Holly Vestad – Editor

I have ten years of experience as an editor, and throughout my career I have helped authors shape their texts into polished works ready for submission. I am driven by the goal to connect writers to their voices and readers to stories.

As a developmental editor, I have woven together a series of disconnected creative essays into a memoir with a beginning, middle, and end that was shortlisted for the Singapore Literary Prize. I have copy-edited numerous award-winning poetry manuscripts, as well as academic monographs, essays, and theses. I am a rigorous, thoughtful, and extremely precise editor known for my attention to detail, and I remain endlessly fascinated by the ways we choose to narrativize our lives. Whatever your manuscript's needs are, I can help!

The books I have edited that have won or been shortlisted for awards include:

Surviving Samsara, K. Goh (memoir, developmental edit, 2022), short listed for the Singapore Literature Prize

Swelling with Pride (memoir, copyedit, 2020), long listed for American Library Association Over the Rainbow 2020 nonfiction category

How She Read, C. Gibson (poetry, copyedit, 2020), runner-up for the Griffin Poetry Prize; winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial and Dorothy Livesay Poetry prizes; and many others.

On/Me, F. Cunningham (poetry, copyedit, 2020), short listed for BC and Yukon Book Prizes; runner-up for Indigenous Voices and City of Vancouver Book awards

"Holly is the best editor I have worked with." — Amélie Ward, filmmaker and McGill PhD candidate

"Special thanks to my amazing editor Holly. Holly got into my psyche and preserved the poetry, playful witty wordplay and lyricism that is integral to my identity... I was privileged to work with Holly on the substantive edit which was one of the most rewarding collaborations I’ve ever experienced with an editor." — Kagan Goh, "Surviving Samsara"

"I hired Holly to edit my text and was elated by the result. Holly was thorough and generous in her corrections, comments and observations. I really feel that she understood my text and what I was going for in my writing, and helped me achieve a clarity and precision of thought I could not have reached on my own." — Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette, professor of literature

"I hired Holly to copyedit my manuscript, and her consummate professionalism, efficiency, and expertise transformed it from draft to finished copy. In addition to her thorough knowledge of style and house form(s), Holly's careful and insightful reading alerted me to many parts of the manuscript that needed clarity and revision. I am extremely grateful for her work and would hire her again." — Tabitha Sparks, associate professor of English, "Victorian Metafiction"