Editorial services for authors and institutions
Are you looking for an insightful editor to help you streamline your writing, clarify your arguments, correct your grammar, or clean up your references?
I am an accomplished editor with decades of experience in academic, art, nonprofit, health, literary, and educational publishing.
I do copyediting, line editing, and developmental editing (also known as substantive, content, or structural editing). I have a thorough knowledge of grammar, usage, and style (including Chicago, APA, MLA, AP, and AMA) and am particularly adept at fleshing out, correcting, and styling citations.
I work with a variety of individual and institutional clients:
college professors, independent scholars, and graduate students
museums and other art organizations
art conservators and conservation scientists
professional organizations and advocacy groups
research institutes and foundations
nonfiction and fiction writers
I often edit content written by authors whose first language is not English, many of whom are distinguished scholars or researchers. My goal is to make their writing clearer and more idiomatic without altering their ideas.
I also work with excellent writers of English whose work benefits from a bit of extra scrutiny and polish—or who need help cutting text to meet length guidelines or to streamline their prose.
Many of my clients hire me because they are looking for more in-depth editing or nuanced copyediting than publishers and academic journals typically provide these days.
Everyone needs an editor!
I edit print and digital content, with a focus on these main categories:
Academic
Scholarly books and journal articles in a variety of subject areas, with a focus on history, art history, art conservation, history, English, consumer research, and gerontology. Clients include professors at Indiana University, University of Nevada, University of Georgia School of Law, Harvard Business School, George Washington University, American University’s Kogod School of Business, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, Texas A&M University, Georgetown University, Colorado State University, Case Western Reserve University, and Mount Saint Mary College.
Museums and Art Institutions
Essays, exhibition catalogs, and books for museums and other art institutions. Clients include the Detroit Institute of Arts, Artpace San Antonio (an international artist residency program), and the Peabody Essex Museum. I also worked as a temporary in-house copy editor at Harvard Art Museums.
Organizations
Websites, position statements, white papers, research articles, profiles, and other content for nonprofit organizations. Clients include the Women’s Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association, UC San Francisco’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mood Network website, Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, and Management Sciences for Health.
Nonfiction and Fiction
Narrative nonfiction, memoirs, personal essays, op-ed pieces, blog posts, book reviews, and fiction. Clients include an emeritus professor of child and family studies who wrote a book about life in Gaza, a psychologist who wrote a memoir about inherited trauma and group therapy, a psychiatrist who wrote a parenting book based on her clinical practice and her own family experiences, and a fiction writer who self-published a collection of stories.
“A good sentence . . . is one that the reader can follow from beginning to end, no matter how long it is, without having to double back in confusion because the writer misused or omitted a key piece of punctuation, chose a vague or misleading pronoun, or in some other way engaged in inadvertent misdirection.”
—Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
“In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you get out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn’t poking up—unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out.”
—Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen