Editing Services by Maurice Mierau
Sometimes the best way to make progress on a book is to work intensively with a professional editor, before you try to publish or approach an agent.
Maurice Mierau is a professional editor and writer with fifteen years of experience. He has edited twelve books of fiction with authors including Richard Van Camp, Michelle Berry, Méira Cook, Shane Neilson, and W.P. Kinsella. Maurice has also edited poetry and book reviews for literary magazines, and non-fiction for several publishers. Books he has edited have won major awards across Canada. His own writing has won national and regional awards, including the Kobzar Literary Award, for a memoir, in 2016, the ReLit Award for poetry in 2009, and the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction in 2015. Maurice has been writer-in-residence at the Winnipeg Public Library, and a writing mentor with the Manitoba Writers’ Guild. He holds an MA in English.
Maurice is available on a consulting basis for fiction, life writing or creative non-fiction, and poetry manuscripts. He also consults on grant and MFA applications, and as a mentor. He is available to interact on-line by email and Skype, and by telephone. His consulting rate is $50 per hour, with a minimum engagement of 10 hours. Other arrangements are also possible; please enquire below.
Testimonials about Maurice’s work as a mentor and editor:
“Attentive, informative, engaged, insightful.”
“Well-prepared, knowledgeable.”
“A good editor can see what a book is trying to do and work with the writer to make the vision clear. Maurice Mierau was that kind of editor on my novel, This Book Will Not Save Your Life. A complicated book which involved four repeating and different points of view, and quotations from and reflections on a famous baby care book, Maurice saw through the complexity, the repetitions, the mess, and presented me with edits that revealed the book to me. Like a good pair of glasses, Maurice made my book move from fuzzy to sharp.“ — Michelle Berry, author most recently of Interference, and winner of the Mary Scorer Award and the Colophon Award.
“I’m terrified of working with Maurice Mierau and this is a blessing. I found that with my three short story collections with Enfield & Wizenty, I was editing and reworking and rewriting the short stories we agreed on to knock his socks off. Maurice is both a surgeon and a master of nailing down not only great copy and content editing, but his approach to choosing what stories made it into the collection and what order and why made me realize that each of our books together is a perfect universe. Great editors create great writers, and I’m grateful for every book we’ve done together. I’d work with Maurice again in a heartbeat. Mahsi cho, Maurice, you Champion Maker, you!“ — Richard Van Camp, author of Godless but Loyal to Heaven, Little You, The Lesser Blessed, among others, and winner of the Georges Bugnet award and the R. Ross Arnett Award for Children’s Literature.
Proposal and Grant Writing Services
by Maurice Mierau
Specializing in proposal and grant writing, Maurice has a long track record writing proposals for both the private and public sector. Contact him below for more details.
Contact Maurice here.