ABOUT

Ashley J. Cerasaro-Flanagan, a freelance copy editor and writer, was born in Hazleton, Pa.

Ashley recently graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville with a Master of Science in communication and information with a focus in journalism and electronic media. While enrolled in the graduate program, she served as a teaching assistant for the school's Introduction to Journalism and Electronic Media course.

For her master’s project, Ashley did research on the information available to high school students during their college-search processes and wrote an advice column “Take It From a Grad Student,” which ran every Tuesday for 12 weeks in fall 2009 on the Knoxville News Sentinel’s “textme” page. Ashley also held the position of editor-in-chief of Scoop, a magazine distributed to 15,000 of the College of Communication and Information's students, staff, faculty and alumni where she approved all of the publication's written and graphic content and edited all copy.

Before enrolling at UT, Ashley graduated magna cum laude from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in mass communications. She was selected to be on the editorial board of her college literary magazine, Scop, during her sophomore year of study. The following year, she served as co-editor-in-chief, managing all aspects of two editions of the publication.

During her senior year at King's, Ashley interned at the Weekender, an alternative free weekly in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where she maintained two of the publication’s features: Agenda and Flicks. She also wrote feature articles and created and implemented her own weekly column, “Shop.” After completing her internship, she was hired as a correspondent.

Now Ashley does freelance copy editing for KNS Media, East Tennessee’s growing multimedia company that produces the award-winning Knoxville News Sentinel along with a number of Web sites, magazines, community newspapers and special events sections. She is also writing a book on the history of Radio Systems Corporation, makers of the PetSafe brand, which is due out January 2011.