Karen Hellekson, PhD, ELS

biography

 I'm a BELS-certified copyeditor in the scientific, technical, and medical industry. My client list includes the university presses of Stanford and Kansas, and the publishing houses Springer and Wiley. I specialize in book and journal work. I write book reviews about upcoming science fiction releases for Publishers Weekly. I blog occasionally about media studies at Res Gestae. I'm currently doing work about the intersection between fan studies and historiography; and about fan gift culture.

My PhD is in English from the University of Kansas, where I studied with Professor Emeritus James Gunn. I have published two books and a number of articles, and a volume coedited with Kristina Busse, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, was released in October 2006 from McFarland. In late 2007, Kristina and I teamed up again, this time as coeditors of Transformative Works and Cultures, a new open-access peer-reviewed journal in the fields of media and fan studies.

I am coeditor, with Craig Jacobsen, of the Science Fiction Research Association Review. We previously coedited the SFRAR for 3 years during 1998–2000. In addition, I am spearheading SFRA 2008's proceedings volume, which is slated for release in spring 2009.