Introducing. . .Ashley Casteel

Name: Ashley Nuzzi (soon-to-be Casteel)

What is your job title/position at Barbour: Assistant Managing Editor

What are your responsibilities with your assignment: My job mostly entails a lot of reviewing (of proofreading tests, proofreading corrections, typesetting corrections, author corrections, etc). I also send galley copies to proofreaders and authors and retrieve the mail everyday (which is always an adventure :-) ). In mid-July I’ll be in charge of assigning projects to proofreaders too.

Tell us a little bit about when/how you came to work at Barbour: After surviving a series of brutal summer jobs dog-sitting, selling fireworks, painting semi-trucks, and cleaning hotel rooms, I stumbled upon a Writer’s Digest article that made reference to Barbour. Up until that point, I hadn’t realized there was a prominent publishing company in Tuscarawas County, so I jumped at the chance to work here when the opportunity suddenly arose a few weeks before I graduated college. I’ve been working at Barbour for a little over a week now, and my only regret is that I wasn’t able to work here sooner!

What has been the most pleasant surprise in your new job assignment: I definitely love Taco Bell Mondays and Spanish soap opera Thursdays. Everyone here has been so friendly and fun to work with. Even the proofreaders and authors have been really welcoming and open to my arrival. I feel like I’ve been adopted into a big happy family J.

What is your least favorite task among your job responsibilities: I really enjoy everything about my job, but if I had to pick a least-favorite task it would probably have to be reviewing e-proofs. I’m an old-fashioned gal and like seeing all the manual corrections in the margins. Every proofreader has a different style, and that’s fun to pick up on.

Have you had any previous experience in the publishing/writing fields? I gained a lot of experience while I attended Hiram College as an English/Creative Writing major. My junior year, I co-edited a collection of non-fiction essays that was published last December. I also copyedited the student newspaper for three years, and did some online freelance writing on the side. Some of my poems and short stories have been published in a few different literary reviews as well.

What project is consuming your energies this week? Mostly just familiarizing myself with the different processes my job entails. I also received my first in-house assignment for a perpetual calendar last week, so that’s been fun to work on too.

Do you ever find time to read for pleasure? If so, what book/s have you read recently? I love to read just about anything that’s kind of quirky and inventive. My all time favorite author is Jonathan Safran Foer. One of my goals in life is to convince everyone in the world to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. (Really, you should read it.) I also really enjoyed The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, and I just finished a great biography on Harper Lee. Right now I’m about a third of the way through Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen, and next on my list is a collection of Odes by Pablo Neruda.

Can you tell us briefly about your family and your life outside of Barbour’s walls? Right now I live at home with my parents, two younger sisters (Gabby and Kathy), and cat (Sylvester), but I’m getting married at the end of June and will be moving into my fiancé’s apartment. Wedding planning has been gradually consuming my life for the past year and a half, but Brett (my awesome fiancé) has been a big help. We’ve been engaged for four years and have been dating for almost eight. Aside from Brett and my job and my family, I also love penguins, cooking, camping, garage sales, and taking lots of photographs.

What church do you attend? I go to West Union Methodist church with Brett and his family. It’s the church Brett grew up in, and I love it because it’s so welcoming and cozy.

Do you have a favorite quote that motivates you these days? Nothing especially motivating, but there’s one quote by Rose Lane Wilder that I like to keep near my writing desk at home: “Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”