Jasmine Gower – Editor

As an author myself, I’ve been working with editors for over half a decade in preparing projects for publication, ranging from short stories to full-length novels. In addition to my familiarity with the various stages of editing and foundational knowledge of the conventions of genre fiction, I’m also well-acquainted with writing and editing marketing copy that is valuable in promoting books, including blog and social media posts. From my experience in the author’s position, I am highly sympathetic to the author’s vulnerability in the editorial process and understand how to navigate between editorial suggestion and an author’s creative vision.

My graduate degree in Book Publishing from Portland State University was earned by working in a hands-on publishing environment via PSU’s Ooligan Press, a fiction and non-fiction publishing house run directly by the graduate students in the Book Publishing program. In my 2 and a half years working at Ooligan Press, I became practiced in the various methods used by publishers to bring a book into the world, such as acquisition, editing, marketing, design, and business operations. My skills as an editor were trained on actual manuscripts, including my developmental editing efforts on Connie King Leonard’s Sleeping In My Jeans, which went on to win the 2018 Oregon Spirit Award for a debut book and receive a nomination for the Oregon Book Awards’ Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature.

In addition to editorial work in the publishing industry, I also have experience writing, editing, and proofreading in business and academic environments. This includes 1.5 years experience creating and polishing internal documentation for Providence Health Plan and 3 years copyediting and proofreading internal and public-facing memos and reports from the Dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University. My variety of experience in multiple industries allows me to be flexible in my editorial approaches and meet the needs of various types of text beyond the genre fiction I work with in my writing career.

In accordance with my values of artistic integrity, labor rights for authors, environmentalism, and humanism, I do not use generative AI in any capacity, nor do I take on projects that utilize generative AI in their creation.