Jocelyn Hungerford – Editor

I started my career in magazines, writing, proofreading and copy-editing, before landing my dream job editing books at Penguin. There I refined my skills further, working on everything from food writing to literary and commercial fiction. I also learned how to build close, warm relationships with writers from a wide variety of backgrounds and to work collaboratively. After ten years at Penguin I went freelance and have been lucky to work on the writing I love most: creative non-fiction, particularly memoir and hybrid works, as well as fiction. I've worked in the UK as well as Australia, and in 2014 won a grant to travel across America, meeting and learning from independent publishers. Several of 'my' authors have won major literary awards.

I love helping writers tighten and clarify language, ensuring the meaning is clear as well as elegant and enjoyable to read. I can help you identify where passages are repetitive or excessively tangential and find solutions without losing vital information, as well as ensuring grammar, punctuation and syntax are appropriate for your intended meaning. I have a good memory for detail, whether that's keeping track of a complex historical narrative, ensuring the argument is clear in a book of ideas, or checking that if a character's eyes were green on page 20, they're still green on page 220. I aim to balance sensitivity and care with my commitment to helping you create the very best book you can, phrasing my queries gently and working with you to find wording that really sounds like you.

Testimonial

Award-winning author Meredith Lake has said of my work: 'Jocelyn is a seriously gifted editor. We started working together towards the very end of the writing stage, and it was a joy to collaborate with someone so quick to understand what the book was about. Jocelyn was generous with her suggestions, timely with her feedback, and outstanding in her attention to detail throughout. I felt like she "got" my style, and helped develop and refine it. She really made the manuscript sing. On top of all that, she was lovely to work with. I can't recommend her more highly.'

- Meredith Lake, author of The Bible in Australia: a cultural history (NewSouth, 2018)