Editing
I’ve worked as an editor across literary publishing for nearly a decade, from shaping essays and reported features at Literary Hub to editing literary fiction at Spiegel & Grau.
Beginning in January 2026, I'll be joining The Detroit Writing Room as a coach, offering guidance on fiction, nonfiction, memoir, book proposals, literary translation, publishing strategies, query letters, and applications for residencies and fellowships. I’ll hold office hours on the first and third Saturday of each month, 10am–noon EST. I’ll include more information about scheduling appointments in December 2025.
The Fire Agent by David Baerwald
Based on the life of the author’s grandfather, this sweeping debut novel follows Ernst Baerwald, a German-Jewish linguist and idealist, from the dawn of chemical warfare in the early 20th century through Japan’s Yakuza underworld to FDR’s wartime intelligence operations. The novel explores how one man’s skills in diplomacy and espionage become useful in ways he never anticipated as two world wars transform everything he believed in.
I worked with David Baerwald to develop this ambitious historical narrative. Rights have been sold in Canada (Penguin Random House), France (Le Seuil), and Spain (Salamandra), with U.S. publication forthcoming from Spiegel & Grau in June 2026.
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“A novel of inspiring humanity and heartbreaking fallibility, The Fire Agent shines a spotlight on the echoes still reverberating to this day. It’s a spy novel, a war story, a love story. It is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that is hardly fictional at all.”—Graham Yost, executive producer of The Americans and Slow Horses
The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet by Giulia Caminito
Translated from the Italian by Hope Campbell Gustafson
This internationally celebrated debut follows a teenage girl, Gaia, and her family as they transition from Rome’s impoverished outskirts to a lakeside town in the 1990s, searching for a new life that might lift them out of poverty. Winner of the Premio Campiello and Premio Strega Off, the novel was among the five finalists for Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Premio Strega.
I acquired this book for the English-language market, working closely with the translator to preserve the novel’s raw intimacy while making it accessible to English-language readers. U.S. rights are with Spiegel & Grau; UK rights were sold to The Indigo Press.
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“Ferocious and riveting.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Intense, impressive . . . A masterful depiction.”—The Financial Times
Skull Water by Heinz Insu Fenkl
Set in South Korea in the 1950s and 1970s, this intergenerational coming-of-age novel follows Insu, the son of a Korean mother and a German father in the U.S. Army, as he embarks on a quest to find “skull water”—a legendary cure said to heal any ailment—to save his dying uncle. The narrative weaves together Insu’s teenage years in the 1970s with his uncle’s experiences during the Korean War, revealing a history of displacement, mixed-race identity, and the tension between traditional Korean beliefs and rapid modernization.
I supported Cindy Spiegel in editing this novel, which draws on Fenkl’s own experiences growing up in Korea.
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“Ambitious and expansive.”—The New Yorker
“A brilliant novel... beautifully realized set pieces.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Mesmerizing... an otherworldly sense of time and place.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)