I offer a range of editing services, including developmental editing, grant proposals, dissertations and masters degree theses, book reviews, book chapters, edited volumes, and books. I am also available for one-on-one sessions online or in person to brainstorm and work through plans and proposals, along the lines of coaching and developmental editing. You are the writer and I help by offering advice and suggestions as well as by line editing. Whether one-on-one or in workshops, I use my background in creative writing to encourage and inspire clients to use language imaginatively, whether that involves sentence structure, rhetorical devices, or more advanced help for graduate students and academics seeking to publish in professional journals.

I see writing as a process of vision and revision, where revision strives ever closer to that original vision. Paul Valéry published an essay about his poem “Le Cimetière marin” (“The Cemetery by the sea”) in which he said that a work of art is never truly completed, only abandoned. Many others have echoed this sentiment since then, from fellow poet W.H. Auden to filmmaker George Lucas. I understand editing along similar lines: it’s a process of reaching closer and closer toward your vision of what you would like your text to be. Regardless of the genre, I work to help you find an authentic and effective way to communicate your ideas. Among the range of devices, word choice, rhythm, and structural issues, as well as metaphor, image, and humor may be relevant to your text. I see my job as helping you to express your vision in ways that are consistent and natural to your own voice, with an ear toward how this sounds in contemporary English as well as with your imagined audience. (In some ways, this work resembles translation.)

I’ve worked as an academic editor as well as a literary editor for over a decade and have taught expository writing at New York University along with many other institutions and contexts. I’ve worked with individuals as well as institutions in the Netherlands, including the Rijksmuseum, The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the University of Amsterdam, and the Tropenmuseum (the Netherlands’ largest anthropological museum). Contact me with your needs and I will respond quickly and provide an estimate.