Georgia "Gia" Manry is a freelance writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon.

Education History:

I began my college life as a potential drama major at the University of Portland, but I realized fairly quickly that life as an actress wasn't what I wanted. When I realized early in my sophomore year that what I wanted to do was write, I immediately set about transferring to Pacific University. In addition to being only twenty miles away, Pacific had both journalism and creative writing programs-- both of which were reputed to be excellent.

I earned a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR in May of 2006. By that time I had already been working as a freelance writer for two and a half years. Juggling my freelance projects with my work as a student and the added complication of completing two internships helped cement my work ethic and time management abilities as well as developing her skills.

Professional History:

By the time I graduated college I already had a solid collection of work samples from my internships and various freelance work, which helped me have a job lined up weeks before my graduation. I started work as a full-time Web Marketing Specialist at Informal Education Products, Ltd. after only a two-week break to go to Japan.

I worked happily at IEP for about six months, at which time I was approached by Rob Bricken to be the primary news editor for a start-up. In addition to the job being a huge jump in responsibility for someone with my age and experience, it offered me the chance to work in a field that had been a hobby of mine for more than a decade: Japanese animation, comics, and popular culture.

In January I started working on animeOnline, and I worked happily until July 20th, when I and my animeOnline coworkers were all laid off and the project cancelled due to reasons beyond our control. I feel very lucky to have spent even seven months at my "dream job," and feel that our team did some truly excellent work in spite of our early closure.

Currently...

After animeOnline, I looked around for full-time work and instead found myself being offered a significant amount of freelance work. Since I had freelanced part time for several years, and since I wasn't yet ready to give up working in my favorite niche, I decided to work freelance full-time for the time being.

So while I am keeping my eyes open for an interesting full-time opportunity, I am currently working as a freelance writer and editor, specializing in Internet marketing and arts/entertainment journalism, including (but not limited to) J-pop culture.

The Logo:

The Chinese/Japanese character that I use in my logo, 才 (read "sai"), means "talent." I use it because it was my talent that landed me my first freelance gig, writing short stories for an ESL teacher in Taiwan-- and also because it's more aesthetically pleasing than the characters for "write" and "word."

Thank you very much for visiting my website! I hope I get the chance to work with you soon. :)