Overview

I worked for the past seven years as a project editor at a distinguished academic press. I had to leave my position to care for my ailing mother. I'm heartbroken to say that she recently passed away. At present, I am working full-time as a freelancer. I am able to devote all of my time to Reedsy projects. I have worked with over 300 scholars from around the world to ensure that their manuscripts are typo-free, thought-provoking works. Before my current position, I was the managing editor of a scholarly journal on maritime history. I began grad school at the University of Cambridge. I transferred to Brown University to complete my studies. My field is history. I have undergrad degrees in anthropology, German studies, and studio art. In addition to English, if your project contains German language words, I could be of assistance in editing.

My philosophy is that the most important aspect of any project is my relationship with the author. I came to copyediting and proofreading from academia, so I understand the intense connection between the author and the writing. I always honor and maintain the author's voice. My experience goes beyond the academic world, too. I served as the editor of a newsletter/magazine for families, making history accessible for all ages. In fact, I even wrote text for a box that contained women's underwear. It was a stretch but I finally made it fit. But seriously, regardless of topic, I keep that most important end goal in sight: your reader.

Services

Developmental Editing

Copy Editing

Editorial Assessment

Proofreading

Non-Fiction

Biographies & Memoirs Entertainment History Humanities & Social Sciences LGBTQ Non-Fiction

Fiction

Historical Fiction LGBTQ Fiction Literary Fiction

Languages

English (UK) English (US)

Work experience

Project Editor

Duke University Press

Mar, 2013 — Nov, 2019 (over 6 years)

I am responsible for supervising manuscript editing, proofreading, and production for 25-30 trade and scholarly books per year. My tasks include:

*Copyedit and proof manuscript, cover copy, blurbs, and index
*Work in partnership with author to ensure that writing has clarity and accurate scholarship
*Primary liaison between author and Duke University Press throughout editorial production
*Direct scheduling to ensure that projects meet all deadlines for design, composition, and printing
*Monitor quality, costs, and schedule throughout the entire book production cycle

Curriculum Manager

Brown University

Jan, 2004 — Jun, 2009 (over 5 years)

*Managed 300+ courses with colleagues in humanities and social sciences depts. for high school summer programs and undergraduate summer courses. Edited descriptions for all disciplines to ensure that faculty fully articulated course potential for targeted student markets. Planned and supervised logistics including master scheduling calendar, classroom bookings, media services requests, computing needs, textbook ordering, supplies, and field trips
*Implemented yearly course recruitment campaigns with department chairs and faculty to create adult, undergraduate and high school curriculum; wrote recruitment brochures, website and e-communication
*Created and presented faculty training sessions
*Brown Writers’ Symposium - coordinated all aspects of the program, from vetting initial short story applications, to developing online initiatives that allowed participants to critique work from their homes after the program ended

Editor

Mystic Seaport Museum

Mar, 1994 — Sep, 2003 (over 9 years)

I was the managing editor of the Log of Mystic Seaport and the editor of the Wind Rose. It was a full-time job, but I continued to work on both publications part-time when I began grad school.

The Log of Mystic Seaport (Scholarly Maritime History Journal)
*Selected content and photos, edited six to ten history articles per issue
*Wrote four news columns per issue, and on an as-needed basis, journal articles regarding the Museum
*Primary liaison with authors from submission process to final proof
*Managed $65,000 publications budget. Reduced budget by 34% while maintaining high quality by exploring new options for production

Wind Rose (Bimonthly Maritime History Magazine)
*Created new publication, and planned yearly schedule and content; coordinated with 200+ Museum staff to adhere to deadlines
*Edited approx. 20-30 submissions per issue, selected photos and wrote articles as needed
*Served as primary contact for external vendors and freelancers
*Managed $50,000 yearly publication budget

Membership/Development
*Wrote all program publicity including brochures, program announcements, press releases, invitations and surveys
*Instituted e-initiatives including membership web site and “membermail” e-mail news bulletin
*Served as editor of the Annual Report, wrote chairman’s message and blurbs on various Development projects
*Wrote “Mystic Seaport Salutes” column; interviewed trustees and high level donors for quarterly piece that highlighted various methods of giving
*Composed newsletters for Watercraft endowment, Shipyard endowment, and Capital Campaign

Portfolio

Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise

Michel Chion

First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chion's Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural in... read more

Who Counts?: The Mathematics of Death and Life after Genocide

Diane M. Nelson

In Who Counts? Diane M. Nelson explores the social life of numbers, teasing out the myriad roles math plays in Guatemalan state violence, economic exploitation, and disenfranchisement, as well as in Mayan revitalization and grassroots environmental struggles. ... read more

Art & Language International: Conceptual Art between Art Worlds

Robert Bailey

In Art & Language International Robert Bailey reconstructs the history of the conceptual art collective Art & Language, situating it in a geographical context to rethink its implications for the broader histories of contemporary art. Focusing on its internatio... read more

Entre Nous: Between the World Cup and Me

Grant Farred

In Entre Nous Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the inte... read more

Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds (Experimental Futures)

Lisa Messeri

In Placing Outer Space Lisa Messeri traces how the place-making practices of planetary scientists transform the void of space into a cosmos filled with worlds that can be known and explored. Making planets into places is central to the daily practices and prof... read more

Punk and Revolution: Seven More Interpretations of Peruvian Reality

Shane Greene

In Punk and Revolution Shane Greene radically uproots punk from its iconic place in First World urban culture, Anglo popular music, and the Euro-American avant-garde, situating it instead as a crucial element in Peru's culture of subversive militancy and polit... read more

Man or Monster?: The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer

Alexander Laban Hinton

During the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood... read more

Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes

Lisa Yoneyama

In Cold War Ruins Lisa Yoneyama argues that the efforts intensifying since the 1990s to bring justice to the victims of Japanese military and colonial violence have generated what she calls a "transborder redress culture." A product of failed post-World War II... read more

What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet?: Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (On Decoloniality)

Madina Tlostanova

In What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this human condition. Observing how the concept of the happy future—which was at the core of the project of Soviet modernity—has lapsed from the post-Sov... read more

Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment (Elements)

Derek P. McCormack

In Atmospheric Things Derek P. McCormack explores how atmospheres are imagined, understood, and experienced through experiments with a deceptively simple object: the balloon. Since the invention of balloon flight in the late eighteenth century, balloons have d... read more

Now that the audience is assembled

David Grubbs

Following his investigation into experimental music and sound recording in Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs turns his attention to the live performance of improvised music with an altogether different form of writing. Now that the audience is assembled... read more

Making Light: Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism

Raymond Knapp

In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in ea... read more

Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity

Dorinne Kondo

In this bold, innovative work, Dorinne Kondo theorizes the racialized structures of inequality that pervade theater and the arts. Grounded in twenty years of fieldwork as dramaturg and playwright, Kondo mobilizes critical race studies, affect theory, psychoana... read more

Making Sex Public and Other Cinematic Fantasies (Theory Q)

Damon R. Young

Beginning in the late 1950s, representations of and narratives about sex proliferated on French and U.S. movie screens. Cinema began to display forms of sexuality that were no longer strictly associated with domesticity nor limited to heterosexual relations be... read more

Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture

Tamura Lomax

In Jezebel Unhinged Tamura Lomax traces the use of the jezebel trope in the black church and in black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men's cultural and institutional power to discipline and define black girlhood and womanhood. Drawin... read more

Work!: A Queer History of Modeling

Elspeth H. Brown

From the haute couture runways of Paris and New York and editorial photo shoots for glossy fashion magazines to reality television, models have been a ubiquitous staple of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American consumer culture. In Work! Elspeth H. Brown... read more

Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity

Ann Elias

From vividly colored underwater photographs of Australia's Great Barrier Reef to life-size dioramas re-creating coral reefs and the bounty of life they sustained, the work of early twentieth-century explorers and photographers fed the public's fascination with... read more

Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change

Eliza Steinbock

In Shimmering Images Eliza Steinbock traces how cinema offers alternative ways to understand gender transitions through a specific aesthetics of change. Drawing on Barthes's idea of the “shimmer” and Foucault's notion of sex as a mirage, the author shows how s... read more

Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor

Susan Merrill Squier

Devised in the 1940s by the biologist C. H. Waddington, the epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates cellular development. As a scientific model, it fell out of use in the late 1960s but returned at the beginning of the twenty-first... read more

Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad

N. Fadeke Castor

In Spiritual Citizenship N. Fadeke Castor employs the titular concept to illuminate how Ifá/Orisha practices informed by Yoruba cosmology shape local, national, and transnational belonging in African diasporic communities in Trinidad and beyond. Drawing on alm... read more

Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War

Kristen Ghodsee

Women from the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe—what used to be called the Second World—once dominated women’s activism at the United Nations, but their contributions have been largely forgotten or deemed insignificant in comparison with those of We... read more

Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism

Kristen Ghodsee

In Red Hangover Kristen Ghodsee examines the legacies of twentieth-century communism twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall fell. Ghodsee's essays and short stories reflect on the lived experience of postsocialism and how many ordinary men and women across Ea... read more

Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925-1937

William Schaefer

During the early twentieth century, Shanghai was the center of China's new media culture. Described by the modernist writer Mu Shiying as "transplanted from Europe" and “paved with shadows,” for many of its residents Shanghai was a city without a past paradoxi... read more

Nature as Event: The Lure Of The Possible (Thought in the Act)

Didier Debaise

We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions ... read more

The FBI in Latin America: The Ecuador Files (Radical Perspectives)

Marc Becker

During the Second World War, the FDR administration placed the FBI in charge of political surveillance in Latin America. Through a program called the Special Intelligence Service (SIS), 700 agents were assigned to combat Nazi influence in Mexico, Brazil, Chile... read more

The Communist and the Communist's Daughter: A Memoir

Jane Lazarre

In a letter to his baby grandson, Bill Lazarre wrote that "unfortunately, despite the attempts by your grandpa and many others to present you with a better world, we were not very successful." Born in 1902 amid the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Lazarre dedicated ... read more

Archipelagic American Studies

Departing from conventional narratives of the United States and the Americas as fundamentally continental spaces, the contributors to Archipelagic American Studies theorize America as constituted by and accountable to an assemblage of interconnected islands, a... read more

Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times

Aimee Bahng

In Migrant Futures Aimee Bahng traces the cultural production of futurity by juxtaposing the practices of speculative finance against those of speculative fiction. While financial speculation creates a future based on predicting and mitigating risk for wealthy... read more

Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and ... read more

Photography after Photography: Gender, Genre, History

Abigail Solomon-Godeau

Presenting two decades of work by Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography after Photography is an inquiry into the circuits of power that shape photographic practice, criticism, and historiography. As the boundaries that separate photography from other forms of ar... read more

Illegible Will: Coercive Spectacles of Labor in South Africa and the Diaspora

Hershini Bhana Young

In Illegible Will Hershini Bhana Young engages with the archive of South African and black diasporic performance to examine the absence of black women's will from that archive. Young argues for that will's illegibility, given the paucity of materials outlining... read more

Dying in Full Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary

Jennifer Malkowski

In Dying in Full Detail Jennifer Malkowski explores digital media's impact on one of documentary film's greatest taboos: the recording of death. Despite technological advances that allow for the easy creation and distribution of death footage, digital media of... read more

Improvisation and Social Aesthetics (Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice)

Addressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms—from jazz and cinema to dance and literature—this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and poli... read more

Media Theory in Japan

Providing an overview of Japanese media theory from the 1910s to the present, this volume introduces English-language readers to Japan's rich body of theoretical and conceptual work on media for the first time. The essays address a wide range of topics, includ... read more

Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus (Global Insecurities)

Ellen Moore

In today's volunteer military many recruits enlist for the educational benefits, yet a significant number of veterans struggle in the classroom, and many drop out. The difficulties faced by student veterans have been attributed to various factors: poor academi... read more

Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion

Lucinda Ramberg

Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which gi... read more

My Butch Career: A Memoir

Esther Newton

During her difficult childhood, Esther Newton recalls that she “became an anti-girl, a girl refusenik, caught between genders,” and that her “child body was a strong and capable instrument stuffed into the word ‘girl.’” Later, in early adulthood, as she was on... read more

How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change

Allan deSouza

What terms do we use to describe and evaluate art, and how do we judge if art is good, and if it is for the social good? In How Art Can Be Thought Allan deSouza investigates such questions and the popular terminology through which art is discussed, valued, and... read more

Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean

Lyndon K. Gill

In Erotic Islands, Lyndon K. Gill maps a long queer presence at a crossroads of the Caribbean. This transdisciplinary book foregrounds the queer histories of Carnival, calypso, and HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. At its heart is an extension o... read more

Anthropology in the Meantime: Experimental Ethnography, Theory, and Method for the Twenty-First Century (Experimental Futures)

Michael M. J. Fischer

In Anthropology in the Meantime Michael M. J. Fischer draws on his real world, multi-causal, multi-scale, and multi-locale research to rebuild theory for the twenty-first century. Providing a history and inventory of experimental methods and frameworks in anth... read more

After Ethnos

Tobias Rees

For most of the twentieth century, anthropologists understood themselves as ethnographers. The art of anthropology was the fieldwork-based description of faraway others—of how social structures secretly organized the living-together of a given society, of how ... read more

Doing Development in West Africa: A Reader by and for Undergraduates

In recent years the popularity of service learning and study abroad programs that bring students to the global South has soared, thanks to this generation of college students' desire to make a positive difference in the world. This collection contains essays b... read more

The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles (Theory in Forms)

Charles Piot

In the West African nation of Togo, applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery is a national obsession, with hundreds of thousands of Togolese entering each year. From the street frenzy of the lottery sign-up period and the scramble to raise money for the em... read more

Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan

Patrick W. Galbraith

From computer games to figurines and maid cafes, men called “otaku” develop intense fan relationships with “cute girl” characters from manga, anime, and related media and material in contemporary Japan. While much of the Japanese public considers the forms of ... read more

A Fragile Inheritance: Radical Stakes in Contemporary Indian Art

Saloni Mathur

In A Fragile Inheritance Saloni Mathur investigates the work of two seminal figures from the global South: the New Delhi-based critic and curator Geeta Kapur and contemporary multimedia artist Vivan Sundaram. Examining their written and visual works over the p... read more

Reading Sedgwick (Theory Q)

Over the course of her long career, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick became one of the most important voices in queer theory, and her calls for reparative criticism and reading practices grounded in affect and performance have transformed understandings of affect, intima... read more

Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation

Imani Perry

Even as feminism has become increasingly central to our ideas about institutions, relationships, and everyday life, the term used to diagnose the problem—“patriarchy”—is used so loosely that it has lost its meaning. In Vexy Thing Imani Perry resurrects patriar... read more

Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First Love, Which Was Reading

Robert Christgau

In this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays, legendary Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau showcases the passion that made him a critic—his love for the written word. Many selections address music, from blackface minstrelsy to punk a... read more

Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017

Robert Christgau

Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, who for half a century has been America's most widely respected rock critic, honoring a music he argues is only more enduring because it's sometimes simple or silly... read more

Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States

Audra Simpson

Mohawk Interruptus is a bold challenge to dominant thinking in the fields of Native studies and anthropology. Combining political theory with ethnographic research among the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, a reserve community in what is now southwestern Quebec, Audra S... read more

Sara has 7 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Jack R.

Sep, 2024

Very thorough, and great feedback and insight, especially with the political/academic stuff. Hopefully we'll get a chance to work together again.

Otilija Š.

Jun, 2024

Sara did a great job. She was very cooperative, responsive, and edited the manuscript with high standards. I would recommend her anytime.

Dieter S.

Mar, 2021

what do you wont me to write it took painful 9 month to edit my book ? is that it ?

Aruna K.

Dec, 2020

Sara put in a great deal of time and effort in her work, which she takes very seriously. She is passionate and brings that to the table.

Alex B.

Aug, 2020

It was a pleasure working with Sara on my rather long manuscript. She was very thorough and diligent; reading and re-reading my work several times. She made numerous comments, which I am sure will strengthen my work, and make it more coherent. She was able to see how the small details fit into the larger arc of my narrative. Thank you, Sara.

Reply from Sara L.

Thank you so much, Alex. Your clear communication was quite helpful as I re-read your manuscript. I hope this project is successful for you. I look forward to reading it in book form!

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Sara Leone – Editor

Overview

Services

Non-Fiction

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Work experience

Portfolio

Sara has 7 reviews

Jack R.

Otilija Š.

Dieter S.

Aruna K.

Alex B.

Sign up to read more reviews

Professionals similar to Sara

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Gabby D.

Benjamin D.

Sara Leone – Editor

Overview

Services

Non-Fiction

Fiction

Languages

Work experience

Portfolio

Sara has 7 reviews

Jack R.

Otilija Š.

Dieter S.

Aruna K.

Alex B.

Sign up to read more reviews

Professionals similar to Sara

Joseph N.

Gabby D.

Benjamin D.

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