Kate Kennedy – Editor

A BIT ABOUT ME

I’m a book editor with two decades of experience. During that time I’ve had the great fortune of both editing and learning from some of Canada’s best-loved authors, working in-house (Gaspereau Press, Nimbus Publishing, and TouchWood Editions) and as a freelancer.

My portfolio includes a Giller Prize-winning novel (Johanna Skibsrud’s “The Sentimentalists”), as well as nominees and winners of many regional and national book awards, including the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, the BMO Winterset Award, the Atlantic Book Awards, and the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction.

HOW I CAN HELP

If you’re looking for a comprehensive, unbiased report on the strengths and weaknesses in a piece of writing you’ve taken as far as you can on your own, I offer an EDITORIAL ASSESSMENT that will help you find the shape of your narrative and give you a clear path forward for taking on big-picture revisions.

If you’re looking for on-the-page commentary and chapter by chapter structural feedback and ideas on narrative arc, character development, dialogue, and style, I offer DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING.

If you’ve had previous editorial input on your manuscript and are now looking to add polish, I offer COPY EDITING—a full sweep to address issues of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and stylistics.

AUTHOR & PUBLISHER TESTIMONIALS

"What I admire most about her editing of fiction is that she has that rare ability to see 'the big picture' while remaining attentive to the subtleties of detail and language ... I will always be grateful for her clear vision and the confidence with which she guided me toward an ending that felt satisfying and, in fact, far truer to my own vision and intentions." —Johanna Skibsrud (“The Sentimentalists,” winner of the Giller Prize)

"It's a rare treat to find an editor who both listens to what a text says, and hears instinctively how it might say it better. Who is, in other words, neither heavy handed nor merely acquiescent. I found Kate's editing as near as you could hope to that happy balance that leads, in the end, to a better book." —George Sipos (“The Geography of Arrival,” finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction)

"Each book Kate has edited for us has come back a better book, and she’s quickly become my most trusted freelancer." —James Langer, Managing Editor, Breakwater Books

"Kate's ability to see what a text needs is second to none, and I can always depend on her to finish projects on time and on budget. Kate is a thoughtful, patient editor I trust with my most important projects." —Patrick Murphy, Managing Editor, Nimbus Publishing