The Book Edit aims to get your manuscript in the best possible shape

The Book Edit was founded by Emily Pedder.  Emily has worked as a writer, developmental editor, writing mentor and creative writing teacher for the past 20 years and is a firm believer in the importance of mentoring writers and the power of a good edit. Her editorial work covers a range of genres from literary fiction to thrillers, crime, historical fiction, sci-fi, Young Adult and memoir. Many of the writers Emily has worked with have gone on to publish either with traditional publishers or with indies. She also course directs the Novel Studio, which she co-founded, and heads up the writing short courses at City, University of London. Emily is our central writing mentor and also runs one-to-one coaching for writers sessions.

How We Work

The Book Edit is a bespoke book editing service. We work with a team of handpicked professional editors, all of whom are also writers. This means that whoever works on your project also understands what it feels like to be edited. They all know how challenging, and how transformative that experience can be.  Between them our prize-winning editors have written for such major publications as The Guardian, Independent, The Times, The Financial times, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, New Scientist, and New Statesman and have had fiction and non-fiction published by the likes of Fourth Estate, Random House and Little, Brown.

Editorial team

Crime Fiction and Children’s Fiction: Caroline (writing as Cass) Green’s debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller and her second, In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. Don’t You Cry is her third standalone thriller. She is also an award-winningauthor of fiction for young people. Her first novel, Dark Ride, won the RONA Young Adult Book of the Year and the Waverton Good Read Award. Cracks was recommended on Radio 4’s Open Book programme and Hold Your Breath won the Oldham Book Award.

Fiction - novels: Kirstan Hawkins is a writer, creative writing teacher and anthropologist. Her first novel, Dona Nicanora’s Hat Shop, was published by Random House in 2010. She has taught on the Novel Studio at City, University of London for over five years, seeing a number of students to publication during that time. She also provides intensive tutoring and mentoring to writers through the Circle of Misse writing centre in France.

Fiction - short stories and novels: Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone is a published author and editor and has been working as a creative writing teacher and mentor for over 10 years, helping writers make the best of their writing. She has taught courses and seminars for City, University of London, Bishopsgate Institute, The Guardian, Cambridge University and others. Students she has worked with have gone on to find places on creative writing MAs, MFAs, City’s Novel Studio, or have found agents and publishers. Among others, she is very proud to have edited M L Stedman, the New York Times best-selling author of The Light Between Oceans.

Fiction - novels; Non-Fiction - memoirs: Penny Rudge was born by Lake Michigan, brought up in commuter-belt Surrey and now lives in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In 2010 Little Brown published her first novel, Foolish Lessons in Life and Love, a black comedy about a self-deluding young Londoner. Penny earned a doctorate in Literature & Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2016. She is currently finishing her second novel, Kindness is a Language, a coming of age love story, and developing a third, an as-yet-unnamed thriller. She believes in the importance of ‘finding the bones’ of the story — the skeleton under the show of personality (to adapt from Jack Kerouac) — and loves the challenge of working with other writers to enable them to unearth, connect and polish their own.

Mentoring - fiction: Rosa Rogers is a Doctor of Philosophy in The Contemporary Novel: Practice as Research. Her debut literary novel Composition (2021) was completed as part of her PhD at the University of Kent. Her short stories, poetry and visual art have been published and/or exhibited in The Menteur (Paris), Stirred Press, Northern Quarter, East Street Arts, The Media Centre and Vortex Gallery. Rosa has performed her work across France and the UK. She is the creator of community projects: Poetry etc. and Tales of a Town and is the former Co-Director of Vortex Gallery. She currently works as an assistant lecturer in Creative Writing in Canterbury, City, University of London, and Nantes.

Proofreading and copyediting - fiction and non-fiction: Howard Walwyn is an editor, proofreader, copywriter and trainer. After 30 years in financial risk and regulation he established his freelance business Prism-Clarity in 2016, providing editorial services to financial and other business clients. Since then he has diversified into other related areas, including technical authoring, copywriting and lecturing in Writing for Business at City, University of London. He is a certified Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) and has completed several SfEP training courses including their Proofreading Mentoring programme.