Hi, I’m Carolina VonKampen (she/her).
I’ve always had a love of reading and writing, and in high school and college, I realized that editing was a perfect combination of those interests. Since then, I’ve been editing anything I can get my hands on: books, blog posts, content marketing, lit mags, magazines, and more.
Now, as a St. Louis-based freelance book editor, I work with indie authors to polish their manuscripts—novels, memoirs, poetry collections, essays, short stories, or business nonfiction—for self-publication or submissions in the traditional publishing world. I provide developmental editing, substantive editing, line editing, copy editing, and proofreading for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
I completed the University of Chicago’s editing certificate program and graduated with a BA in English and history. I am a member of ACES: The Society for Editing, Editorial Freelancers Association, The Authors Guild, and St. Louis Publishers Association. In 2026, I founded #StetChat, an hourlong live conversation on Bluesky for the editing community, and I host the live chats every first and third Wednesday of each month.
From 2019 to 2023, I was the publisher and editor in chief of Capsule Stories, a print literary magazine published every season, where I read submissions and edited all the poetry, short stories, and essays that we published, working closely with authors to ensure their work was polished and publication-ready.
I greatly value diversity, equity, and inclusion and champion these values in my work as an editor. I stay up-to-date on inclusive and conscious language and storytelling by reading articles, attending conferences and webinars, and paying attention to these conversations on social media. You can read about how I copyedit for inclusive language in the section “I provide feedback on inclusive language considerations” of this blog post.
I write, sometimes. My writing has appeared in HerStry, FIVE:2:ONE’s #thesideshow, Moonchild Magazine, HerStry, and Déraciné Magazine. My short story was nominated by Dream Pop Journal for the 2018 Best of the Net. My experience as a writer informs the approach I take as an editor, and my goal is to be the type of editor I’d want to work with as a writer.
I love being a freelance editor! I enjoy editing a range of projects and learning about new things through the content I edit. It’s so fulfilling to work with authors—I love how inventive, creative, and hard-working the writers I work with are. And freelancing means I get to spend my days at home with my two editorial assistants, my tuxedo cats, Les and Lou.
Want to see if I’m a good fit for your book project? Learn more about the editorial services I offer and the types of projects I work on.