Meet our Beta Readers
Akelah Adams
From a young age, Akelah has always had a passion for reading. She loves the different characters and worlds that she could discover when she read and she knew she wanted to work with authors and writers to put their work out there. <!–more–> She graduated with a B.
Cameron Van Sant
Cameron Van Sant is an editor who wants to see every writer succeed. He has experience editing creative works, professional reports, and academic writing.
Mandy Ballard
Mandy (she/her) is a skilled developmental, line editor, and book coach who has worked with both traditional and indie bestsellers, taught at multiple writing conferences, and has a soft spot for beginning writers. Her cozy approach comes through in every edit; if you’re looking for an editor who is 100% on your team, Mandy is the editor for you!
Tova Seltzer
Tova Seltzer is an editor, fiction writer, and poet. She holds a B.A. in creative writing from American University in Washington, D.C., and is a 2020 graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course. The great love of her life is working with stories in development and figuring out what they want and need to be the greatest they can be.
Cassiopeia Gatmaitan ("Cath")
Cassiopeia (“Cath”, they/them) is a historical and literary fiction writer who has been lost in books since they could hold them. Aside from writing, they’re also working towards a degree in archaeology. You could say they’re always looking to dig up the next great find—in both books and their career.
Carrie Jacks
Carrie loves the entire process of publishing a novel—from developing that brand new, exciting idea to formatting the words to look perfect on the page.She is sometimes intimidated by editing her own words, but she loves to read other writers’ works in progress to help make them the best they can be.
Lune Dube
Lune was raised in two storytelling cultures. Whether it was the indigenous stories their father told them at bedtime, or ones from the Torah that they heard in school or synagogue, Lune has always been enchanted by the power of stories. By age 19, they were performing on stage as an improvisational actor and traditional Native storyteller.
David Pena
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, David (he/him) is an editor and writer with a background in Psychology who loves books as much as he loves people. You can find him behind his laptop and second coffee or walking around his hometown buying more and more books, always ready to listen and trade stories.
Leila Halimo
A wild child of the chaotic arts, Leila is a creative soul with a proclivity for colorful, vivid imagery in her artwork and writing. She enjoys bold, brilliant splashes of color in everything and anything. When not nose-deep in a book, she can be found playing video games and writing critical analyses on the pop culture/media she consumes.
Justin Ho
Justin Ho (he/him) is a writer who grew up in Hawaii but spent most of his time in online worlds. Now a bit more grounded, he’s currently pursuing traditional publishing, keeping up with YA releases, and learning Korean (code for watching too much TOMORROW X TOGETHER and BTS content).
Kim VanderHorst
Kim is an experienced and kind developmental editor—maybe because she’s a mom, or maybe because she’s Canadian. But she has a knack
Heba Elsherief
Heba Elsherief holds an MA in English Literature and a PhD in Language and Literacies from the University of Toronto. A former Islamic high school English teacher, she now teaches university classes in cultural studies and language education.
Erin Olds
Erin (she/her) is an experienced developmental and line editor with two secret skills: decreasing word count while retaining voice, and figuring out the one thing that needs to shift in order to make a story truly excellent. She loves working with beginner writers on craft and with experienced authors on in-depth skills like objective correlatives, theme, misbeliefs, and character arcs.
Neha Patel
Neha loves playing around with words to weave engaging sentences that tell meaningful tales. As an editor, she insists on using Oxford commas but will allow sentences to end with prepositions. But hey, it’s all about helping writers tell their incredible stories to readers.
Taye Timko
Taye Timko is a Jack and Jill of all Trades and the Master of Some—primarily an educator of color at an African centered high school on the East Coast, teaching (sometimes) reluctant young writers by day and is a writer and freelance editor by night.
Rebecca Blevins
Rebecca Blevins has been a freelance editor for ten years, working with indie authors and multiple publishers including Penguin, Tor, and Little, Brown. She is the author of five published books—two for children and three for adults, so she understands how it feels to have your work edited.
Savannah Tenderfoot
Savannah Tenderfoot is a seasonal park ranger who would always choose a day in the woods or at the beach over being indoors. When she isn’t reading, you can find her gardening, cooking, kayaking, beading, relaxing near the river with a book of brain-teasers… the list goes on.
Madison Parrotta
From an early age, Madison Parrotta was paranoid that she’d never be able to read. When she was proven wrong, she devoured as many books as she could. As Madison grew older and continued to read, she noticed the lack of people like herself (i.e. that were disabled). At this point, she knew she wanted to work with books that were written by disabled writers or were about disability in a way that dismantled ableism.
Thais Carreira Afonso
Thais is an Associate Agent with Azantian Literary Agency. She has eight years of experience in publishing between Brazil, China, and the United States. More recently, she interned at Writers House, where she honed her skills while supporting the desks of Amy Berkower and Johanna Castillo, and she was mentored by Jennifer Azantian before stepping up to the Associate Agent role at ALA.
Basil Wright
Basil (Pronouns: He/They/Xe) is a writer and sensitivity reader who has primarily worked with TTRPG writers to ensure their games are inclusive and welcoming to all. They love D&D, anime, and otome games. If you had to match Basil to a magical girl team, they would be the energetic yellow magic girl that always supports their friends and is constantly snacking on something.