you probably already know that I’m a New Yawker and a “[b]ook geek, cakeatarian, [and] aggressive blocker of spammy followers,” and that my preferred pronouns are She/her/Herself.
You might also wish to know that in June 2017, I started the immersive portion of the 18-week Grace Hopper program, a full-stack JavaScript bootcamp for women that’s part of Fullstack Academy, and after graduating in September, I signed on for another three months as a teaching fellow. Before that, I was a digital content producer at the Museum of Modern Art, and before that, I worked at Amplify as a senior content producer, specializing in EPUBs.
Before that, I was managing editor of print and digital production at CN Times Books, the U.S. subsidiary of Beijing MediaTime Book Co. Just before I left there, I did a webinar for Bowker on book production for self- and independent publishers. And before that, for a little over two years, I worked at F+W Media as “Digital Production ePub QA Associate,” and then as “eBook Developer” (I disapprove of the camel-casing in both of these titles), fixing e-books, writing documentation, and suchlike. In that capacity, I was one of four presenters at a workshop on e-book production at the 2013 Digital Book World conference, which is an F+W joint; my segment was on the whys and hows of e-book QA.
[If you prefer to read this kind of junk in less annoying format, you can find it at linkedin.com/in/indiamos. Note that I generally don’t connect with people there unless I know them already in some way.]
From 2008 to 2010, I attended the Interactive Telecommunications master’s degree program (ITP) at New York University; I left with two incompletes and a metric shitload of student loan debt. In general, the less said about all of that, the better, but if you’re afflicted with morbid curiosity, you can watch or read a transcript of my thesis presentation in this blog post: The India, Ink. comedy show. If you are contemplating attending grad school yourself, and are not doing so while sipping champagne atop your own twenty-foot-high heap of winking jewels and shiny gold coins, maybe check out this book first: Don’t Go Back to School by Kio Stark.
Before grad school, I was art director at Nextbook (now Tablet magazine), a senior designer at St. Martin’s Press (where I designed book interiors solely for Tor/Forge Books) and Neuwirth & Associates, and managing editor of Seven Stories Press and PEN America, the literary journal of PEN American Center. For about three years I was webmaster of poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, and for the three preceding years I was a program associate there, managing poetry awards and designing the quarterly journal. And before that, I was a program coordinator at PEN American Center, directing the visiting writers program and administering emergency funds to writers in need. I also worked, millions of years ago, at the late, great Tower Books, in Sacramento and Seattle, and I spent some time blissfully shelving at my college library.
Obviously, (a) I like books, and (b) I look fucking FANTASTIC for my age. Thanks for the genes, Mom and Dad.
I occasionally still perform freelance e-book production, book design, typesetting, and editorial work (mostly pro0fread1ng), because it amuses me. If you need something text-related done, I may be your woman. I can also eat cake, or sit on/in a porch, patio, lawn, balcony, terrace, piazza, or gazebo and drink cocktails, if you need someone to do any of those things for you. I might perform the latter tasks pro bono.
What is this website?
It started as a blog about book production–related stuff, but as my occupation has become more digital, so, too, has my subject matter.
You can find a list in the footer of the posts on this site that have been most popular lately. Among the most frequently read posts here overall (as of November 2017) are
- Making Castoff – as seen on kottke.org!
- Open-source bitmap-to-vector converter
- Degristling the sausage
- What does an “art director” do?
- What happens when an e-book gets corrected?
Of course, the best parts of the best pages here are the comments. Leave a comment—today!
I’m following you! Will you follow me back?
I may already be following you! In a vain attempt at not letting Twitter eat my life, I try to limit the number of people I follow directly. However, I keep up with many additional people through Twitter lists compiled by myself and others. So if I don’t reciprocate your following me, please be comforted by the knowledge that I may have been stalking you through more stealthy means for weeks, months, or even years. Feel better now?
Do you have a cat?
Why, yes! So glad you asked. I live with two nefarious carnivores, in fact—
—Ampersand (left) and Interrobang (right), whose misdeeds are occasionally recorded at @catcrimeblotter.
What’s with your name?
Please see the OAQ for answers to this and other Occasionally Asked Questions.