michelle gillett + nina ryan
are a team of experienced editors who offer detailed feedback and consulting to writers, from overall analysis of short pieces and manuscripts, line editing, and one-on-one tutorials, to book-doctoring and guidance in the development of manuscripts and book proposals.Nina Ryan has 20 years of book publishing experience as a literary agent and editor. Michelle Gillett is a poet, columnist and longtime writing teacher. They have worked with writers published by Knopf, Macmillan, Doubleday, Henry Holt and other major publishers as well as with writers who are just getting started.
Whether you are just beginning your project, are working toward publication, or are a published author, we can help you with your material.
Student testimonial
As a novice writer I could not have been guided more thoughtfully by Michelle Gillett. She offered her wisdom as a published writer on many levels and could clearly see what my manuscript could become long before I did. Her skill at analyzing material at a specific level enabled me to understand what needed to be cut, what needed to be strengthened, and what was missing. A number of times she enabled me to write myself out of a corner by finding the exact words or the exact inspiration to help move me ahead. Equally important, she modeled for me what it meant to take a work seriously and in so doing honored all that I was attempting to say. I learned to trust her instincts, and then to trust my own and eventually it began to feel as though the work was the kind of collaboration we all wish for: two partners offering the best they can to create something together.
Nina provided for me a similar kind of holding: one of kindness and skill. With her guidance we were able to take a manuscript and transform it into something marketable. She knew everything that needed to be done, from the re-organizing of material, to helping me articulate why that material would be important to an audience, and then to framing the proposal for the manuscript such that the book had the best chance of becoming a published work. Throughout this entire process she would remind me that the work had a meaning and a value above and beyond its potential future as a published book. Because of this, I felt encouraged to continue writing and continue believing that my words had meaning - for a novice there is perhaps no greater gift.
My book would not have come into its full self without either of them. I owe them both a thousand words of praise and thanks.
Maria Sirois XPoetry Reading
Picnic with Poets
benefit for Close Encounters with Music
v
Poets Charles Coe, Leslie Harrison and Michelle Gillett
will be reading their work.
The Mount, Lenox, MA
Saturday, November 12, 4pm
Tickets: $15
Poetry Reading
by Michelle Gillett
Monday, November 21, 7pm
The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY
for Bookmarks, a group reading of personal essays about
"Creative Endeavors - Being Terrified and Doing it Anyway"
Tickets: $15