A Closer Look at Jolanta N. Komornicka

I am co-president of the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI) and co-chair of the Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph Twig of Editors Canada.

I come to the publishing world from academia, where I was an Assistant Professor of History. My specialty, and my continuing passion, is the Middle Ages. I’m unlikely to turn down any project that even tangentially touches on the medieval world or history more broadly. My years of experience researching and teaching have given me familiarity with history’s neighbouring fields of anthropology, theology, religious studies, literature, and archaeology.

Picture of an individual with dark brown, shoulder-length hair and glasses. Smiling while wearing a grey corduroy blazer over a burgundy shirt. On the blazer's lapel are two enamel pins: one is a book for the Chicago Manual of Style, the other has a magpie and the letters ISC SCI.

My primary work is with my individual clients and presses, but I also teach courses on back-of-book indexing and the business of freelancing at Library Juice Academy. I have worked as the Production Editor at Zoetic Press, as a copy editor and proofreader for Architectural Histories, and as a continuity editor at Choice of Games. I currently copy edit for H-France, and I proofread The Bulletin for ISC/SCI and Key Words for the American Society for Indexing (ASI).

I have a wide range of interests, from tabletop role-playing games to hiking to travelling. An avid gamer, I am always looking for clients working on roleplaying, strategy, and text-based adventure games. I thoroughly enjoy a good explanation of a specialist subject for the non-specialist reader, especially in history, the hard sciences, mathematics, and ecology. My years unpacking weighty academic monographs and journal articles for students served as on-the-job training for plain language, which I now study and apply as a copy editor.

I have trained in copy editing, line editing, stylistic editing, medical editing, proofreading, and indexing — primarily through Toronto Metropolitan University — while supplementing my course work with niche professional development sessions from Editors Canada, the Indexing Society of Canada, ASI, and the American Medical Writers Association. I have also received training in ESL and have worked extensively with graduate students writing in English as a non-primary language.

I am a member in good standing with ISC/SCI, ASI, Editors Canada, ACES, and the EFA.

Resume
Academic CV