A D ReedA. D. Reed is a writer and editor who operates the editorial service My Own Editor (www.myowneditor.com) and founded the North Carolina-based publishing imprint Pisgah Press LLC (www.pisgahpress.com). A lover of languages since childhood, he grew up ith a multilingual, Canadian-born Russian émigrée mother who spoke English with a flat Cleveland, Ohio, accent and Russian like a lifelong Muscovite; a father from a south Georgia farm family who spoke carefully and precisely (like many a self-conscious, self-made man) though with a noticeable drawl; an elder sister who became an acclaimed editor in Canada and the Cayman Islands, and an older brother who, after careers as a librarian and teacher (and writing poetry), nits and picks with the best of them. Their extended family and friends spoke southern, Appalachian, British, Anglo-German, Greek-American, deep country, and transplanted-New-Yorker dialects, among many others-all of which Reed listened to and absorbed with fascination. He studied French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, and Russian as a high school and college student, becoming fluent in some languages, competent in others; but his first love remains the elegant, flexible, surprising, often incomprehensible, sometimes ridiculous, always delightful mélange of tongues that has gradually evolved into the modern American English language. Read More Read Less