Hello to my fellow poets
I'm a poet, essayist, translator, and writing coach whose work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. I'm the author of A Life Replaced (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019), and I've spent over 10 years reading manuscripts closely—my own, my students', and those of writers I've mentored.
What I bring to your manuscript isn't a dry checklist. It's a careful, attentive reader who takes your project on its own terms. I'm interested in what your collection is trying to do, and where it's already doing it beautifully — as well as the places it could push further. My feedback is direct but never harsh; I'll tell you which poems are pulling their weight and which aren't, and I'll do it in a way that leaves you energized to revise rather than discouraged.
I work especially well with poets who are women, non-binary folks, LGBTQIA+, immigrants and their kin, and folks in midlife or beyond. I can help you with submitting to journals, shaping a first manuscript, finding your way between books, working productively with hybrid forms, poetry that responds to literature from another culture, and much more. If that sounds like you, I'd love to read your work.
Here are my rates:
Feedback
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Chapbook (up to 32 pages): $300
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Full-Length Manuscript (up to 65 pages): $600
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Reduced reparations rates are offered for Black and transgender writers.
I'll read your manuscript closely and send you a 1–2 page written response with my reflections. You can expect notes on thematic coherences, which poems are prominent and which ones might be worth cutting, observations on form and craft, some possible alternate titles, gaps where new poems could strengthen the manuscript, and any patterns of repeated language or imagery worth revisiting.
Coaching
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$70 / one-hour Zoom session, or $60 available for a set of four sessions
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Here are examples of what we might do together:
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Finding your voice: if life has absorbed you, I can help you set up helpful habits of mind to help you self-actualize as a poet and check in with compassion and accountability.
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Submitting: I can point you toward a handful of journals or presses that feel like a strong fit for your work and help you set up a submitting practice.
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Generative work: here, we can focus on the practice itself — prompts, deadlines, and the kind of steady accountability that keeps writing happening even when life is persistently pulling you away from writing.
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Developmental work. We might spend a session pulling apart a single poem line by line — what the images are doing, where the form is helping or hurting, where your voice is dynamic and where it seems to be less energetic. Or we can look at a manuscript, its arc, its repetitions, the poems that belong and the ones that don't quite.
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Contact
I'm never too busy for clients and referrals. Let's connect.
(267) 289-2457