clips and Testimonials

Here I've curated some of the writing I have done for clients and for the web, plus a few examples of the work I can do for you--straight from the mouths of professionals I've worked with before.

Testimonial

I hired Avigail to provide big-picture developmental suggestions and edits on my book manuscript, and am delighted with the results. We established goals for the editing process together, and she kept those front-and-centre as she read the manuscript, providing me with a reader's report full of insightful questions and suggestions, and a checklist to help implement them. I would recommend her services to any academic looking to improve their writing process.

Daniel Ross, Assistant Professor, Département d'histoire, Université du Québec à Montréal

Testimonial

I am the Communications Coordinator for the Pittsburgh non-profit Open Hand Ministries. We asked Avigail to assist us in our annual end of year fundraising campaign which involved a 30 day gratitude challenge around the time of Thanksgiving. The campaign featured weekly blog posts- stories of gratitude from the perspectives of different participants and supporters of our organization. Avigail wrote two of these posts. Her work far exceeded our expectations, both in the quality of her writing and her assistance in the development of the campaign. We asked Avigail to contribute as a writer, but she delivered much more than her two stories. This campaign was a new idea for us, and as we worked to stay on top of the details, Avigail helped keep us organized and on time, and assisted with the creation of additional content beyond the blog posts. She worked with great flexibility when we asked for last minute additions and left time to make sure her work matched our vision. The campaign had a goal of $16,000 and we ended up raising over $20,000. We are grateful for Avigail’s patience, impressed with her professionalism, and quite happy with the quality and delivery of her work.

Jodi Salant, Communications Coordinator of Open Hand Ministries, Inc.

Give Thanks, Live Thanks: The 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge and End-of-Year Campaign

In support of the end-of-year fundraising campaign for Open Hand Ministries (OHM), I wrote two reported stories about families that OHM has helped to become first-time homeowners in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of East Liberty and Garfield. The 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge and End of Year Campaign, which had a fundraising goal of $16,000, used OHM's social media platforms to share a meditation, question, or story about gratitude during the month of Thanksgiving. Each Tuesday the Gratitude Challenge featured "A Story of Gratitude" about community members who have benefitted from the organization's housing- and social-justice work.  The two stories I contributed--which can be found on OHM's website here and here--highlight the role Open Hand Ministries has played in these families' successful journeys and emphasizes how OHM performs vital community-building work in Pittsburgh's multi-racial, multicultural East End.  

Testimonial

Laura N., a client who used my academic editing services, wrote of the experience:

"I am a historian of philosophy. I am not a native English speaker, so I hired Avigail to proofread a paper that I was preparing for a conference in English. I was not looking just for a spelling or grammar proofreading. I was looking for the careful and “brave” editor which I had never found before. I wanted my editor to make my text more natural to a native English speaker, even if it meant completely changing the structure of a sentence, shortening it, or replacing words with synonyms which fit better.  Avigail’s editing has been exactly what I was looking for, and even more. She made my text more natural to a native speaker, by changing the structure of sentences, replacing words in order to avoid repetitions or to be more accurate, and offering me different options for adjusting sentences when they were unclear. Also, she added comments in order to help me to understand the reasons for these changes, and send me a general commentary, which provided an overview for the edits she made. I really appreciated these comments and explanations, because they will be very useful to me when writing my next papers in English. Finally, Avigail is very accurate in delivery times as well. 

The Metropole, The Blog of the Urban History Association

As co-editor of The Metropole, I regularly contribute pieces on topics of interest to urban historians. I have published interviews, like the one I did with Prof. Holly Tucker about her new book on pre-enlightenment policing in Paris; pop culture analyses, including a look at Honolulu through the lens of a recent popular memoir and a reflection on New Orleans through the music videos and performances of Beyoncé; a quirky post about how I prepared for a trip to Mexico City; and a reported article on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the election of Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes. I also coordinate and edit the weekly Member of the Week series and the recurring  Friday ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) series. 

Commissioned Institutional History: 100 Years of the YM-YWHA of Washington Heights And Inwood

For the 100th anniversary of this Jewish Community Center, I wrote a 22-page narrative history of the institution for its use in marketing, fundraising, and commemorative materials.

Press Release for Bystander Intervention Training hosted by Bend the Arc: Pittsburgh and CAIR Pittsburgh in partnership with Union Project 

I wrote a press release to publicize an event coordinated by three organizational partners committed to bridging cultures--Bend the Arc: Pittsburgh, CAIR Pittsburgh, and Union Project--and pitched it to local print, online, radio, and television media outlets.

Testimonial

David Favaloro supervised and mentored me during the summer of 2012, when I served as a research and exhibit development intern at the Tenement Museum. In that capacity, I conducted in-depth research for a planned exhibit that will tell the stories of the post-World War II immigrants and migrants to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

Avigail worked as a true intellectual partner and collaborated on the direction, scope, and approach to this demanding research project. She displayed a remarkable ability to locate and thoroughly evaluate potential sources, cogently discuss the ways in which they provided a lens on our subject, and follow their lead to additional sources. More importantly, Avigail displayed excellent writing skills as she weaved together the disparate strands of this research into a compelling narrative.

David Favaloro, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Testimonial

Kyle Crawford supervised and mentored me during the summer of 2014, when I served as a research intern at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. 

I supervised Avigail during her internship at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. From the outset, Avigail distinguished herself by asking insightful, challenging questions; while these inquiries often demonstrated her understanding of public health research methods, I also observed how, with a few pointed questions, she could quickly analyze and integrate new information. Avigail was also entrepreneurial, constantly seeking out new projects and ways to contribute to the work of the organization. I assigned her to write a report on a recently completed grant, the Minority AIDS Initiative. In just four weeks Avigail read hundreds of pages of materials about the grant, from the proposal to final debrief interviews with our community outreach specialists, and drafted a comprehensive report on our intervention model. This work proved incredibly valuable to our team. Avigail saved us time and allowed us to focus on writing a follow-up proposal to continue innovating on our HIV/AIDS intervention. She is knowledgeable, professional, and a quick study, and I recommend her highly.