Rebecca McBride: Profile

Rebecca McBride offers freelance writing, editing, and research services to organizations, companies, and individuals. Here is a brief profile of her educational and professional experience—how she got from there to here.

Rebecca graduated from The Harley School in Rochester, NY, after spending her junior year of high school at the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

In her doctoral dissertation, Richard Wright's Use of His Reading of Fiction, 1927-1940, she studied the influence of writers like Dreiser, Farrell, and Hemingway on Wright's apprenticeship, which ended with the publication of Native Son in 1940.

For her graduate assistantship, Rebecca taught courses on American literature, including the study of black characters in American fiction, at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Later, she taught writing at Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson, New York.
After working as a researcher for an author, an assistant for a film producer, and program assistant for a skills training project, she began writing freelance feature stories and reviews for magazines and newspapers. As public relations/publications officer for Regents College, the University of the State of New York, she helped create a complete set of publications with a new design and approach. She wrote the college's viewbook, catalog, brochures, and quarterly newsletter.
As Senior Writer/Editor for Welfare Research, Inc. (WRI), she was responsible for the organization, clarity, accuracy, and overall quality of all project and corporate publications. She wrote and edited reports, manuals, grant proposals, brochures, newsletters, and website content.
As a consultant/freelance writer and editor, Rebecca McBride writes articles, brochures, and handbooks; edits reports, manuals; and website content; identifies funding sources; interviews subjects; and conducts online and library research. Editing services include developmental editing, copyediting, and proofreading.
Areas of past work include literature, child welfare, youth, education, immigration, and health. Additional areas of work are welcome.

Her book, Traveling Between the Lines: Europe in 1938, will be published by Epigraph in August 2010 (see Writing).