Mandy loves magazine writing, publishing most recently in The Bend, Tex Appeal, and Austin Traveler magazines. She started in journalism as a sports stringer, covering Friday night lights for local newspapers. This led to a staff job with The Williamson County Sun, one of the last family-owned newspapers, where she soon focused on feature writing as Society Editor. She self-published a collection of beer-tending stories, First Drafts, based on her time behind the bar at a local craft brewery, and excerpted her work-in-progress novel at Dollar Store Magazine. 

Mandy earned her bachelor’s at Southwestern University in Texas and her Master of Arts in Literature and Publishing at the University of Galway in Ireland, where she marketed the literary magazine, ROPES, and earned work experience placements with several cultural institutions, including Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Dublin Book Festival, and the Galway International Arts Festival’s SELECTED program for emerging arts professionals. She also worked at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, voted the best bookshop in Ireland by readers of The Irish Times, and interned with Spolia literary magazine in Berlin.

She currently teaches composition at Austin Community College and serves as a writing specialist for the University of Texas. She previously taught at Central Texas College and served as an editor and curriculum coordinator for CTC Online High School. She is working on an MS in Education at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, where she is also learning to surf. Her volunteer work spans fundraising for libraries, walking shelter dogs, and judging literary contests at PBS and 826 National, as well as staffing annual events like Austin Film Festival, Texas Book Festival, ATX TV Festival, and SXSW. In her free time, she likes to read.

Consultation fee is one cup of coffee.

@mandyjoshelton • Instagram

Contact is same @ Gmail.

Always curious about: feature writing, book reviews, publishing history, bookstores, booksellers, ebook incunabula, Ireland, Galway, sustainable fashion, sports mythology, sports romances, third spaces, creative underclasses, longform essays, Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw, shoes, community, nonprofits, public libraries, Texas, Austin, small towns, school mascots, Veronica Mars, travel, craft beer, Patrick Swayze, academic life, adjunct life, grammar lessons, Being Erica, road trips, the Coastal Bend, Clara Driscoll, surf culture, stargazing, craft beer, small businesses, entrepreneurship, Truman Capote’s New York, ninja turtles, and literary fiction.