Erin Maxwell Meyer, PhD

Owner & founder of Laughing Saint Editorial LLC

Resume (by request)

Academic CV (by request)

Laughing Saint Editorial LLC was started by a former professor of writing and university writing-program director.

Like Saint Philip Neri—the laughing saint—I trained for an academic career but left it behind to find new ways of helping people more directly.  Unlike Saint Philip, I have yet to be canonized and am not holding my breath about it.

Education

I hold two bachelor degrees—one in Religious Studies and another in English—from the University of Missouri (I was one one-hundredth of a grade point away from honors, so I should have studied for that geology final a bit more).  My masters (2007, with honors) in Language, Literature, and Composition and my doctorate (2011, with honors) in Composition and Rhetoric are both from the University of Kansas.  At these flagship, Research I universities, my focus was on contemporary rhetoric, writing studies, writing pedagogy, writing-program administration, linguistics, and pedagogical mentoring.  My dissertation brought together conceptual metaphor theory, classical and contemporary rhetorical theory, and literary theory to propose a new, "metaphoric" cognitive model of literary reading and comprehension.

Professional Background

In 2015, I resigned from my position as an assistant professor of English and writing-program director at a small, private, Midwestern university that shall remain unnamed here (feel free to ask me, though).  It was my most successful year as an academic: I'd published (under my former name of E.A. Williams) three peer-reviewed articles that year—two co-authored articles and one monograph, which was published in an international scholarly journal—and presented at the Council of Writing Program Administrators' national conference, all while I was both finishing a revision of learning outcomes for all three writing courses that I oversaw as Writing Director and also teaching writing for first-year students, business majors, and masters-level nursing students.

I taught writing at the college level for ten years.  And not just student essays, either: students in my classes were just as likely to compose a website or a wiki as they were to write a research paper.  I've designed and taught classes including beginning composition, advanced composition, business writing, and various genres of literature and poetry.  Over the years that I spent in the classroom, I worked with writers from England, Bosnia, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, Thailand, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.

Extracurriculars

Humanity cannot live on editing alone.  Here are a few of the ways I've been involved in my community:

• Indiana University Purdue University at Fort Wayne (IPFW) Community Orchestra cellist (2013 to 2016)

• Marshall (MO) Philharmonic Orchestra cellist (current)

• Founder and former facilitator of Summit City Book Club. Profiled at BookRiot

• Former Chicago Theological Seminary MDiv student (Presidential Merit Scholar award winner)

• Marshall (MO) Public Schools board member (since 2017) and president (2020-2021)