Bio
Hi, my name’s Michelle Goodman and I’ll be your tour guide today. But before we get started with our romp through the cubicle-free life, let me tell you a bit about me:
I fled the cube in 1992 to become a freelance writer and have yet to look back. In 2006, I decided to cram as much as detail as I could about flexible, boss-free, and otherwise nontraditional careers into a book: The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, which Seal Press published in 2007.
My reported pieces about alternative careers, human mating rituals, and other pop culture phenom have appeared in Salon, Bust, Bitch, Bark, Seattle Times, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Yahoo! HotJobs, PayScale.com, and many more. I also write a column called “How’d You Land That Great Job?”, which appears on NWjobs.com and in the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times every other week.
My creative non-fiction has been anthologized in Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness and The Moment of Truth: Women’s Funniest Romantic Catastrophes, both published by Seal Press. In 2006 I was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, a dreamy women’s writing retreat in Washington state that receives hundreds of applications from around the globe each year. This article explains why I want to move there.
My 15-year freelance career has given me the chance to work with everyone from book publishers to high-tech empires to peddlers of new-age products, wrangling text on pet accessories, video games, voice recognition software, marital aids, home colonics, and just about anything else that can be sold. One of my favorite recent projects entailed writing captions for this adorable puppy journal by pet photographer Emily Rieman.
As a frequent speaker on the freelance writing life, I’ve sat on panels and given talks at events sponsored by Mediabistro, Biznik, Seattle Women’s Commission, the University of Washington, and more. I also teach classes through the Editorial Freelancers Association and Richard Hugo House in an effort to help aspiring cubicle expats avoid the same mistakes I made early in my own solo career.
I was born and raised in the Garden State and got my B.A. in journalism from George Washington University. In my former 9-to-5 existence, I worked as a community newspaper reporter and bureau chief, a New York book publicist, a high-tech book editor, and a Microsoft web community editor. I live in Seattle with Buddy, an eighty-pound lap dog. The Anti 9-to-5 Guide is my first book.
