Working with Hannah was like shining a light on what had previously felt tangled and dark. She saw in my work the larger meaning I couldn't quite grasp, and helped me pare away and shift material to make that meaning sing. From our first revision to our last, I was blown away by the time, attention and respect she gave my writing. Often, I have felt pushed to sacrifice the poetry of my work for clarity, but Hannah found a way to cohere my essay in a way that drew its lyricism out, rather than erasing it. Quite simply, working with Hannah Beresford was, hands down, the most moving and instructive editorial experience I have ever had.

— Allie Rowbottom (author of Aesthetica, Soho Press, 2022 and Jell-O Girls, Little, Brown, 2018)

Hannah was recommended to me by a friend during a time when I was thinking of hiring an editor for short stories in my collection that were feeling stagnant and having trouble finding a home (being published). I am immensely grateful for said recommendation. My experience with Hannah was like no other. She took the time to not only analyze my work but to discuss with me what it was that I was trying to achieve before making line edits. That collaborative conversation provided a deep edit that aligned with my particular style and process. Hannah’s approach provided that validation I needed to jump back into editing. A piece she edited was placed for publication within a few months. I plan on working with her again and again and again!

– Melissa Ximena Golebiowski  (Catapult, Lit Hub)

The hardest part of working with Hannah was psyching myself up to fill out an inquiry–it meant saying to myself, "yes, I'm writing a book." But Hannah took my writing and goals seriously, listened, and provided thoughtful feedback that was both gentle and critical. Communication and planning was a breeze. In writing, I'd struggled seeing the forest for the trees, but Hannah helped me step back and consider the big picture. It was a very collaborative process. Afterward, when I was excited to dive into revision, it was reassuring to know Hannah would be there as a continued support.

– Jaime Zuckerman (author of Letters to Melville, Ghost Proposal, 2018 and Alone in this Together, Dancing Girl Press, 2016)

Hannah is a kind and thoughtful reader, and editor. She has the greatest care and attention to detail. It is an edit that will make your intentions feel seen and allow you to see your work afresh.
— Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (author of The Sleep Watcher, Sceptre, 2023, Starling Days, Sceptre, 2019, and Harmless Like You, W. W. Norton Company, 2018)

Hannah is a phenomenal editor. She recently helped me polish a series of essays for an eventual collection. Her thoughtful notes allowed me to excavate deeper themes, fine-tune my structure, and make connections I hadn’t seen before. I love her intuition, her attention to detail, and the way she gently invites writers to examine their blind spots and take risks in their work. Not to mention, she’s incredibly organized and provided the deadlines, accountability, and encouragement I needed to get each essay over the finish line. I'm so grateful for her wisdom and support.

– Gina DeMillo Wagner  (author of Forces of Nature, Running Wild Press, 2024)

Hannah is an absolute dream editor. Her ability to understand and elevate a writer’s voice without compromising the core essence of it is what really sets her apart from the rest. I reached out to Hannah to edit several short stories for a story collection. Much like a therapist, you want to make sure an editor is a good fit and I could tell from our early correspondence that she was thoughtful and perceptive and really paid attention to my goals. Her notes were always so detailed and filled with insights and connections I hadn't made myself. I truly felt seen, which was as important to me as her excellent structural revisions and line edits. As a writer herself, she knew how vulnerable I felt about sharing my work and offered herself more as a collaborator than a critic. It felt like we were on the same team and she cared as much about my project as I did. She also gave me a sense of accountability—a rare gift for any writer. She provided clear notes, line edits and deadlines, and her enthusiasm motivated me to be more productive. Her guidance was like a lifeline to me, and her kindness and mentorship tricked me into actually enjoying the editing process. For that, I’m forever grateful.

— Nada Alic (author of Bad Thoughts, Vintage Books/Knopf, 2022)

For years I have known Hannah as both a powerful writer and a thoughtful reviewer, which is why I have sought her help as I put together my first manuscript. Both encouraging and discerning, Hannah gently suggests ways to make the writing clearer, stronger and more truthful. Though she does not hold back, I never feel overwhelmed or frustrated by her notes—just eager to go back to the work and make it better. She is the second set of eyes you need when you have spent too much time alone with your writing. What’s more, Hannah always gets her notes back to me in a timely fashion. I am always impressed and grateful, because I get to keep my momentum, one of an artist’s most valuable tools. It also does not hurt that she is a lovely person and so, that much easier to work with! I highly recommend her services.

— Daria-Ann Martineau (Founder of PRINT, Top 10 Poems of 2020 awarded by Split This Rock)

To call Hannah Beresford an incredible editor would be an understatement. She is also a locksmith. I sent her the first draft of my manuscript and not only did she give me the perfect combination of generous but incisive notes, she gave me a key. The advice she gifted (once I finally committed to following it) has unlocked some of the best, most thrilling, and most rewarding writing of my life. I am forever grateful to have had such a tender, inquisitive, and wildly smart reader of my first foray into prose and memoir. Hannah’s intelligence is just the perfect amount of a few notches smarter than you, whoever you are. She gives just the right amount of herself to foster a sense of intimidation, but never isolation. She sets the bar and shows you how to raise yourself up to it. She is a north motherfucking star.

— Megan Falley (author of Drive Here and Devastate Me, Write Bloody Publishing, 2018, co-author of How Poetry Can Change Your Heart, Chronicle Books, 2019, and A Woman of the World and National Poetry Slam Finalist)

Reaching out to Hannah was the best choice I've ever made for my writing. When I was lost in the weeds of a very personal memoir project, Hannah untangled the mess of memory dump my manuscript had become so I could see it for the narrative I hoped it could be. She has an extremely fast turnaround time, but the care and attention she gave every page of my draft and every question and concern I had about my manuscript made me feel like I was her only client in the world. Her editorial suggestions and tips have led me to finish a book that I am proud of, and will continue to lead me, as I learned so much from her. She has an incredible eye for structure, poetic edits, and such a kind and encouraging attitude. Hannah's fee is the smartest money I've ever put into my writing practice.

— Sammi LaBue (author of Words in Progress, DK Books, 2020 and founder of Fledgling Writing Workshops, NYC)

I have known, admired, and trusted Hannah for nearly a decade. First of all, she is one of the most talented writers I know. I immediately, humbly fell in love with her gracefully mastered words when I first read her poems in 2012. Second, she is a dearest friend, editor, and mentor who has supported me emotionally and intellectually through some of the most difficult years in my writing career. She is there when I feel alone. She cheers me on when I need some lift. Most importantly, she challenges me to see my blind spots, stretch my perspective, and trim my language so that it is lean and ready to leap out from the page.

— Ivy Liuyu Chen (Co-founder of TransWords Translations LLC)

As an editor, one of Hannah’s many gifts is an ability to look at a story and see right down into the emotional under-current of it. Truly, she identified things about my characters—their needs, proclivities, hang-ups, and intuited how they operate within the greater context of the work, and then showed it to me in a way I’d never seen before. It was like a curtain lifting to reveal an entirely new side of the story’s world, coupled with insightful, sensitive guidance on where, precisely, to manipulate the boundaries of that world. She possesses a great analytical power. Hers is exactly the kind of eye you want on your work.

— Justine Champine (author of Knife River, forthcoming from Dial Press, 2022)

Hannah is an editorial maven. She will prioritize your project as a whole, ensuring that it's cohesive and dynamic and structurally fit, and also urge your sentences to do as much as they can. I asked her to read my collection of essays, ones that cover a range of subjects, in a range of ways. I wanted to knit them together more organically, but couldn't figure out how. Hannah helped me find the project's true locus and make thoughtful tweaks. With her encouragement, I even generated some of the material of which I feel most proud. I've joked to Hannah that the manuscript I delivered to her was a basketful of fruit, and that she helped bake it into pie. Which is to say: she turned it into a book.

— Courtney Zoffness (author of Spilt Milk, McSweeney’s, 2021)

If the job of an editor is to take a piece of writing and help to shape it in the image of the unrealized potential of the person writing it, then Hannah’s work is unparalleled. I’ve worked on over a dozen stories with Hannah, and each time I’m humbled by the level of her effort and care she displays with my writing. By working with Hannah, I haven’t just polished a small set of stories, but become a better writer and thinker. On a practical level, her flexibility with tight turnarounds (along with her professional etiquette) has made her a total joy to work with. I can’t recommend her enough. You would be lucky to take up a sliver of her editing time.

— Caro Claire Burke (author of COVER STORIES, a weekly short story series based on songs)

Hannah has the incredible ability to see through a manuscript to its core and tease out what it wants to be. Her direction helped give me a new language and set of questions with which to understand the purpose of my book. She has an impeccable understanding of craft from the level of each word, to each sentence, and to the entire manuscript. Seeing my work through her lens has given me renewed purpose and drive for my manuscript, illuminating the art within it, something that I had come to doubt after so many rounds of revision. I know I'll turn to Hannah in the future when I need a fresh read and path forward.

– Ella Mei Yon (Glimmer Train, Pigeon Pages)

Hannah's edits are brilliant on the level of line, story, and deep subtext. All the writing she touches, she elevates. She'll take your writing to places you didn't know it could go.

— Jon Lindsey (author of BODY HIGH, House of Vlad, 2021)

Hannah Beresford is one of the best editors I've ever worked with. She'll fix your structural problems, she'll fix your sentences, she'll fix your life. She is a Writer Whisperer.

— Shelly Oria (author of New York: 1, Tel Aviv: 0, FSG, 2014 and editor of Indelible In The Hippocampus: Writings From The Me Too Movement, McSweeney's, 2019 & I Know What's Best for You, McSweeney’s, 2022)

It’s something special to have your work read and considered by Hannah. To say she looks at your fiction with “new eyes” would be an understatement; instead, she looks at it with eyes that are keen to find the most compassionate course for your story. She distills it down to its core and sends it back to you with a map to help you excavate the humanity in every character.

— Kells McPhillips (author of AthleteLit, a short story series about athletes)

I had the joy of working with Hannah on a short story collection and an essay collection in 2021. Hannah’s insight—in a developmental consult and line edits, for fabulist fiction and personal essay—pierced through to the heart of each story. Her feedback fully embraced my vision and voice while offering clear, dynamic solutions to elevate each individual piece and the arc of each manuscript. Hannah handled my work with great care and with her guidance I’m confident that I’ll be sharing the best possible evolution of these stories.

– Katie Li (author of Somewhere In Between, Kung Fu Girl Books, 2016)

Hannah brings a calm commitment and clarity to working with you. Her process is tailored toward your project and includes a close read like that of a publisher or an agent. Expect the following: an overview, targeted remarks, thought provoking questions and the potential of “re-ordering” an essay. Her wide lens of observation on your material works in tandem with her dexterity to home in on the micro matters of: narrative tension, structure, details that matter versus those that clutter, undeveloped scenes, grounding exposition, and more. In feedback notes, to avoid confusion in tricky and/or paramount sections, she places practical track changes in the document to illustrate her advice. A big jewel Hannah gave to my work was in the rearrangement of narrative threads that I, too preciously, had been holding onto. She did so, by providing me with a master class on ‘ratio and order’ where I better understood symbolic scale and the distribution of ideas. Hannah’s goal is to get your work published, not left in a drawer.

— Yvonne Conza (Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB)

Hannah's manuscript consultation was just the right blend of positivity and thoughtful criticism. She worked quickly and thoroughly, culminating in a written document and conversation that provided me with a global sense of what was and wasn't working in my novel, how best to move forward, and what questions I could use to guide the project. Her feedback gave me new perspective, helping me see the book from a reader's perspective, which was invaluable. After working with Hannah, I was left feeling excited to tackle the next draft.

— Kristin Sanders (author of Cuntry, Trembling Pillow Press, 2017)