EDITING

Emily offers one-on-one editorial services to writers with literary fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novel projects. Her editorial practice builds off her decade-plus of magazine editing (as prose editor and coeditor of The Southern Review, editor of The Paris Review, and senior editor at Stranger’s Guide), teaching (graduate, undergrad, and continuing ed creative writing), and her own writing and research interests. She tailors her editing services to the writer’s goals and the project’s needs; she can offer a clear-eyed editorial read and feedback letter, chapter-by-chapter developmental editing, all the way down to line work. Projects range from revising individual short stories to editorial feedback on novels, story collections, and book-length nonfiction. She also offers line editing for books and stories in preparation for submission and those being readied for publication.

Emily primarily works directly with writers; however, she is also open to institutional freelance work. Recent projects include an artist’s biography, an architectural practice’s monograph, a prize-winning story collection, a writer converting several reported articles into a book-length project, and novels.

For rates, availability, references, and more information, please contact: info@emilynemens.com.

“Emily encouraged me to go further in certain places and to hold back in others; she challenged the lucidity of my thinking, the accuracy of my language, my ways and means of expression, my punctuation and my syntax; and from the first word to the last, she kept me honest. In a half-century of writing, no editor has made so indispensable a contribution to my work, and I hope most sincerely to repeat the experience.”

“Emily Nemens is the star editor who is decisive and literary, and expert at coming up with practical solutions. She helped me create character motivation that was decisive, improved a complex literary plot, and helped me figure out how to make it cohere. Like a choreographer, she saw what was missing and guided me gently to fill it.”

“After receiving an incredibly thorough and motivating critique letter from Emily in an advanced fiction workshop she was leading, I engaged her to work with me on a handful of short stories. That 1:1 time was so precious and instructive; not only does Emily have an uncanny ability to sense what a story wants to be, she also somehow manages to sharpen a writer’s instincts without re-writing her actual words. This, to me, is the mark of a great editor. There’s a reason all the authors she’s ever worked with thank her profusely in the acknowledgments of their published story collections!”