Halimah Marcus offers manuscript consultations for short stories, essays, memoirs and novels. For more information email halimahmarcus@gmail.com.

My editorial strategy comes from place of brainstorming and creativity. Writing is a solitary practice that is often isolating, but editing, at it’s best, is collaborative and generative. As a writer, I know how vulnerable inviting someone else into your work can be, but if that collaboration is approached with care and compassion, it can also be freeing and generative. Consultations include written feedback as well as long conversations, with the goal of getting you to the next step in your process, whether that’s finishing a first draft, pushing through writers block, solving a specific narrative problem, or pursuing publication.

Editorial Experience

Halimah Marcus has been a fiction editor since 2012, when she co-founded Electric Literature’s weekly fiction series, Recommended Reading. Over the last decade, she has worked with hundreds of writers, including AM Homes, Weike Wang, Sheila Heti, Helen DeWitt, James Hannaham, Laura van den Berg, Charles Yu, Etgar Keret, Ben Marcus, Maggie Shipstead, Nathan Harris, and Catherine Lacey, as well as many other established and emerging writers. As the editor of Horse Girls, she developed essays by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, Carmen Maria Machado, and T Kira Madden. Stories she has edited have gone on to be included in Best American Stories, Best American Mysteries and Suspense, Best Australian Stories, the O Henry Prize Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

TESTIMONIALS

One of the great literary minds of our era. Halimah’s impact on contemporary literature can’t be overstated… She is one of the most agile thinkers and creative editors that we’ve been lucky enough to have in our lifetime.
- Lucie Shelly, author of Recommended Reading’s “A to Z” and former Senior Editor of Recommended Reading

Halimah is the kind of thoughtful, assiduous reader every writer hopes for. I think that comes both from her own talents as a writer and her compassion as a person. She sees the emotional life of the story and, with great kindness, great sensitivity tells you how to lift that emotional life into being. And that’s what stories are! Emotional life intensified into a singular moment. Working with her is a joy and a revelation.
– Leigh Newman, author of Nobody Gets Out Alive, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize

Halimah has a preternatural ability to see what a story is trying to be—to identify what’s working, to believe in what the writer is trying to do.
- Wynter K. Miller, Director of Operations and Fiction Editor, Electric Literature

She knows how to turn literature into a social event, a space where all of your favorite people, past and future, are working together on a project that is greater than anything you could achieve on your own. I learned from her that being an editor means developing a kind of emotional sensitivity, an intelligence that hasn’t just improved my writing, but also my life.
- Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit, finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and former Managing Editor of Electric Literature

Hundreds of writers have benefited from her support, her editorial skill, and her vision.
– Kelly Luce, author of Pull me Under and Editor of The Commuter, Electric Literature

I submitted a risky short story to Halimah back in late 2014. Even though it was an anemic mashup of sentimentality and broken imagery, Halimah somehow divined what I was trying to do, and with signal patience, guided me through a revision. A story started to resolve from the chaos, and it appeared in Recommended Reading in February 2015. Three others followed over 10 years; Halimah performed variable editorial conjures on each, transforming them into real stories. I still don’t know how she does this. I just know I’ll truly miss Halimah’s sage blue-pencil sorcery, not to mention her kindness and affable brilliance.
– Bill Cotter, author of Recommended Reading’s “The Promise of Hotels,” “Collision,” “The Good Room,” and “The Long Walk North”

As an editor, Halimah has a broad understanding of what makes a “good” story. I thank my stars for folks like her, who with their elegant ethics make the publishing industry a better, brighter place.
– Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

Her sense of to tighten the structure, deepen the tension, and enhance the emotional connection took [my] story from good to great, and is just one example of Halimah’s remarkable skill as an editor and guide dragging fragile writerly egos toward their best selves.
– Mark Jacquemain, author of Recommended Reading’s “Lockdown” and “Island”