My love of gardening started around age six, when my dad showed me how to cut apart marigold cell packs with a steak knife and plant them firmly in the ground. "Don't be afraid of it," he used to say.

As luck would have it, my first job as an editor was at a gardening magazine — Garden Design — where I learned how to write by watching some of the best. A few years later, I joined the staff at The New York Times Magazine, working on the Fashion and Home Design editions.

Both were the kind of places where you walked in every morning just grateful to be there. The unpretentious writers around me showed me that good writing does its job quietly. It informs without announcing itself.

After eight years in New York City, I moved back to my hometown in Rochester, New York, started POST Magazine, went to night school for my master's in marketing, and eventually joined Cornell University, where I helped faculty translate their expertise into online courses.

When I work with an author, all of these experiences come into play. I think of myself as the reader — someone who wants the information, has the questions, and is thirsting to learn. We write with that reader in mind. And your book becomes the one with dog-eared pages and sticky notes poking out from the edges — the one they reach for again and again.

~ Amy Calabrese Metcalfe

*illustration by Sarah Keane