Julie A. Hersh – Editor

I'm an editor with full-time experience at HarperCollins, a major international affairs think tank, and a cyber intelligence tech company - in addition to freelance experience across the Big 4, literary magazines, and academia.

I love to be taken all over the world in my editing - as well as to outer space, cyberspace, and any worlds of your making! Specifically, that means I love to read (and edit) speculative fiction/magical realism, literary fiction with bite, and detective novels. I also have more than five years of experience working on international affairs and tech content, and a master's in Russian studies. Please send me your forays into different countries, deep inside computers, and everywhere in between!

My motto as a nonfiction editor is "making things make sense" - I want your writing to be clear and readable, even if that means breaking some grammatical rules. (But I do have an exhaustive knowledge of grammar, if that's your thing, and I can quote the numbers of my favorite sections of the Chicago Manual of Style.)

I'm also passionate about conscious language: I stay up-to-date on changing linguistic norms, follow alternate style guides, and edit with a consistent focus on sensitivity and respect. In my eyes, "sense and sensibility" are the most important parts of my work.

Practically speaking, if you work with me, I'll spend time going over what you're looking for and providing a sample edit of a page or so - so we start out, well, on the same page about what you're looking for. I'll return a fully edited manuscript with markup (Google Docs, Pages, or Word), a detailed style sheet, and an editorial note summarizing the kinds of edits I made.