Andrea Vander Pluym is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous national publications and online. Her professional career began in magazine writing and editing and expanded into freelance writing, syndicated column writing, authoring two books,  and consulting large and small companies on how to best reach their audiences through engaging copy.

During her years as an editor both online and in print, Andrea honed her skills at creating carefully edited and concise copy. While working as a full-time editor and copy editor, she was known for her abilities to cut out the “fat” and quickly catch non sequiturs, grammatical errors and typos, in addition to her keen memory of style rules in the AP and Chicago manuals.

As a writer, Andrea’s editors and clients have appreciated her collaboration, research and interviewing skills, and journalistic and creative writing styles. In her 20 years of publishing experience, she has written feature stories, how-to articles, personal essays, fiction, hard-hitting news, columns, and interviews on topics including lifestyle, health, celebrity, technology, and do-it-yourself projects.

Andrea has won notable awards for her writing, including two Maggie Awards, the Hollywood Women's Press Club Scholarship, two Copley News Scholarships, the California Newspaper Publishers' Association Merit of Excellence, and the National Council on Alcoholism Journalism Award for Best Feature Story. After gaining acceptance into elite writing workshops with authors Carolyn See, Hargurchet Bhabra and David Wong Louie, she earned a B.A. in English literature, with a concentration in short fiction writing, from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Andrea lives in the Bay Area.