My Services
As a writer, you want your words to express your ideas clearly, in an attractive style appropriate to your target audience.
Whether you’re an academic looking for editing support at any stage of a monograph, a scholar putting together an edited collection, a nonfiction writer preparing to send a manuscript to an agent, a postgraduate student submitting a thesis, or a Spanish-speaking author aiming to reach an English-language readership, I can help you produce and publish your best work.
EDITING
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Substantive and structural editing involves working closely with writers as the text is written, revised and polished. For example: In the early stage of the writing process, I work with authors to develop ideas, structure the text and choose the appropriate register. In the middle stages, I support authors in decisions about what to keep and cut from the text. For texts in a more advanced stage (for example, an academic manuscript that has been through peer review with revisions requested), I assist with revisions and rewriting.
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Stylistic editing is appropriate for writers who are confident about their ideas and the structure of the text but want a professional editor to help ensure they use the best language and style for the target readership. Before your text goes to the copyeditor and printer, I make suggestions for improving word choice and sentence structure, and identifying spelling, grammatical and other errors. Examples include academics writing for a nonspecialist audience or authors whose first language is not English who want an editor to help refine their written English.
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Copyediting comes after a work has been written and edited for content, structure and style. As a copyeditor, I go through your text with a fine-toothed comb, focusing on all elements (consistency of spelling and application of publisher’s house style, layout, images, tables, headings, page numbers, references, bibliography, etc.). I can work for publishers to prepare the final copy for the typesetter, or with individual authors who want a clean manuscript to submit to an agent or publisher..
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This is the final stage of the editing process before publication. As a proofreader, I focus on correcting typos, layout problems and other errors or inconsistencies missed at the copyediting stage or introduced accidentally during typesetting. For typeset texts, I compare page proofs to the copyedited text. In cases of work prepared for submission rather than publication (e.g. a PhD thesis or an article or book submitted to a journal, publisher or agent), I work with the final version in Word.
Please note that proofreading is not the same as stylistic editing or copyediting. If a text requires substantial changes to grammar, sentence structure, the proper use of punctuation and/or correct referencing and bibliographical formatting, it will need a stylistic edit or copyediting (see above) or something between, known as a proof-edit.
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Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum, #SayHerName: Black Women’s Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence (Haymarket, 2023).
Patricio Simonetto, A Body of One’s Own: A Trans History of Argentina (University of Texas Press, 2024).
TRANSLATION
I translate academic and other nonfiction texts from Spanish to English.
I have lived and worked between English and Spanish for more than thirty years, first as a PhD student writing a thesis on Basque history and later teaching and researching Spanish and Latin American history at university level for two decades. I work fluently across Iberian and Latin American Spanish as well as North America and British English.
Sample Translations
Jorge Marco and Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, The Fabric of Fear: Building Franco’s New Society in Spain, 1936–1950 (Liverpool University Press, 2023).
Diego Falconí Trávez, From Ashes to Text: Andean Literature of Sexual Dissidence (Polity Press, 2022).
RATES
My rates vary depending on the type of work required, the nature/stage of the text, and the deadline for completion. For substantial and structural editing, I charge by the day.
For stylistic editing, copyediting, proofreading and translation, I charge by the word.
Please contact me to discuss your project and get a quote.
In addition to the above services, I offer research, teaching and workshops in my areas of expertise: feminism, gender studies and sexuality; Spanish and Cuban history; oral history and memory studies; political activism and revolutionary movements; animals and veganism; drugs and drug policy.
Please book a 15-minute consultation to discuss how we can work together.