Benjamin Hodges
Atlanta-based writer and editor

I am a lifelong enthusiast of letters with equal passions for writing beautiful stories and getting things right.

I have worked as a professional writer and editor for more than 15 years. In that time, I’ve drafted hundreds of speeches for executive leaders, penned award-winning feature stories, edited books and magazines, written for the signatures of politicians, rebranded colleges, fundraised hundreds of thousands of dollars, taught at a public university, and much more.

A ZEAL FOR CRAFT

Narratives aren’t discovered; they’re created. Writing with clarity, energy, and concision, I approach my assignments with a conscientious zeal for the craft.

I think sentences are just as important as the meaning they convey and the visions they summon. Compositions of great beauty and power don’t just rely on an eye for character, conflict, and the texture of experience. They’re also predicated on sound mechanical execution — structure and syntax, phrasing and transitions. I care about creativity and technique to the same degree.

THE DAY JOB

I am the principal writer for Ángel Cabrera, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since I started in 2020, I have penned hundreds upon hundreds of pieces for President Cabrera — keynote speeches, brief remarks, official statements, talking points, video scripts, quotes, letters, columns, blog posts, op-eds, and more.

I excel at crafting model nutgraf messaging for key topics and projects — pithy phrasal narratives that tend to stick around and become stylish boilerplate for other communicators. More importantly, though, I delight in creating remarks that make the president stand out against the usual institutional fluff and puffery.

I conduct meticulous research to provide him with substantial prep that helps him converse eloquently, express genuine emotion, and make enduring contributions at his numerous speaking engagements. These engagements include widely publicized, external events with U.S. senators (such as Jon Ossoff and Sam Nunn), foreign delegations (such as the Belgian Economic Mission), heads of federal agencies (such as CIA Director William Burns), dignitaries (such as Ambassador Reuben Brigety), international bodies (such as the United Nations), and global industry leaders (such as Satya Nadella).

Between 2016 and 2020, I was the assistant editor of the Georgia State University Magazine, an award-winning quarterly with more than 100,000 subscribers and an extensive web presence. As assistant editor, I wrote, edited, and helped produce stories about cold cases, drug addiction, historic buildings, bone collections, pirates, and more. While my own words filled each issue — from heds and deks to features, profiles, and other bylines — I also overhauled our assigned content. That work could entail coaching writers on revisions, applying the finishing touches on quality reporting, or refashioning 3,000 words of lifeless prose into compelling narrative.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My work with the written word includes the following:

• Articles, including feature stories, columns, and profiles

• Commercial video scripts

• Comprehensive marketing and sales copy for commercial websites

• Critical music reviews and album release promotional materials

• Daily social media posts

• Direct mail and email marketing

• Fundraising appeals

• Ghostwriting, including official correspondence, endorsements, and letters of recommendation

• Identity copy, including mission statements and key messaging

• Marketing copy, including back covers, product labels and descriptions, and more

• Newsletters

• Operator’s manuals

• Peer-reviewed technical papers

• Professional bios

• Speeches (from brief remarks to keynote addresses)

• Style guides

As an editor, my services range from meticulous proofreading to deep editing. I possess an encyclopedic command of Associated Press (AP) style, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), and Modern Language Association (MLA) style, and I’ve edited everything from feature stories and technical papers to books and manuals. While I can tighten your prose — rewriting sentences and cutting copy to fit — I can also work with you to recreate your text as whole. That means re-envisioning structure, realigning arcs, and drafting new narrative and testimony as the greater goals of your piece may require.

Check out samples of my work under Feature Stories and Copy on Commission, and read what others have to say.

Pricing depends on the length of the copy and the scope of the project. Contact me for a quote.

VITALS

I hold degrees in English from Georgia State University (B.A. ’08) and Portland State University (M.A. ’14). In addition to Atlanta, where I now reside with my wife and children, I’ve lived in Fredericksburg, Va.; Portland, Ore.; and Paris, France.