I am the former managing editor of Caitlin Press, where I was responsible for evaluating submissions, diagnosing the needs of manuscripts, editing, proofreading, and ensuring each book was on schedule for printer and publishing deadlines. I have a BA in English and publishing and a SSHRC-funded MA specializing in print culture. I pursued three years of FRQSC-funded doctoral study in the English department of McGill University before leaving the program to open my editing business. Throughout my graduate studies, I held writing workshops in the university setting focusing on writing persuasion, organization, and clarity.
I am currently a writing tutor at First Peoples’ House at McGill and McGill Writing Centre, where I help undergraduates, graduates, and post docs craft their essays, articles, dissertations, and applications to schools, jobs, and funding opportunities. I am a member of Editors Canada, where I serve as the chair of the career builder committee. I am enrolled in Queen's University's Professional Editing Standards Certificate and have so far completed the Copyediting Standards course.
I have been operating my editing business since late 2022, and the company only continues to grow in exciting ways, primarily due to the repeat clients with which I maintain longstanding professional relationships.
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For a full CV, please visit my LinkedIn.
The short story:
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Hello—my name is Holly Vestad, and I am a substantive, line, and copy editor with ten years of experience editing non-fiction manuscripts, academic monographs, dissertations, and articles, manuals, newsletters, website copy, and varied other communications products, as well as researching, teaching, and tutoring the mechanics of clear, stylistic writing.
The long story:
My editorial approach is backed by a decade of experience. Throughout my career, I have helped writers shape manuscripts, articles, and varied communications products into polished drafts. As a substantive editor, for example, I helped one writer develop a collection of numerical data into a narrative about a city’s historical development, and I have woven a series of disconnected creative non-fiction essays into a cohesive memoir that was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize.
I have also copy edited numerous texts, including academic monographs, an academic chapter written in English by a native French speaker, manuals, newsletters, numerous poetry manuscripts, and much else, with edits adhering to different style guides and to varying degrees depending on the context. For instance, I have copy edited a poetry manuscript according to Greg Younging’s Elements of Indigenous Style and applied the Chicago Manual of Style with discretion to a poetry manuscript written in African American Vernacular English. Texts such as these provided me with the opportunity to consider when an editorial practice might be in line with the legacy of colonialization, and how to amend that practice.
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