Will Allison – Editor

Since 2011, I’ve served as a contributing editor and teacher for the award-winning, Brooklyn-based literary magazine One Story. Before that, I served as an editor-at-large for Zoetrope: All-Story and as the executive editor of Story, where I began my editing career in 1996. I’ve taught creative writing in the MFA program at Columbia University, at The Ohio State University, and elsewhere. I am a longtime guest editor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. I am the author of the novels What You Have Left, a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and a San Francisco Chronicle notable book, and the New York Times bestseller Long Drive Home. My short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, Slate, and elsewhere.

I work with a range of new and established authors as an editor/ writing coach specializing in literary fiction and creative nonfiction. I edit authors the way I hope to be edited as an author myself. I have two goals as an editor: to help improve the manuscript while respecting the author’s vision and sensibility, and to help the author become a better editor of her own work. I enjoy working with authors who seek honest, rigorous feedback and are able to set aside their egos for the sake of their manuscripts. I don’t think of myself as a manuscript “fixer” but rather as an author’s collaborator, coach, and/or teacher, as the circumstances call for. Testimonials available on request.