For a fuller description of my approach to editing, please see CraftBook Editorial, my professional site.)

I offer developmental editing, book coaching, line editing, book doctoring, and copyediting for novels, memoirs, biographies, works of history, short stories, and book proposals. Before becoming an independent editor, I was an acquisitions editor at Algonquin Books and guided many books, fiction and nonfiction, into publication. Among my authors were Guggenheim Fellows and other award winners. I published work by Robert Morgan, Mary Gabriel, Derek Lundy, Stella Suberman, Patricia Bryan, Thomas Wolf, William Kornblum, Scott Morris, and many others. I also acquired the book Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, an international bestseller. As a freelance editor, I edited Robert Hicks’s three-book series of bestselling historical novels: The Widow of the South (named one of the ten best Civil War novels of all time by the Christian Science Monitor), A Separate Country, and The Orphan Mother. I have a BA in history from Cornell University, an MS in journalism from Northwestern University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing (fiction) from Bennington College.

If you have a project that requires editing, please contact me directly at duncan@craftbookeditorial.com. I’d love to talk with you about your writing!