Meg Toth – Editor

"Meg is a close and attentive reader. She’s also an intuitive editor: the suggestions she made for my work made it so much better. Plus she was a pleasure to work with — upbeat, encouraging, and genuinely interested in making my writing better." -- Sarah Chinn, author of Disability, the Body, and Radical Intellectuals in the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press) and Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American Stage (Oxford University Press)

"Meg has a sharp and discerning editorial eye, from the global, structural level of argument and idea to the fine-grained level of individual sentences. She is at once rigorous and affirmative, and always upbeat; her feedback has been a boon to my writing!" -- Joseph Entin, author of Living Labor: Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work (University of Michigan Press) and Sensational Modernism: Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties America (University of North Carolina Press)

I work with both fiction and academic writers to help them achieve their publishing goals. I hold a Ph.D. in English and taught college literature, film, and writing courses for over fifteen years before moving into full-time editing.

I have offered my expertise in developmental editing to scholars who have gone on to publish their books with premier academic presses, including Cambridge UP, Oxford UP, and UNC Press. I also have extensive experience in academic journal publishing, as a writer, editor, reviewer, and Managing Editor of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. My own academic work has been published in prestigious journals (Modern Fiction Studies, Adaptation, etc.) and reprinted in the Norton Critical Editions series. While I focus on film and the literary arts, my work is interdisciplinary, crossing into several fields. Similarly, the books I've offered developmental editing on contribute to multiple disciplines: education, pedagogy, history, visual culture, literature, disability studies, women's studies, queer studies, and labor studies.

For fiction writers, I offer a range of services, from developmental editing and manuscript critiques to coaching and query package services. I myself am a well-published fiction writer--I've twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize--and I've gone through the query process. I also serve as Assistant Editor/Reader for Conjunctions Magazine, an award-winning literary journal that has published the work of authors like Margaret Atwood, Sandra Cisneros, Carmen Maria Machado, and David Foster Wallace. I work on a range of genres, but I'm especially drawn to literary, speculative, horror, and thriller manuscripts.

When it comes to working with clients, I start with one fundamental premise: every writer is different. I like to begin a client relationship with a conversation about where and how I can best help you achieve your goals. While I especially enjoy helping authors realize their vision through developmental editing, I am also highly skilled in line editing. Do you need help structuring your plot or creating an outline? Expanding or tweaking your argument? Or maybe just polishing your prose? I can help at every stage of the writing and publication process.