A M Carley

I’ve always been fascinated with words. These various accumulations of letters hold so much power, and influence everyone in countless ways. Books were my close companions when I was little. In high school, I wrote for and then edited the school paper. I worked my way through college proofreading books for a law publisher, and preparing a music teacher’s manuscript for publication. As a history major, and later as a music conservatory student, I sensed that some of my best work involved the integrating of information and nuance into new written work.

After college I moved from the Midwest to New York City and worked my way into arts management. From there, it became possible to start a fine arts consulting business that I ran for many years, where I managed private collections of art. Writing was often at the heart of this work, when my words could bring three or four different parties with divergent interests to an agreement. Writing these agreements required listening carefully, working purposefully, and drafting precisely.

On the side, I went back to school to study music. Raised in a musical family, I wanted to learn more about the language and theory of music. I began writing music, paying close attention to lyrics.

A few years into running my own business, I put myself through law school because those agreements I was drafting kept passing muster with the legal experts. I considered for the first time the possibility that I could become one of them. In my third year at NYU Law, I won an ASCAP Nathan Burkan award for a paper on the uneasy fit between copyright law and minimal and conceptual art. An edited version of that paper was published in ArtForum magazine, and I began to write for publication. Then, at the dawn of the dot-com era, I edited an online magazine addressing issues at the intersection of arts and technology. Our small staff was distributed across the country, and our contributing writers sent in their work from around the globe. I understood the possibilities of the internet to sustain collaboration and co-creation, for staff and readership alike.

Moving to Charlottesville, VA in mid-life, I considered my next professional steps. I noticed that the best aspects of my working life all involved the power of words – to reveal, to influence, to engage, to entertain, to advocate, to connect, to empower, to improve lives. Starting in 2012, I committed to working with writers – providing coaching and editing services that give their words more potency and polish. I enjoy this work immensely, and am grateful for the life experiences that prepared me for it. Combined with my own work as a writer of nonfiction, I live my life surrounded by words.