Who is Bengman?
Bridget Engman was born in Minnesota and raised in Illinois, and now resides in Southern Arizona, surrounded by plants, insects, and animals that could easily kill her. One of them probably will someday, when she gets a little too close trying to get a really good photo.
She is a graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and attended University of New Orleans for two years before meandering her way back to Illinois by way of New Mexico and earning both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures with an emphasis on Japanese Literature. Since then she has worked as a freelance visual artist and jewelry crafter, occasional Japanese teacher, and arts administrator, recently returning to the freelance world.
Through all of Bridget's schooling, travels, and tribulations, two things have remained constant: an insatiable hunger for stories of all kinds and in all media, and a compulsive need to proofread every written document she encounters. (The latter has led to many awkward moments online and an occasional rant to her long-suffering friends and family about the state of proofreading in the world today.) When Holly Atkinson of Evil Eye Editing tempted her into occasional line editing work, Bridget's love of storytelling and language (not to mention her pedantic need to fix incorrect English) finally found a new outlet, and since then she has enjoyed being either the primary editor or line editor for several published books. She takes great pride in her ability to weed out commonly-misused homophones and eggcorns, her instinct for the pacing of exposition, and her lack of shyness or coyness when it comes to editing sex scenes, regardless of their heat level.
Seriously, she has no shame.
Bridget continues to create visual art in various media and with various subjects, make jewelry, and engage in any art or craft she can get materials for. She competes annually in GISH, an international scavenger hunt for which she inevitably gets sunburned taking underwater photos, lies on hot pavement in the Arizona heat to take wacky pictures of her friends from the absolute best angle, and makes art out of things like toilet paper rolls, tampons, and last night's dirty dishes. In her mostly-nonexistent free time, she enjoys reading and writing fanfiction, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, doing even more crafts and art, and coddling her hummingbird plants, herbs, and succulents. She is proud to have single-mothered three children to adulthood, and prouder that they are all creative, kind, funny, and incredibly sarcastic.