About the Founder
Mia Lipman Irwin, Principal Editor, began wrangling words for a living in 1999, when she graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in English and a keen eye for copy. Since then, she has edited (give or take) gazillions of books, magazines, websites, marketing materials, white papers, and résumés.
Mia has held staff jobs at University of California Press, Avalon Travel Publishing, San Francisco magazine, Amazon Publishing, Yesler/Projectline, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Washington, as well as in-house contractor roles at Apple and Yahoo. She began freelancing in 2000, and in 2013 she made her business official as Dots & Dashes. Her client roster includes media, nonprofit, and technology organizations (see here for details), and she has reviewed fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for Kirkus Reviews and The Seattle Review of Books, among other outlets.
A seasoned interviewer and public speaker, Mia has been lucky enough to chat on the record with Oliver Sacks, Jeanette Winterson, and Barbara Kingsolver (see here for clips), and she has been a panelist and/or moderator at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Bay Area Editors’ Forum, National Endowment for the Arts, and Orcas Island Lit Fest. She also roams far and often—her former hometowns include Paris, Dublin, San Francisco, and Northampton, Mass., and she has traveled in South America, Asia, and the Middle East. These days she lives in Seattle, where she occasionally gives a guest lecture on editing at the University of Washington and University of Puget Sound.
In 2006, Mia cofounded Canteen magazine, a literary journal that expanded into an active nonprofit: Canteen Arts later added a youth journal, canTeens, and ran a creative writing program for middle schoolers in Harlem. She stepped down from Canteen Arts in 2013 to launch Lit Fix, a quarterly reading and music series. All proceeds from Lit Fix events are donated to local nonprofits that promote literacy.
Mia is not currently accepting new clients. To follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn, click the icons below.
Mia has held staff jobs at University of California Press, Avalon Travel Publishing, San Francisco magazine, Amazon Publishing, Yesler/Projectline, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Washington, as well as in-house contractor roles at Apple and Yahoo. She began freelancing in 2000, and in 2013 she made her business official as Dots & Dashes. Her client roster includes media, nonprofit, and technology organizations (see here for details), and she has reviewed fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for Kirkus Reviews and The Seattle Review of Books, among other outlets.
A seasoned interviewer and public speaker, Mia has been lucky enough to chat on the record with Oliver Sacks, Jeanette Winterson, and Barbara Kingsolver (see here for clips), and she has been a panelist and/or moderator at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Bay Area Editors’ Forum, National Endowment for the Arts, and Orcas Island Lit Fest. She also roams far and often—her former hometowns include Paris, Dublin, San Francisco, and Northampton, Mass., and she has traveled in South America, Asia, and the Middle East. These days she lives in Seattle, where she occasionally gives a guest lecture on editing at the University of Washington and University of Puget Sound.
In 2006, Mia cofounded Canteen magazine, a literary journal that expanded into an active nonprofit: Canteen Arts later added a youth journal, canTeens, and ran a creative writing program for middle schoolers in Harlem. She stepped down from Canteen Arts in 2013 to launch Lit Fix, a quarterly reading and music series. All proceeds from Lit Fix events are donated to local nonprofits that promote literacy.
Mia is not currently accepting new clients. To follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn, click the icons below.