Ryan Chapman – Editor

After a decade in book publishing and arts nonprofits I now balance freelance editing, writing, and teaching (to both undergrads and MFA students). My novels include "Riots I Have Known" (Simon & Schuster, 2019) and "The Audacity" (Soho Press, 2024), and I've written for The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and Bookforum.

In the past eight years I've been fortunate to edit work by over sixty writers, many of them through Reedsy. I'm a thorough and generous reader, and I love nothing more than discovering a manuscript's latent strengths and hidden questions. Every fiction project is a unique puzzle; it's my job to help the writer solve it.

A few testimonials from recent clients...

"Ryan is the sharpest editor I have ever worked with. His gift is his ability to articulate certain enigmatic qualities related to writing and art in ways that helped me revise my book and made it so much stronger. He is always patient and kind and this erases much of the vulnerability associated with being in the position of a writer whose work is being critiqued. I learned so much from Ryan about how my book was succeeding and what specific steps I needed to take to bring the rest of the book up to that level. He is both a talented writer and artist and a former industry professional and this combination makes him uniquely wonderful to work with."

“Ryan is wickedly smart and has an incredible knowledge of literature. He helped me fine-tune my manuscript and get it ready to send to agents, pointing out areas where it could be tightened, making suggestions, while understanding and respecting my artistic vision. He engages deeply with the work and is passionate about helping writers improve their craft. As an experienced author and industry professional, he offered invaluable advice and insight into the publishing world.”

"If I didn't love working with Ryan for his impeccable taste in literature alone, I'd love him for his generosity. I might have spent months (years?) twiddling my thumbs and grieving over my manuscript if not for Ryan, who rescued me from logorrhea and sloth. We young writers care deeply for our prose, but believe me, Ryan cares more. His care will redefine your work as much at the structural level as it will the beautiful minutiae of the sentence. In a single session, Ryan might cite Kazuo Ishiguro, Donald Antrim, Mariana Enríquez, Thomas Bernhard, and a half dozen other modern masters. (And he also has an essay for every situation! Whether you're having trouble with revision, miming the sentence structure of your favorite sour Austrians, or, perhaps, you find yourself downtrodden and full of despair—Ryan has an article for that.) His knowledge is vast; his interests are eclectic. Did I mention his novel is very good? Did I mention he's funny? You have every reason to hire him."