Mark Bennett Feldman
markfeldman@writingworks dot info
Summary
Experienced writer, manager, and strategic communicator able to develop and tell compelling stories that engage key audiences and help meet long-term goals.
Experience
Founder & Principal, Writing Works. Launched communications and writing consultancy. (September 2012 – present)
Helps organizations find memorable, engaging, and specific language to meet strategic goals. Emphasizes storytelling (locating plot, characters, suspense, and identification) and vivid and concrete language. Able to write quickly, balance multiple competing deadlines, and work collaboratively. Core skills include: communications strategy and messaging, writing for varied audiences and media, listening, teaching, presenting, translating complex concepts, and a keen design sense.
Mast Collaborative: Writing and designing website for clean tech consultancy.
Sustainable Business Oregon: “Making Change”: series of interviews with prominent businesspeople and change makers.
Founder and Director, SUSSingSustainability@Stanford, Stanford University. Started and grew a sustainability blog showcasing student writing and art and providing a centralized forum for environmental news and opportunities. (suss.stanford.edu/blog). (2010 – August 2012)
Writing and Editing: Worked with students to develop story ideas, edit student writing, and mentor student editors. Wrote blog content as well as publicity and fund-raising materials.
Digital Experience: Worked with students, administrators, and faculty to design, develop, and grow a WordPress blog. Managed Facebook presence.
Freelance Writer and Editor. Carried out projects with minimal supervision that furthered organizational communication and development goals.
Oregon Environmental Council: worked on communicating and framing their carbon tax program.
GeoKids Early Childhood Development Center: Edited GeokidsSummer2010.
US Geological Survey: Wrote press releases and stories for the web that led to print, radio, and TV coverage.
Lecturer, Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) Stanford University. (Fall 2005 – Spring 2012)
Advising and Mentoring: Served as a first-year advisor. Mentored students’ independent research. Numerous students have won Stanford-sponsored awards for writing and academic achievement. Provided individualized consultation at the Writing Center to graduate and undergraduates to improve organization, clarity, and effectiveness of writing.
Leadership and Management: Organized regular presentations of instructor research-in-progress. Co-organized a 2 day Sustainability Practicum featuring distinguished participants (including Wes Jackson and Scott Sanders) and hands-on workshops (2012).
Writing and Publishing: Wrote for varied audiences. Edited and wrote for PWR’s online newsletter (2005-6). Published academic and non-academic articles; co-edited a special double issue of an academic journal.
Consultant, Graduate Student Instructor Teaching and Resource Center, University of California, Berkeley (2004-5). Collaborated with librarians, professors, and teaching assistants to implement a Mellon Foundation grant to integrate library research assignments into large enrollment courses; designed an online handbook on teaching research to undergraduates; led pedagogy workshops for graduate students on topics including “Effective Grading” and “Teaching Research in First Year Writing Courses.”
Sustainable Conservation, Program Assistant. (1997-1998) Sole administrative and programmatic support for a small environmental non-profit. Quick to learn and take on additional responsibilities. Designed and edited quarterly newsletter. Maintained website content. Organized annual meetings and other events. Oversaw all aspects of office relocation.
Education
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric Department (2005).
A.B. Bowdoin College (highest honors), Brunswick, Maine. Joint degree in English and Biology (1996).
Recognition & Awards
Research Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center. September 2009-10. Highly selective year-long research fellowship awarded for researching and writing: Urban Ecologies: New York City’s Visionary Urbanism.
Invited Participant, Faculty Choice, Stanford’s Cantor Center for the Visual Arts (2010-11). Created a podcast tour of selected objects in the museum’s collections, titled “Out of the Wild,” exploring how various works of art envision nature.
Invited Presentations, Rutgers University, American Studies Colloquium (2010); New York University, Colloquium in American Literature and Culture (2009).
Arts Writing Workshop, Selected to participate in a year-long arts writing workshop sponsored by the International Art Critics Association and the Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation (2010-11).
Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Major research grant ($5,000) (2011).
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor, Rhetoric Department, UC Berkeley (2003-4).
Nathaniel Webb Research Fellowship, Bowdoin College (1999-2004).
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fellowship, Bowdoin College (1999-2004).
Brown Prize in Extemporaneous Composition, Bowdoin College (1996).
Selected Publications
Still Wild: The Human and the Animal in American Literary Naturalism. Book manuscript under review, University of Massachusetts Press.
“Basia Irland’s Gathering of Waters: An Invitation to Know your River,” forthcoming in Sculpture.
“Visualizing the Ends of Oil: Edward Burtynsky and Chris Jordan” Places: Design Observer (April 26, 2012).
“Animal Pedagogies: Evolutionary Lines and Discontinuities,” Nineteenth Century Studies, 27 (2011)
“Inside the Sanitation System: Mierle Ukeles, Urban Ecology, and the Global Circulation of Garbage,” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 10/11 (Spring & Fall 2009).
“Where the Wild Things Aren’t: Animals in New York City,” The Minnesota Review, 73/74 (2009).
“The Physics and Metaphysics of Caging: The Animal in Late-Nineteenth Century American Culture,” Mosaic, special issue on “The Animal,” 39.4 (December 2006): 161-180.
“Remembering a Convulsive War: Whitman’s Memoranda During the War and the Therapeutics of Display (link: pdf),” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 23.1-2 (Summer/Fall 2005): 1-25.
Selected Writing for SUSSingSustainability@Stanford
Series on Zach Yohannes’ Gro-Mart, vertical urban agriculture prototype. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
“The Fissured Ethos of Climate Science” (February 2012).
“Happenings at Jasper Ridge Biological Reserve” (October 2011).
“Waru” (July 2011).
“Bloomington Community Orchard” (July 2011).
“Photos that Make You See and Think About Water – Jin Zhu’s (‘11) ‘Endless Stream: Water in the American West’ “ (April 2011).
Writing Works 