Edwina Woodbury developed her love of reading in childhood when her mother read to her daily. As a young girl, she devoured volumes of The Bobbsey Twins adventure novels and the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, later developing a love of poetry and a broad range of fiction and nonfiction.

Her fascination with publishing began in the 1980s when she helped two elderly women write and publish their memoirs. The tools available to self-publishers at that time were few and far between, but she found the process of working with authors both rich and rewarding.

After a successful twenty-one-year corporate career in finance at Avon Products, Inc., Edwina left Manhattan for her home state, settling in Chapel Hill where she had earned her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina. Once again, she was drawn to the idea of helping individuals write and publish their stories, which led to her acquisition of The Chapel Hill Press, Inc. in 1999.

Since then, she and her staff have seen the business grow to meet the demands of the increasing number of writers who want to self-publish their work. She finds every new project a learning experience, and has made life-long friends through their collaborations on book projects. Edwina’s greatest rewards come from enabling individuals to realize their dream of becoming published authors.

When she’s not working, Edwina enjoys creating organic sculptures, reading (especially fiction), traveling, choral singing, and discovering the latest farm-to-table restaurants. She and her husband Dennis McGill live in Chapel Hill with their Labrador retrievers, Seamus and Lola.

Luz has a passion for the printed word, a profound respect for the process of writing and believes everyone has a story worthy of a beautiful book.

Raised in Argentina, Luz and her family moved to Chapel Hill in the late ’70s. She studied Business Administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and pursued the arts while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, but it was her love of publishing that made her pivot into the world of newspaper syndicates in NYC. She eventually left the corporate world for a more flexible schedule while raising her five children in Northern NJ. She returned to NC in 2012 when serendipity led to a meeting Edwina Woodbury and the opportunity to join Chapel Hill Press. Those years solidified her love of publishing, and she has spent the past decade immersed in books. Her latest role was with UK based publisher Austin Macauley. While working in the fast-paced world of NYC publishing was fulfilling, the pandemic was a time to reassess priorities, and the pull of family brought her back to NC.

She is thrilled to be back at Chapel Hill Press for what she calls her ‘next to last chapter’ and for the opportunity to work in true partnership with authors to bring their stories to life. “There is nothing like the satisfaction I feel when an author sees their book for the first time. All those late nights, the outpouring of words, stories, memories, years in the making, all bound in a beautiful, perfectly laid and crafted book.”

Dedicated to making the author’s publishing experience a smooth and enjoyable journey, she is fiercely devoted to assuring every step of the process is the brightest reflection of quality and commitment to bringing dreams to tangible reality.

Bob Land is a freelance editor, proofreader, and indexer with four decades of wide-ranging publishing experience. In addition to Chapel Hill Press, current clients include university presses (Oxford, Yale, NYU, Oklahoma, Johns Hopkins, et al.); theological presses (Orbis, Westminster John Knox, Crossroad, et al.); a cornucopia of business, education, nonprofit, and trade publishers (Aspen Institute, Social Science Research Council, Health Communications, et al.); and a few individual authors worldwide. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, Bob wrote and edited university-level business and insurance textbooks and examinations for the world’s largest self-study insurance education program, and also was the lead editor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Bob’s first job in the world of printing and publishing was a far cry from his headier work today: proofreading airline timetables and scratch-off lottery tickets in the early 1980s. One memory from those years is checking the printing plates for the big-money winning tickets of the original McDonald’s scratch-off games—laboring on the graveyard shift under the watchful eye of an armed Atlanta police officer.