Candida Hadley – Editor

I have been a nonfiction and academic editor for 14 years. I worked as a developmental editor with an independent political/academic publishing company for 11 years before going freelance full-time three years ago. Though I edit all manner of nonfiction, I am particularly interested in writing projects that critically interrogate pressing social issues, such as racism, colonization, white supremacy, capitalism, poverty, gender and sexuality, and the like. I provide development editing, copy/line editing, and proofreading.

While many of the projects I've worked on are written by academics and students, I have also edited more general interest books and memoirs. These projects have also addressed issues of equity and justice in all its myriad forms.

I have graduate degrees in Globalization Studies and Religious Studies from McMaster University and have taken a variety of editing courses. Before becoming an editor I spent almost a decade working as a qualitative and mixed methods researcher in the university sector.

TESTIMONIALS

"Candida, you are one of the most gracious people, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your compliments. All my communications with you have been more than positive, they have been a pleasant experience. I think you feel and understand how personal the memoir I have written is, and you have a special intuitiveness and sensitivity about writers in general."

Berna Bolyn author of Among Wolves: A Memoir (Reedsy collaboration)

“Candida is an amazing editor. She suggested many, many changes that immediately and powerfully clarified what I had been trying to say. In her comments to me, she challenged me to do better, to be more critical, and more intellectually rigorous while she somehow simultaneously made me feel very much capable of those things. She deeply challenged me to do better while encouraging me and boosting my confidence, helping me feel capable of meeting the challenges she set. Both direct and gentle, she helped distill my muddy thoughts and messy ideas into something I feel very proud of. She encouraged me to put more of myself into the pages, to tell the story I want to tell, to let my own voice emerge. She guided me in ways that have made me a better writer, communicator, storyteller going forward. The book will have my name on it, but it was a collaborative endeavour with Candida through and through. I am really, really grateful to her and excited for any writers out there who get the chance to work with her!”
Jen Gobby is a scholar-activist currently doing a postdoc at Concordia University and the author of More Powerful Together: Conversations with Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders