Services

  • I offer editorial feedback on fiction and nonfiction manuscripts in progress, book proposals, individual short stories, essays, or reported features, and more.

  • I offer creativity coaching, in which I work in a supportive capacity, framing questions and talking through problems, whether creative or logistical, in a series of Zoom sessions. I may offer assignments, read work beforehand, or provide feedback depending on the client’s needs.

  • I offer 30 or 60 minute consulting sessions on stories or projects in progress, career advice, submitting to literary journals, querying for an agent as well as sharing my experience on publishing a nonfiction book, writing a short story collection, writing a novel, navigating the fact checking and legal process, whether or not to get an MFA, how to structure your writing practice, crafting a book proposal and more.

  • I do NOT do: copyediting, proofreading, editing for punctuation, spelling and grammar, fact-checking, ghost writing, or layout work.

Who is a good fit?

  • I tend to be a good fit for fiction and nonfiction projects that are invested in the craft of writing, are emotionally and formally complex, and/or are working out structural problems, as I have a particular obsession with reading for structure.

  • I tend NOT to be a good fit for: business books, self-help books, books about spirituality, nonfiction books where a white author is writing about a tradition that originates with people of color (ex: a yoga memoir), YA, children’s or middle grade, romance fiction, or horror fiction.

My identities in this work

  • I identify as a white, queer, fat, cis woman and an anti-Zionist Jew.

  • I have worked with clients from many different identities, including clients of color, trans clients, and raised working class clients. I can provide references and additional testimonials on request.

As of February 1, 2024, I am fully booked for spring and summer 2024. Please check back in September 2024 for updates.

Testimonials

"What Emma helped me do is see a full view of a project that had multiple strands and moving parts. It wasn't solely a birds-eye view: she zoomed in on parts and showed me how it was working. I was stuck revising paragraphs and sentences but her feedback showed me how I could improve the structure as a whole to make the book more immediate and engaging for a reader new to what had become for me very familiar material."
— Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water (Milkweed, 2021) & others


"Emma's keen editorial eye utterly transformed my nonfiction book proposal from a jumble of ideas into a polished, sellable document that earned me a book deal. Her thoughtful edits not only made me a better writer at the line-to-line level--they helped me to think more deeply about the book's larger ideas. She's worth every penny."
— Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity (Putnam, 2023)


"Emma's feedback letter including a restructuring of my essay was amazing. I felt so lost in the piece, and this was a valuable map in helping me get out of the maze I made."
— Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation: A Memoir (2014)


"Working with Emma was a wonderful experience. Proceeding from a smart and insightful thematic reading of my memoir-in-progress, she mapped the structure in a way that helped me resolve long standing issues and move forward with a clearer sense of the book's logic and appeal. All in all, this was a supportive process and money well spent. I wish I'd found her earlier."
—Jessica E. Johnson, author of Metabolics (ACRE, 2023)


“Emma’s ‘Reporting for Creative Writers’ class helped remind me that, as a writer, I actually have so many of the skills reporting requires already, and helped break down the steps of what the work can look like--ethical thorniness, FOIA requests, and all.”
—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers (Dutton 2020)


“Emma’s feedback on my short story was in-depth. Her line edits are indeed line edits, and she was able to key-in on the places that I was not as focused on in my execution. One of the best things she did was ask me to linger on a particular moment that at first had only been summarized. Using her feedback, I have meticulously revised the story, and I was able to make it substantially richer.”
— Ashley Kay Bach, writer