Overview
I'm an book editor with over twelve years of experience developing everything from memoir, fiction, oral history, and academic anthologies to children's books and graphic novels. As a managing editor for independent presses, I've learned every stage of book production and bring that detailed knowledge to every editorial project I take on. My focus is developmental editing, but I like to help authors imagine how every step of the process might work best for their manuscripts, from querying agents and imagining their audiences and potential publishers all the way to typesetting, cover design, and goals for the book post-publication. I love helping experienced authors polish their work, and I really love helping new authors organize and clarify their manuscripts. Books I've helped produce or develop have won or been finalists for awards such as the National Book Critics Circle Award, Lambda Literary Award, the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and many others. Still, I'm most proud when authors tell me I helped them put together exactly the manuscript they'd hoped for.
Services
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs
History
LGBTQ Non-Fiction
Life Sciences
Music
Fiction
Comics & Graphic Novels
Literary Fiction
Science Fiction
Short Story
Languages
English (US)
Work experience
Voice of Witness
Aug, 2012 —
Jun, 2017
(almost 5 years)
Oversaw production and editorial development of the Voice of Witness book series, a collection of oral histories of human rights crises published by McSweeney’s Books (previous) and Verso . Worked closely with project editors to develop editorial focus and scope of every Voice of Witness title. Acquired new projects for the series in consultation with the Voice of Witness editorial advisory board.
Self-employed
Oct, 2007 —
Present
Freelance editorial assignments have included developmental editing, copyediting, and copy writing for book publishers, as well as developmental editing and ghost writing for private clients. Publisher clients have included Counterpoint Press, Harvard University Press, Milkweed Editions, Routledge, Tin House Books, and Open Road Media, and many others.
Soft Skull Press
Nov, 2005 —
Oct, 2007
(almost 2 years)
Oversaw all phases of book production from author manuscripts to finished books for over twelve titles a season.
Edited, copyedited, or designed fiction, non-fiction, and poetry titles ranging from memoirs to novels to comics to periodicals.
Portfolio
In a gripping story of international power and deception, Engel reveals the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain. As allies, they fought Communism; as rivals, they clashed over which would lead the Cold War fight. In the quest for... read more
Its title recalls Bret Easton Ellis’s infamous book, but while Ellis’s narrator was a blank slate, African Psycho’s protagonist is a quivering mass of lies, neuroses, and relentless internal chatter. Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill h... read more
In this compelling tale for children and adults alike, the poet Matthea Harvey collaborates with artist Elizabeth Zechel to create a powerful, resonant allegory for these times of violent military solutions to global problems.In this compelling tale, there is ... read more
Despite his often-unacknowledged influence, academics, intellectuals, and the general audience in America and abroad still read Leslie Fiedler’s work and draw on its concepts. He inspired both reverence (Leonard Cohen penned: "leaning over the American moonlig... read more
A haunting debut novel that explores the fraught journey toward adulthood, the nature of memory, and the startling limits to which we are driven by grief Facing the prospect of fatherhood, disillusioned by his fledgling teaching career, and mourning the loss o... read more
A fast-paced and fascinating look into the male mind and sexual obsession, Hooked portrays the attempt to mask the self while needlessly committing acts of reckless exposure, both literal and figurative. Read it if you must, but don't tell anybody about it. In... read more
Brian Cuban was a successful lawyer—and an addict. Brian Cuban was living a lie. With a famous last name and a successful career as a lawyer, Brian was able to hide his clinical depression and alcohol and cocaine addictions—for a while. Today, as an inspiratio... read more
Mahi Binebine's courageous novel delves into a world that most readers know only from stories on the nightly news, delivering a compassionate glimpse into the difficulties facing asylum seekers and a striking portrait of human desperation. Mahi Binebine’s cour... read more
A profound and philosophical exploration of the nature and meaning of illness, Alberto Barrera Tyszka's tender, refined novel interweaves the stories of four individuals as they try, in their own way, to come to terms with sickness in all its ubiquity. Dr. Mir... read more
This was Allen Ginsberg,” Gordon Ball declares after recounting intimate moments with the cultural icon and beloved Beat Generation poet on East Hill Farm, outside Cherry Valley, New York.During the late 1960s, when peace, drugs, and free love were direct cha... read more
Historically, a love of cooking has been left to those considered far from cool: suburbanite Betty Crockers toiling over a hot stove. But the new youth-culture sensibility has taken over, merging the axiom You are what you eat” with its updated mantra You ar... read more
Dick Wimmer offers readers five new tales centring on Seamus Boyne, the greatest painter in the world. Among the cast of characters back with him to continue the wild ride are the Boynes' saucy daughter, Tory, and Seamus' best friend, the writer Gene Hagar.
Written by authors born into the so-called dilemma of intermarriage,” the stories in Half/Life explore the experience of being raised in a half-Jewish home. Though each essay is distinct, and the experiences are vastly different, each describes growing up wit... read more
As architects and designers, we struggle to reconcile ever increasing environmental, humanitarian, and technological demands placed on our projects. Our new geological era, the Anthropocene, marks humans as the largest environmental force on the planet and sug... read more
In My Green Manifesto, David Gessner embarks on a rough-and-tumble journey down Boston’s Charles River, searching for the soul of a new environmentalism. With a tragically leaky canoe, a broken cell phone, a cooler of beer, and the environmental planner Dan Dr... read more
On the Lower Frequencies is at once a manual, memoir, and history of creative resistance in a world awash with war and poverty. An icon on the 1990s zine scene, Iggy Scam traces not only the evolution of cities, but of his own thinking, from his early focus on... read more
Inspired by kitschy Mexican "historietas" (pocket-sized comic books), Roberto presents an English-language version featuring his alter-ego, Eddy Arellano. When a dama named Juanita calls him down to Sonora, Eddy crosses the Rio Bravo and never looks back. Soon... read more
Someday We’ll All Be Free is the indispensable and passionate follow-up to Kevin Powell’s best-selling essay collection, Who’s Gonna Take The Weight? Manhood, Race, and Power in America. Here Powell widens his lens and skillfully dissects the dreams of America... read more
Maggie Nelson’s fourth collection of poems combines a wanderer’s attention to landscape with a deeply personal exploration of desire, heartbreak, resilience, accident, and flux. Something Bright, Then Holes explores the problem of losing then recovering sight ... read more
In the wake of Abu Ghraib, Americans have struggled to understand what happened in the notorious prison and why. In this elegant series of essays, inflected with a radical Catholic philosophy, David Griffith contends that society's shift from language to image... read more
The way we absorb information has changed dramatically. Edison’s phonograph has been reincarnated as the iPod. Celluloid went digital. But books, for the most part, have remained the sameuntil now. And while music and movies have undergone an almost Darwinian... read more
Steven Church grew up in the 1970s and ’80s in Lawrence, Kansas, a town whose predictable daily rhythms give way easily to anxietyand a place that, since Civil War times, has been a canvas for sporadic scenes of havoc and violence in the popular imagination. ... read more
What happens to a regular guy who dopes? Surprised to learn that pro athletes aren’t the only ones taking performance-enhancing substances, journalist Andrew Tilin goes in search of the average juicing Joe, hoping to find a few things out: Why would normal peo... read more
The final book in Jim Krusoe's trilogy about the relationship between this world and the next.Toward You completes Jim Krusoe's bittersweet trilogy about the relationship between this world and the next. Bob has spent several years trying to build a machine th... read more
John Barth stays true to form in Every Third Thought, written from the perspective of a character Barth introduced in his short story collection The Development. George I. Newett and his wife Amanda Todd lived in the gated community of Heron Bay Estates until ... read more
When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his Anarcho-Sufi” hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned wit... read more
If Tripping with Allah is a road book, it’s a road book in the tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey, rather than On the Road. Amazonian shamanism meets Christianity meets West African religion meets Islam in this work of reflection and inward adventure. Knight, ... read more
In the gripping first-person accounts of High Rise Stories, former residents of Chicago’s iconic public housing projects describe life in the now-demolished high-rises. These stories of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification give vo... read more
The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been one of the world’s most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises for over four decades. In this oral history collection, men and women from Palestineincluding a fisherman, a settlement administ... read more
The men and women in Invisible Hands reveal the human rights abuses occurring behind the scenes of the global economy. These narrators — including phone manufacturers in China, copper miners in Zambia, garment workers in Bangladesh, and farmers around the worl... read more
Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycott... read more
Moving stories of life in a country enduring an ongoing crisisSeven years after the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck Haiti, the island nation remains in crisis, all but ignored by the international community. At the center o... read more
For ten years, Voice of Witness has illuminated contemporary human rights crises through its remarkable oral history book series. Founded by Dave Eggers, Lola Vollen and Mimi Lok, Voice of Witness has amplified the stories of hundreds of people impacted by som... read more
Luke has 51 reviews
Professionalism
Quality
Value
Responsiveness
Tomás M.
Mar, 2021
Ugoji E.
Aug, 2020
Brooke E.
Jul, 2020
nadeiz B.
May, 2020
Paul L.
Apr, 2020
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