Vivian Lee – Editor

I have experience in traditional publishing, working with award-winning authors in both fiction and nonfiction. My booklist includes Matthew Salesses' The Hundred-Year Flood, Viet Dinh's After Disasters (PEN/Faulkner Finalist), Naima Coster's Halsey Street (Kirkus Prize Finalist), and Harold Schechter's Hell's Princess (A Washington Post Bestseller). I was a 2018 PW Rising Star Honoree, honoring my editorial work.If we both decide this is a good editorial partnership, I believe in working holistically with you and your writing goals in mind. We'll discuss any problem issues you have come across, and I will help shape your book into market-ready shape, whether that is for an agent or for self-publishing. I love to work on fleshing out your themes, your characters (even if the character is you!), and creating scenes and narratives. I can't wait to work with you on your project! Author Testimonials:

“Vivian Lee is the best editor a writer could wish for. Her editorial suggestions reveal the potential already in the work and encourage questions of the manuscript and its author. A true advocate and hero in publishing, Vivian understands her writers and their audiences, and edits with generosity and vision.” —Matthew Salesses, author of THE HUNDRED-YEAR FLOOD and DISAPPEAR DOPPELGÄNGER DISAPPEAR“Vivian has the professionalism, vision, kindness, and generosity of an editor who understands nonfiction work and nonfiction writers. She knows that our content is as fragile as us, but she also knows that we are more powerful than we admit or let on, and so she never shies from opportunities to challenge or inspire. She directs, but doesn’t hand-hold. Asks, but never demands. Balanced in all her ways, there’s nothing more I could ask from a memoir editor.” —Cinelle Barnes, author of MONSOON MANSION and MALAYA: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM“Ms. Lee should have been a gemcutter in Antwerp, because she was able to take my rough-hewn manuscript and help me polish it into a multi-faceted gem of clarity and beauty.”—Viet Dinh, author of AFTER DISASTERS, a PEN/Faulkner finalist“In my forty-year career as a published author, I’ve had many editors, but none that I have been happier with than Ms. Lee. A writer herself, she is wonderfully sensitive to matters of style and structure and has helped me enormously in shaping, sharpening, and in all ways improving the manuscripts I’ve turned in to her. In addition to her sophisticated understanding of exactly what makes a piece of narrative nonfiction work, she has an exceptional ability to communicate her insights. A thoroughgoing professional, she is also a warm and engaging personality.”—Harold Schechter, best-selling author of HELL'S PRINCESS, MAN-EATER, and THE MAD SCULPTOR“Vivian Lee is the kind of editor every writer hopes to have in his or her corner. She cares deeply about the work, both respecting your voice as an author while meticulously addressing the areas of your work that need strengthening. I will always be thankful for her keen insights (and the very detailed diagram she created) for how to restructure my memoir and weave two competing storylines together in a way that flowed seamlessly in the end—it was all her.”—Kimberly Rae Miller, best-selling author of COMING CLEAN and BEAUTIFUL BODIES