Stephanie Fysh – Editor

I’ve been editing and proofreading fiction, textbooks, scholarly publications, and trade nonfiction since 1999. My clients include established publishers and independent authors who are self-publishing or seeking contracts. Authors have called me “a true professional, incredibly thorough” and “the sweetest copy editor alive.” Could I be the right editor for you?

My expertise in fiction is in manuscript evaluation, substantive or developmental editing, stylistic or line editing, copy editing, and proofreading of long-form fantasy, science fiction, and YA. I also work in erotica, romance, literary fiction, historical fiction and, occasionally, short fiction. For science fiction and fantasy series authors, my services include world (series) bible creation and maintenance, whether you’re catching up on a series begun earlier without one or are on your first novel. I don't often take on new developmental editing clients, but I'm always interested in fiction copy editing and proofreading projects, with close attention to continuity.

As a stylistic or line editor, copy editor, proofreader, and back-of-the-book indexer of nonfiction, I have considerable experience in the social sciences, biography, history, current events, popular science, exhibition catalogues, translations, and manuscripts by writers for whom English is a subsequent language. I like the documentation you hate. I enjoy helping scholarly authors hone their work for a general audience. And with many a college and university textbook under my belt — in sociology, psychology, economics, management, communication, general biology, genetics, anthropology, and more — I can also support faculty who are creating their own or open-source textbooks. As a proofreader of scholarly texts, I have worked in everything from Canadian history and film studies to material science and entomology.

For over a decade in the 2000s and 2010s, alongside my editing business, I taught a generation of new copy editors and proofreaders in Eastern Canada's leading publishing training program, which I was also co-coordinator of for a while. During that time you might have heard me on CBC Radio promoting the singular "they" and the objective "who." It has been a pleasure to watch the first, in particular, become accepted in North America.

When I'm not working or curled up with a book, you can find me studying (I hold a PhD in English, but I'm now a part-time BSc student), making photographs, binging TV, losing at pub trivia, or playing with the dog.