Agnes Cserhati - Editor

I have worked with recognised, award-winning writers in Poetry, Literary Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction. I love helping emerging writers develop their debut collections or novels but am equally excited working with experienced writers. I especially enjoy helping writers push the envelope that bit further, whether they are working in traditional or experimental forms. My motto is: be ambitious, be authentic.

I love writing that is intelligent, surprising, and deeply human—poems and stories that ultimately tug at the soul, compel the reader to search their own emotions, be it joy, humour, sorrow, shame, etc.

I find the entire process of a writer’s work being accepted and published by literary magazines and journals, then being collated and developed into a fully formed manuscript ready to submit to agents or publishers, one of the most fascinating and invigorating pursuits of all. I love to keep my finger on the pulse of current writing and to help writers discover how their own voice and vision might fit into or challenge what’s already out there.

My editing philosophy is to give care to a writer’s work. My edits will likely cover everything between the specific and technical to the spontaneous and immersive. The arc, the direction, are key. I hope to encourage writers to work to their strengths, but also to help improve any lapses. The aim is to make the writer’s work entirely their own in the best version possible. While meticulous, the process should also be exhilarating!

PRAISE

On Whereabouts, Matthew Francis, reviewed by Sarah Crown, Guardian (August 12, 2006): “Shortlisted for the Forward prize for both his previous collections and named as one of the Poetry Book Society's 20 ‘next generation poets’ in 2004, Matthew Francis already has an impressive pedigree. With this outstanding volume, his place among contemporary British poetry's aristocracy is confirmed.”

On In Slow Woods, Gill Gregory, reviewed by Valeria Melchioretto, Tears in the Fence (March 2012): “Throughout, we find a strong sense of sensory sensibility. Gill Gregory often enhances her poems by making ekphrastic citations of artwork to back up her intent. This collection speaks to the eye and soul as well as the ear and the mind. Clearly there is an ambitious mind behind these poems, exploring complex inner worlds that can barely be expressed, and despite restraint, the result is utterly exciting.”

On Liminal, Michael Lee Rattigan, interviewed by Robert Yates (July 10, 2012): Do you think there is an overall theme to Liminal? “It wasn’t even my idea to call it Liminal, actually. It came out of exchanges with my editor and her reading of the poems. The original idea was one that allows for a certain kind of range for it to float between different areas of experience, passages of life, places, and people. I wanted to allow for all of that to be pushed into this space, to cram in as much as I could to this hybridity of experience.”