Luke Gerwe - Editor
New York, NY, USA
Developmental editor with fifteen years experience. Have worked in memoir, literary fiction, music, religion, social sciences, and more.
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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.
Languages
English (US)
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs
History
LGBTQ (non fiction)
Life Sciences
Music
Fiction
Comics & Graphic Novels
Literature
Science Fiction
Short Story
Work experience
Managing Editor
Voice of Witness
August, 2012
–
June, 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.
Freelance Editor
Self-employed
October, 2007
–
Present
(almost 12 years)
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.
Managing Editor
Soft Skull Press
November, 2005
–
October, 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 (34 selected works)
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 some of the most crucial human rights crises of our time, including men and women living under oppressive regimes in Burma, Colombia, Sudan... 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 of this crisis is Lavil—“The City” in Kreyol, as Port-au-Prince is known to Haitians—the cultural, political, and economic capital of Hai... 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 boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and c... 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 world — reveal the secret history of the things we buy, including lives and communities devastated by low wages, environmental degradation, ... 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 administrator, and a marathon runnerdescribe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the historic crisis. Other narrators includ... 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 voice to those who have long been ignored, but whose hopes and struggles exist firmly at the heart of our national identity.
Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing
Michael Muhammad Knight
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, the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature” seeks reconciliation between his Muslim identity and his drinking of ayahuasca, a psyched... read more
William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur'an
Michael Muhammad Knight
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 with his idol, Knight finds that his own books have led to American Muslim youths making a countercultural idol of him, placing him on the ... read more
Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons
John Barth
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 its destruction by a fluke tornado. This event, Newett notes, occurred on the 77th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash, a detail ... read more
Toward You
Jim Krusoe
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 that will communicate with the dead. He's gotten more or less nowhere. Then two surprising things happen: he receives an important message... 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 people take these substances? Where do folks get them? Does the stuff really work?But these controversial drugs often silence their users, ... read more
The Day After The Day After: My Atomic Angst
Steven Church
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. Childhood was quiet on the surface, but Steven grew up scaredscared of killer tornadoes, winged monkeys, violent movies, authority figu... 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 evolution, the literary world now faces a revolution, a sudden seismic change in the way we buy, produce, and, yes, read books.Scholars... read more
A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America
David Griffith
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 has changed the way people think about violence and cruelty, and that a disconnect exists between images and reality. Griffith meditate... read more
Something Bright, Then Holes
Maggie Nelson
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 and insight of feeling lost, then found, then lost again. The book’s three sections range widely, and include a long sequence of Niede... read more
Someday We'll All Be Free
Kevin Powell
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 American freedom and democracy in these early days of the 21st century. Be it the reelection of President George W. Bush, the colossal tragedy ... read more
Dead in Desemboque: Historias de Amor y Sangre!
Eddy Arellano
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 he's embroiled in a complex, comic drama featuring a memorable gallery of quirky characters.
On the Lower Frequencies
Erick Lyle
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 more outré forms of resistance through more contemplative times as he becomes preoccupied with the need for a more affirmative vision o... 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 Driscoll in tow, Gessner grapples with the stereotype of the environmentalist as an overzealous, puritanical mess. But as Dan recounts his... 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 suggests that conventional anthropocentric approaches to design must accommodate a more complex understanding of the interrelationship betw... read more
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 without a streamlined identity, unsure of community or religious direction. From Jenny Traig, whose experiences led her to extreme devotion... read more
The Wildly Irish Sextet
Dick Wimmer
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.
Lost in the Supermarket: An Indie Rock Cookbook
Kay Bozich Owens, Lynn Owens
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 are who you listen to.” Lost in the Supermarketyes, named for the 1979 hit by The Clashis a creative compendium of recipes that reclaims... read more
East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg
Gordon Ball
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 challenges to conventional society, Allen Ginsberg, treasurer of Committee on Poetry, Inc., funded what he hoped was a haven for comrades ... read more
The Sickness
Alberto Barrera Tyszka
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. Miranda is faced with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has only a few weeks to live. He is also faced with... read more
Welcome to Paradise
Mahi Binebine
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 courageous novel takes place in Morocco, where seven would-be immigrants gather one night near the Strait of Gibraltar to wait for a signal ... read more
Brian Cuban is a successful lawyer, activist and TV host is living with an enemy that haunted him for over 30 years - his own reflection in the mirror. Through a series of very personal, witty and poignant anecdotes, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban opens up about his personal battle with a mental disorder known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) in which the sufferer is... 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 inspirational speaker in long-term recovery, Brian looks back on his journey with honesty, compassion, and even humor as he reflects both on what ... read more
Hooked
John Franc
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 the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov and Henry Miller, John Franc's masterful novel explores sexual obsession, as a group of male friends ... read more
Bright Before Us (A Tin House New Voice)
Katie Arnold-Ratliff
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 of a former relationship, Francis Mason is a prisoner of his past mistakes. When his second-grade class discovers a dead body during a fi... 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 moonlight / like the shyest gargoyle / who will not become angry or old") and rage (Saul Bellow called him "the worst fucking thing that ever h... read more
The Little General and the Giant Snowflake
Matthea Harvey
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 a little general who heads an army called the Realists. Every day he and his troops practice battle formations while the Dreamers, the o... read more
African Psycho
Alain Mabanckou
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 his girlfriend Germaine. He’s planned the crime for some time, but still, the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistica... read more
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 sovereignty and hegemony, Engel shows that one important key was airpower, which created jobs, forged ties with the developing world, a... read more
Luke has 28 reviews
Professionalism
Quality
Value
Communication
It is a pleasure and an honor to work with Luke. His editorial assessment is marvelously detailed and very helpful. It engages with the book as a whole and as the constitution of its parts. It picks up on weaknesses I had only begun to detect when drafting, and it provides remedies—a word I like—for various ailments in the text. Indeed, it reads like its own document, independent of the novel,...
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Duane Rudolph, June 2019
Luke was professional and responsive and very easy to work with.
Heather Furnas, May 2019
I love working with Luke! He's flexible, easy to communicate with and also a great editor – his developmental feedback for my books was invaluable! I'll work with him on every novel in my trilogy and probably beyond that.
Diana Wink, April 2019
Luke provided excellent, specific feedback on my manuscript in an editorial assessment. His suggestions have helped immensely. He was also very prompt, easy to work with and reliable. I am looking forward to working with Luke again soon and I would recommend him to anyone looking for a thoughtful editor with an eye for the story you are trying to tell, and a commitment to the craft of writing.
Dawn Hurley, April 2019
Luke went beyond my expectations. Not only was his editing in depth, thoughtful, and rich in detail, he offered further insight and guidance which was more so than what would have been merely necessary, within the bounds of what was initially offered. I would absolutely work with Luke again.
Brooke English, April 2019
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