Work With Me

I get tremendous satisfaction from helping authors shape their fiction and nonfiction. Over the course of my career editing for Nerve, Glamour, The New York Times Magazine, and others, I’ve had the privilege of working with award-winning writers like Jennifer Baumgardner, Robert Olen Butler, Meghan Daum, Susan Dominus, Jennifer Egan, the late Denis Johnson, Mary Karr, Daphne Merkin, Eliza Minot, Rick Moody, Emily Nussbaum, Dale Peck, Elissa Schappell, and Jennifer Weiner.

When I'm not ghostwriting books, I spend my days as a developmental editor and writing coach. What's a writing coach? A great one serves as a lightning rod between a writer and their best writing. As your coach, I consider it my role to help you unleash your creativity as well as guide you on character development, theme, story, tone, and structure all along the way.

Perhaps you're already quite far along with your project. You might need a developmental editor at this point. This is someone who (if they're good), gets in there, re-wets the clay, and helps refine the sculpture—without cramping the artist's style.

Whether you're just beginning, have finished a draft, or are lost somewhere in between, please feel free to reach out and tell me about your project at Gen(at)GenevieveField(dot)(net).

“Having a piece edited by Genevieve is like having a conversation with your smartest best friend—that one who respects you enough to expect a lot from you but who is also your fiercest cheerleader. Genevieve can coax out the gem of a story hidden amid the clutter of a first draft.”
—Jennifer Baumgardner, publisher of Dottir Press and co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (Macmillan)

“Genevieve Field has been the most important and influential person in my career, which has spanned two decades and included six books and columns and articles for dozens of magazines. She has given me ideas and guided the ideas I already had from vague conception through every stage to the finished project. She has always stayed on top of new developments in our rapidly changing, confusing field of publishing.”
—Lisa Carver, author of Reconsidering Yoko Ono (Backbeat)

“My writing had been stuck in a holding pattern for the past five years, and in our first call, Genevieve got me unstuck!”
—Trish Cook, author of Midnight Sun (Hachette)

“While working with me on my memoir about a difficult period in my life, Genevieve has been gentle with my fragile new-writer ego. She is also a fierce advocate of the story that only I can tell. She never pushes me toward easy answers. Instead, she walks beside me, imparting wisdom every step of the way.”
  —Tanya Corrin, author

“Genevieve Field is an enthusiastic, careful and endlessly creative editor—she won't rest until a piece of writing is as good as she knows it can be, while always letting the writer know she is on that writer's side.”
  —Susan Dominus, contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine

“Genevieve Field has been an invaluable asset to my fiction. Her instincts are superb; she takes what I've given her and shows me how to make it better, every single time.”
—Jennifer Egan, president of PEN America; author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of the Pulitzer Prize (Anchor); and Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (Scribner)

“Genevieve has a gift for editing. She understands writers, has compassion for them, and edits to amplify their voices rather than snuff them out. And she’s energetic even when you’re not. She never lets you be lazy. Plus, she’s fun.”
  — Devin Friedman, senior correspondent, GQ

“Genevieve Field is a storyteller with a gift: the seemingly magical ability to hear a subject’s voice and channel it into seamless, sparkling, wholly original prose. From an editor’s standpoint, she’s a dream to work with (and I’ve done so for years across a range of outlets and assignments); she has an ear both for a story’s fine details and its large-scale architecture. And from a subject’s point of view, she’s a trusted collaborator—always there to serve the story and ensure its success.”
—Cindi Leive, journalist, founder of The Meteor

“Genevieve is an uncommonly gifted editor with the ability to turn wayward scribblings into taught, deeply affecting prose.”
—Rufus Griscom, founder of The Next Big Idea Club

“Without Genevieve Field, my story would simply have been a row of journal entries and conversations boxed onto my shelves gathering sad dust. With her clear vision of whom our story could reach, the story crossed oceans and spanned continents…reaching millions.”
—Britt Magnuson, author of “Look Up If You Love Me”

“I can't say you helped me get my start, but I can say that you were a thoughtful, wise and delicate writer and editor, who sent me out there looking very, very good.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard author of Two If By Sea (Simon & Schuster)

“Genevieve Field is simply a great editor of longform. She's excellent at creating momentum and narrative tension. As an elegant writer herself, she refines even the most experienced writer's words until they shine.”
—Alissa Quart executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

“As a magazine writer, I've called upon Genevieve's enormous talents countless times—often in the eleventh hour. When I was writing my first book, a graphic memoir called The Impostor's Daughter, she brainstormed concepts, edited the overall manuscript, then line-edited every page; she even helped to organize the drawings. She was instrumental in line-editing my second book, Truth and Consequences, and provided crucial feedback about tone, style, and character. With Genevieve's hands on your manuscript, it's guaranteed to be the best it can be.”
—Laurie Sandell, author of Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family (Little, Brown)

“Genevieve is supremely talented, but she's also pragmatic. She doesn't work with you in a vacuum. She understands the market. She helped me make my manuscript better, but she also helped me to become a better writer.”
—Kyle Spencer, author of Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement—and Its Plot for Power (Ecco) and journalist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico