About

Please feel free to use any of these bio-blurbs:

General Bio

Erin McKean is the founder of the not-for-profit Wordnik.com, the world’s biggest online dictionary. Before founding Wordnik, she was the editor-in-chief of American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press.Her goal is to make every word in the English language “lookupable” – including the 52% of unique English words that aren’t currently in any dictionary. Erin is the author of three Weird and Wonderful Words books, the best-selling novel The Secret Lives of Dresses, and (most recently) The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dresses. She’s written regular columns for The Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, PAPER, Foreign Affairs, and Sew News. She’s served as an advisor to the American National Corpus, the journal American Speech, the Wikimedia Foundation, and serves on the KPCB Design Council, and is an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. She blogs at dressaday.com and tweets as @emckean. When you meet her, please tell her your favorite word.

Writing-specific Bio

Erin McKean is the founder of Wordnik.com. Previously, she was the editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, and the editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2E. Her books include Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That’s Amore (which is also a collection of words). The Secret Lives of Dresses is her first novel, and really, her first book where the words are arranged in something other than alphabetical order. The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dresses, is her first non-wordy nonfiction book. Erin lives in California south of San Francisco and spends her free time reading, sewing, blogging, roller-skating, and arguing about whether robots or zombies would win in a fight (lasers optional). She loves loud prints, quiet people, long books with happy endings, and McVitie’s Milk Chocolate Hobnobs.

Coder-friendly Bio

Erin McKean is the founder of the not-for-profit Wordnik.com, the world’s biggest online dictionary. Before founding Wordnik, she was the editor-in-chief of American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, and before Javascript, she dabbled in HyperCard, Perl, and Omnimark (if you have ever written anything in Omnimark, she will buy you a drink). In addition to writing code, blog posts, and documentation, she’s also the author of the Weird and Wonderful Words books, the best-selling novel The Secret Lives of Dresses, and The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dresses, and is an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. She blogs at dressaday.com. When you meet her, please tell her your favorite word.

Need a Picture?

Feel free to use this picture as long as you include the photo credit line.

Erin McKean, CC-BY-4.0 Kirill Ignatieff
picture credit: CC-BY 4.0 Kirill Ignatieff (http://www.igkirill.com/)

Press

Advisory Roles

I am an advisor to the Planet Word Museum.

Need Something Else?

Contact me.