Studio
We offer a full range of editorial services to writers at all stages of their career and practice, and from all backgrounds and experiences.
1.
Book a consultation
2. Select an approach
We tailor our approach to the needs of each project and the working styles of each writer. Our most common packages are broadly outlined below.
A thorough and instructive assessment concerning the fundamental components of your manuscript, such as voice and style, structure, plot and pacing, thematic development, characterization, dialogue, and more. This may be most helpful to writers who have completed an early draft of a manuscript and are seeking direction for the revision process, or to writers who have received a fair amount of feedback about their manuscript but are feeling stuck, or to writers simply seeking a fresh perspective from someone with a rigorous eye.
Includes:
- A clear and comprehensive written assessment to guide the revision process
- Margin comments to draw attention to discrete issues addressed in the assessment
- A phone conference to discuss the assessment and next steps
An assessment (as described in the Primary package) as well as a sentence-by-sentence edit of your manuscript to address issues such as chapter structure, syntax, inconsistency, tense agreement, and more. This package is best for writers who have already completed a substantial revision and are seeking assistance polishing their voice and style, or for writers who have revised to the point of paralysis, or for those who simply relish the agony and satisfaction of producing a perfect sentence.
Includes:
- A clear and comprehensive written assessment to guide the revision process
- Margin comments to draw attention to discrete issues addressed in the assessment
- Line edits to elevate each sentence
- Correspondence during the revision process
Manuscript Coaching
An ongoing editorial collaboration for writers seeking guidance throughout the process of drafting or substantially revising a manuscript. Rather than waiting for a complete draft, we work together in stages, reading your manuscript as it develops and helping you think through questions of structure, argument, voice, pacing, and direction along the way. This may be most helpful to first-time authors moving from proposal to full manuscript, writers navigating especially complex or ambitious projects, or anyone who would prefer not to spend three more years wondering whether Chapter Four has ruined everything.
Other editorial services:
- Ghostwriting
- Query letter editing
- Proposal editing
- Copywriting
- Copy editing
Who you’ll work with:
Photo by Anna Watts
Naomi Huffman | Co-Founder, Editor
Naomi grew up in rural Indiana and now lives in Brooklyn. She began her career at Newcity, one of Chicago’s last alt-weeklies, before working for a handful of independent publishers in Chicago. Later, she worked for MCD, a former imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where she managed the overall digital strategy and brand identity, acquired and edited multiple titles, and discovered her unflagging interest in archival reading and publishing. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, The Believer, and elsewhere. She teaches at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Naomi is drawn to fiction that springs from a singular place or experience and possesses a distinct voice and style, and is particularly excited by satire, transgressive humor, and dark comedy. She enjoys nonfiction with an informed perspective that bears a sense of social responsibility, and that may aspire to correct misremembered or lesser-known histories.
She has worked with many acclaimed writers, but also relishes the opportunity to work with those who are coming to writing for the first time. She has worked with many musicians and artists to develop their novels and memoirs, and she specializes in drawing out confident work from writers from other creative disciplines. She is a sensitive editor and maintains an open and candid relationship with her clients; she sees the editorial process as collaborative rather than purely instructive. Above all, she ensures a work succeeds on its own terms, sentence to sentence, word by word.
Julia Ringo | Co-Founder, Editor
Originally from Washington State, Julia now lives in Brooklyn, where she works as an editor, literary agent, and publisher. Before co-founding Hagfish, she spent nearly a decade in New York publishing, first at Publishers Group West, distributor for Grove Atlantic and other independent presses, and later editing at Alfred A. Knopf and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
She is drawn to fiction and narrative nonfiction driven by intellectual ambition and emotional precision. She has a particular affection for books that find unexpected connections between the personal and the political, the human and the natural worlds. She reads widely across genres, but is especially excited by singular voices, dark humor, and genre-bending and hybrid forms.
As an editor, Julia believes that every manuscript contains a central question or tension waiting to be more fully realized. Whether uncovering that organizing principle, translating complex ideas into clear and engaging prose, or finding the right structure for the story a writer wants to tell, she aims to meet a project wherever it is and work closely with the writer to determine what it needs next. She has worked with novelists, memoirists, historians, journalists, and academics writing for general audiences, helping them to create books that are both intellectually rigorous and wholly readable.
Photo by Maddie Crum
Mallika Rao | Editor
Born and brought up in Texas, Mallika now lives in Brooklyn. She is a member of The New Yorker's editorial staff, in the Fiction department. She also teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she was the Axinn fellow in Fiction and the Translations editor for the Washington Square Review. Her nonfiction work, including profiles, essays, reportage, and criticism, has appeared in major print and digital publications.
In fiction, while her tastes tend toward realist narratives rendered in lucid, direct language, she also welcomes ornateness and experimentalism. What she responds to above all is an interest in and feel for human beings and the human condition. In nonfiction, she likes a strong line of inquiry that interacts with the writer’s presence, and she welcomes genre-defying work. Subject matter-wise, her interests range broadly across the arts and sciences; the quality of thought and emotion evoked by an idea and on the page is what compels her.
In her work as a teacher and editor, she aims to develop a project in collaboration with the writer: to jointly discover what the project is. She takes pride in fostering discovery with a clear, open, and respectful approach to communication. Together with the writer, she will apply attention strategically, where and when it is needed—from the level of a single word to structural and thematic concerns.
Photo by Ella Pennington
Michele Moses | Editor
Michele is a born and raised New Yorker, currently serving as the assistant editor at The Yale Review. She spent the first decade of her career as a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff, and has also worked as an editor for Guernica and Cake Zine. Her own writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Nation, Guernica, and The Drift, and she was selected by the National Book Critics Circle for its emerging critics fellowship. She received her MFA in Fiction at Brooklyn College. In addition to writing and editing, she is also a podcast producer and a book-club facilitator.
As an editor, she is a sensitive and engaged question asker, always attuned to opportunities for greater clarity, emotional precision, or internal resonance. In this way, she helps writers to figure out what they are trying to say and to find language that reflects the full particularity of their inner world. Michele also loves a good story and is an imaginative and playful thought partner in developing compelling plotlines. She brings to the editorial process a sincere interest in the relationship between life and art, and she welcomes discussion of her clients’ writing processes and of the experiences that inspire their work.
Maddie Crum | Editor
Maddie lives in New York by way of Texas and the Gulf Coast. She co-edits Joyland Editions, a small press publishing two novellas each year, with recent titles named Best Books of the Year by The New Yorker and selected for Book of the Month’s program for independent and international voices. Before that, she worked in digital media, academic publishing, and as a freelance editor for magazines and arts organizations. Her writing appears in The Baffler, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Joyland, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, and her work has received support from Millay Arts. She’s taught writing at Sackett Street and across the CUNY system.
She enjoys helping other writers locate and deepen whatever lies at the heart of their work—a relationship, an ambivalence, a belief, a mood, a place, or an incomplete account. As a teacher and editor, she always hopes to facilitate a conversation, a lively back-and-forth that might uncover something unexpected. And, she enjoys helping determine a project’s most intuitive structure, whether that’s a linear narrative or a form that deliberately plays with conventions.