Mary Norris (copy editor)


Mary Norris is an American author, writer and copy editor for The New Yorker.

Early life

Mary Norris was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1974 and earned a master's degree in English from the University of Vermont.

Career

Norris joined the editorial staff at The New Yorker in 1978. She has been a query proofreader at the magazine since 1993. She has also been a contributor to "The Talk of the Town" and The New Yorker website.
Her first book, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, was published by W. W. Norton & Co in 2015. Norris was a finalist in the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor for Between You & Me. She gave a TED talk at TED2016 on the same topic. Her second book, Greek to Me – Adventures of a Comma Queen, explores her relation to foreign languages, particularly to classical Greek.