Ursula DeYoung – Editor

I'm an editor and writing consultant with over a decade of experience in editing manuscripts of all kinds—fiction, nonfiction, scholarly, commercial. Some of these manuscripts have been written by tenured professors with contracts already in hand from major publishers; others are first works by aspiring novelists. I work as an instructor and writing consultant at the GrubStreet Writing Center in Boston, one of the biggest nonprofit creative-writing programs in the country. In addition, I serve as the primary editor for an international educational organization called The Center for Asia Leadership Initiatives. For every client, I offer meticulous, thoughtful suggestions that take into account both rigorous writing standards and the client's individual preferences.

As a writer myself, I know how important and how delicate the editing process can be for authors. My first novel, SHORECLIFF, a family drama set in Maine in the 1920s, was published by Little, Brown in 2013, and my nonfiction book, A VISION OF MODERN SCIENCE, about the 19th-century physicist John Tyndall, was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011. The latter book was originally my dissertation: I received a Ph.D. in History from Oxford in 2009, after earning a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 2004.

In 2017, I founded EMBARK, an online journal that features the openings of unpublished novels in all genres. Many of our contributors have gone on to see their books published by major presses, and several have connected with literary agents through the journal.