Steve Novak is a wordsmith, copy editor, and freelance journalist. Over his 19-year career, Novak’s work has appeared in newspapers, websites, newsletters, and blogs, with contributions to industry reports and technical proposals.
He worked 17 years as a full-time local news journalist in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, writing and editing print and digital stories for The Express-Times, lehighvalleylive.com, The Star-Ledger, and NJ.com. In addition to numerous state-level awards for writing and headlines, he co-led reporting on the “Swing County, Swing State” project, which earned national accolades as a 2021 Toner Prize for Political Reporting winner and Online Journalism Awards finalist. He also launched a weekly local history feature, covered the science and humanity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and wrote about his experiences chasing eclipses and throwing Christmas trees.
More recently, Novak works as a technical proposal writer for a government contracting firm in health care and national security. He has produced freelance blog posts and newsletter copy for a fentanyl public-awareness campaign and edited industry reports. He’s always coming up with short-story ideas.
