Maria Carter - founder, owner, senior editor, publishing editor
Maria set up a a freelance in 2000, but she has been working in the publishing industry since the 1980s. She started up as Shoreline BioMedical and later created Swan & Horn to incorporate the publishing side of the company. As her skillset expanded, she began offering the entire suite of editorial, production and publishing services to her clients, and then to her own authors.
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Her language, editorial and production standards are understandably high - a result of working for so many major publishing houses, so many types of clients across industries and government bodies, and at so many levels.
Thousands of documents and books have passed through her hands between the time when she merely followed corporate house-style guides and when she began compiling them for herself and others. She has even set up whole publishing departments for business clients. You can see more here about her professional training and published works here. ​Still very much a biomedical information expert, Maria loves her fiction work too, both general and literary.
Education and employment history
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​​​BSc Biomedical Sciences degree, Westminster University (1985)
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PhD at St Thomas' Medical School, London University (on neuropharmacology of human retinal disease); MSc by research obtained 1987.
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Formal editorial training in 1989 (Publisher's Training Centre, PTC).
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Employment from 1989 in academic/health publishing settings as medical writer/editor/indexer and project/editorial manager (Taylor & Francis, MediCine/Adelphi, Adis International, Crossaig/Derwent/ISI Thomson Reuters, Elsevier). Alsoe spent one year with ICI/Astra Zeneca.
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Self-employed from 2000 to present day. Recognised as Advanced Professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) in the early 1990s.
The rest of the team
HUGH CHARRIER CARTER
Hugh is full-time office manager with responsibility for order fulfillment and stock control, and support for bookseller visits, book festivals and launch events. He is a busy songwriter and musician, with an entire career spent in the music industry. Latterly he ran music-therapy classes for adults with additional needs.
ROBIN J. GREEN
Robin joined Swan & Horn as an assistant publisher in 2023, with responsibilities in all aspects of the publishing side of the business, from the technical nuts and bolts of running the company and dealing with authors, to distribution, marketing and promotion. In his spare time he is a writer of creative fiction and a part-time philosopher.
ALEXANDRA E. COMPTON
Alex joined the company in 2024 as editorial publishing assistant. A writer, published poet and spoken-word performer, she is also the CEO of a non-profit charity, Maggie's Beautiful People. She previously worked on the Poor Things online resource of the Alasdair Gray Archive and for the Glasgow Women’s Library. She has an MA in English Literature and is currently studying for a Creative Writing MLitt.
