Editing
Manuscript Consultations
I bring more than two decades of teaching and editing experience to every project. I’m a collaborator at heart, and truly enjoy helping other poets with their projects. Manuscript consultations include ordering suggestions, developmental strategies and, if you like, line edits.
My fee for a chapbook (20-35 pp.) is $250; for a full-length manuscript (up to 75 pp.) it’s $500. I do offer a sliding scale for clients for whom these fees are prohibitive—please just ask.
I’m also available to edit individual or smaller groups of poems. Please contact me for rates.
Testimonials
“Erin stepped in to help with my book manuscript at just the moment when it most needed a firm but gentle hand. After attempting to muddle through various iterations of the book on my own, her clarity of vision for the organization of my poems came as a huge relief. Rather than relying on the stock notions of theme or chronology, Erin intuited how the poems might speak to each other in a way that would allow for both surprise and recognition, as well as a dynamic relationship between the two. She saw the book I’d already written but couldn’t quite bring fully into the world—and now my readers get to see that book, too.”
“Prior to working with Erin I had been overwhelmed by abundance and proximity to my own poems. She took a too-big hunk and helped chisel it into a proper book. With great skill she found the themes and threads that I was unable to see being too close to it and presented me a version of the book that resonated with what I knew to be true of the poems.”
–Rebecca Hoogs
“When Erin handed back my edited manuscript, I could hardly believe it was a thing I'd written. Out of several years' work that appeared to me scattershot, she found a through-line and a story. She suggested a new order and a new title, using the poem from which the new title came as the hinge of the book. Some poems I thought were throw-aways now earned their keep; careful line-edits tightened all the right screws. Within a year of working together, the manuscript became a chapbook competition finalist at my first-choice press and was published in 2021 -- a dream come true.”
“Erin Malone is a wise and generous editor. Her keen and experienced attention to my work revealed and developed strengths within individual poems via line edits, as well as helped me develop themes and resonances across a full manuscript. Erin provides feedback that is sensitive to the nature of an individual poet’s work but also informed by a deep knowledge of contemporary poetry.”
–Sarah Bitter