Editorial Freelancers Association
Member Profile
Julia Boss
Julia Boss Editing
Who I am
I am an editor of academic and other serious nonfiction with more than twenty years of combined freelance and in-house experience.
I have been involved in the publishing of serious nonfiction writing since 1991. I started in-house with trade publisher Algonquin Books, editing nonfiction and overseeing Algonquin’s paperback reprint line. I then pursued a Ph.D. in history and Renaissance Studies at Yale University, earning M.A. and M.Phil. degrees though I did not complete a doctoral dissertation. At Yale I expanded my editorial experience with two scholarly document editing projects (Yale Boswell Editions and the Yale Center for Parliamentary History), taught for four years in a writing-support capacity with Yale Summer Programs, and coordinated a writing group for advanced graduate students and faculty in history and American Studies. My own research and writing focused on reading communities, reader reception, and how editorial and other decisions that are embodied in the physical container of a manuscript or printed book contribute to readers’ experience of a text’s meaning.
What I do
For the past two decades I’ve worked with academic clients, primarily faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, as they develop and revise proposals, fellowship applications, journal articles, book manuscripts, and other materials. I offer developmental or substantive editing as well as line editing for style, grammar, word choice, and clarity. I’m most familiar with CMOS style. For nonprofit and commercial clients, I’ve also written and edited materials from white papers to blog posts and social media. I’ve been fortunate to work extensively with clients who write in English as a second or third language.
Subject-area knowledge and experience includes literature (American, African American, Italian especially medieval and Renaissance, Latin American, Francophone including North Africa), American history (borderlands/American West, African American, early American), gender studies and sexuality, religious studies (Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism), history of the book, history of science, film studies, and U.S. policy including healthcare and housing and urban development. My clients have placed their books with publishers including University of Toronto Press, Columbia University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Yale University Press, Notre Dame Press, LSU Press, University of Delaware Press, and many others. Projects I’ve edited have won numerous prizes, including from the Modern Language Association and the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.
I’m happy to support authors at any stage of the writing and revising process, from offering a big-picture evaluation on how to develop a project from doctoral dissertation to book manuscript, to implementing peer reviewers’ “revise and resubmit” recommendations, to line editing a complete single-author or multi-author book manuscript. I bring to every client project the perspective of a seasoned editor with experience on both sides of the publisher’s transom.
Eugene, OR
US
Email: julia@juliabossediting.com
https://www.juliabossediting.com/
More information: View PDF file
Years in the field: 23
Years freelancing: 20
Julia Boss
Who I am
I am an editor of academic and other serious nonfiction with more than twenty years of combined freelance and in-house experience.
I have been involved in the publishing of serious nonfiction writing since 1991. I started in-house with trade publisher Algonquin Books, editing nonfiction and overseeing Algonquin’s paperback reprint line. I then pursued a Ph.D. in history and Renaissance Studies at Yale University, earning M.A. and M.Phil. degrees though I did not complete a doctoral dissertation. At Yale I expanded my editorial experience with two scholarly document editing projects (Yale Boswell Editions and the Yale Center for Parliamentary History), taught for four years in a writing-support capacity with Yale Summer Programs, and coordinated a writing group for advanced graduate students and faculty in history and American Studies. My own research and writing focused on reading communities, reader reception, and how editorial and other decisions that are embodied in the physical container of a manuscript or printed book contribute to readers’ experience of a text’s meaning.
What I do
For the past two decades I’ve worked with academic clients, primarily faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, as they develop and revise proposals, fellowship applications, journal articles, book manuscripts, and other materials. I offer developmental or substantive editing as well as line editing for style, grammar, word choice, and clarity. I’m most familiar with CMOS style. For nonprofit and commercial clients, I’ve also written and edited materials from white papers to blog posts and social media. I’ve been fortunate to work extensively with clients who write in English as a second or third language.
Subject-area knowledge and experience includes literature (American, African American, Italian especially medieval and Renaissance, Latin American, Francophone including North Africa), American history (borderlands/American West, African American, early American), gender studies and sexuality, religious studies (Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism), history of the book, history of science, film studies, and U.S. policy including healthcare and housing and urban development. My clients have placed their books with publishers including University of Toronto Press, Columbia University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Yale University Press, Notre Dame Press, LSU Press, University of Delaware Press, and many others. Projects I’ve edited have won numerous prizes, including from the Modern Language Association and the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.
I’m happy to support authors at any stage of the writing and revising process, from offering a big-picture evaluation on how to develop a project from doctoral dissertation to book manuscript, to implementing peer reviewers’ “revise and resubmit” recommendations, to line editing a complete single-author or multi-author book manuscript. I bring to every client project the perspective of a seasoned editor with experience on both sides of the publisher’s transom.
