Who is Lisa Eldred?

I recently graduated from Michigan State University with a M.A. in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing and a certificate in Serious Game Design. Currently, I am employed at University Outreach and Engagement as an editorial assistant, meaning I write, edit, maintain several websites, and do page design for technical reports. I also do freelance work for Joe T. Darden, Professor of Geography at MSU.

You can read an interview with me about my work process at the Beyond Words blog.

Why Wasabi Jane?

A few years ago, while eating lunch at a local sushi resteraunt, a colleague dared me to eat a sizable chunk of wasabi. Now the thing to understand about this is that I love wasabi. It’s the only condiment I’ll have on my sushi. I even snack on those wasabi peas by the fistful. But I’m not an idiot. “I’ll give you street cred,” he said. “We’ll call you… Wasabi Jane!”

It was when he upped the ante to registering wasabijane.com for me that I actually started considering it. I’ve been doing web work for a couple of years now; I used to write book reviews for my friend Dagny’s now defunct godsoframen.com, and for a while I’d been considering actually getting my own domain. Wasabijane was, by no means, my first choice, but it had a certain flair.

So: I popped about a teaspoonful of wasabi in my mouth and didn’t even flinch. “So,” I said, turning to my coworker, “where’s my website?”

The sad thing to this is that I actually let the domain expire without actually using it. But when I was actually ready to create my own site, wasabijane was a natural choice.