What the Draft Knows
A close editorial reading for memoir and personal essay writers.
Send me up to 3,000 words. I'll read your draft twice and return marked opening pages and a two- to three-page editorial letter identifying patterns, structural possibilities, and governing questions. $225 · Delivered within two weeks
Memoir often suffers from too much life and too little reader experience. You can know what happened and still not know what the essay is about.
You need one clear, expert read. You'll finish my letter knowing what the piece is trying to become and exactly how to get it there.
No formula fits every memoir. The right questions will tell you why this one isn't working yet.
Finding those questions for your pages is what I do.
Who it's for
Memoirists and personal essayists seeking a high-level editorial letter rather than a full developmental overhaul. Â
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You have a draft. Not an idea, not an outline. An actual draft you've revised more than once and can no longer see. Maybe it's an essay you want to send out. Maybe it's the first chapter of a book you've been circling for years. You've reached the end of what rereading it yourself can do.
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You don't need permission and you don't need cheerleading. You need someone who reads this form closely to tell you what's actually on the page, including the part you didn't know you'd put there.
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The subjects I read most: illness and the body, family and memory, adoption, grief, aging, the years that never resolved into a lesson. Late starts are welcome here. A distance of thirty years is an advantage, not an apology.
How it works
The process is designed to be efficient, expert, and entirely asynchronous. You send me your pages, and I return a precise, actionable read that identifies exactly where your draft is landing and where it isn’t.
01
Submit Your Draft
You send me your pages, up to 3,000 words, as a Google Doc link and answer a few short questions about what you're hoping the piece will do.
02
Expert Analysis
Within two weeks I send you back a letter of two or three pages, written after reading your work twice. Everything happens in writing.
03
Feedback Delivered
Receive your written feedback directly in your inbox, allowing you to revise with clarity and confidence. There's no call to schedule and nothing to sit through on a hard day.
What the letter names
Five things, in this order:
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Your surface subject, the story you sat down to tell.
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The underlying pressure, which is what the draft turns out to be about instead.
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The patterns that keep recurring whether or not you planned them.
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The governing question the piece asks and hasn't answered yet.
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And what all of that means for your next revision, on your actual pages rather than in the abstract.
What a read sounds like Â
Imagine a writer clearing out her mother's apartment.
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On the surface the essay is about the sorting and the donation pile.
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The real pressure arrives the moment she has to choose which version of her mother survives, the one in the good coat or the one in the hospital gown.
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That choice is the structure.
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The passages that explain her grief are doing work the objects already do better, so the move in revision is to trust the inventory and cut the commentary.
About Me
For twenty-five years I taught people to write, mostly seventeen-year-olds in an AP English Composition classroom, which turns out to be excellent training for reading personal essay drafts.Â
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This year I'm reading entries for a memoir prize, which means a stack of other people's pages and the question of why some hold and some don't. The ones I set aside early tend to do the same thing. They summarize. Ten years of a marriage compressed into a paragraph, then a lesson about resilience. I wanted the morning she stood at the sink deciding whether to say it.
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I'm at work on two memoir-in-essays manuscripts of my own, so I know exactly what it costs to hand someone pages you can no longer see. I read accordingly, never careless with what you've given me.
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My own essay "Molasses Brain" won the 2025 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir. The judge, novelist Sharon Butala, wrote that it showed "the sheer strength of the writing, through the entire work, and the writer's admirably delicate touch." That's the ear I bring to your pages.
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M.Ed., Harvard Graduate School of Education. A.B., Smith College, with high honors. Fulbright fellow. National Writing Project fellow, SUNY Stony Brook.
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The Details
This is a pilot service for students who need a single, expert read. It includes a comprehensive review of your personal essay/memoir draft with specific feedback up for up to 3,000 words. Your letter comes back within two weeks.
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One submission, one letter that gives you a clear direction to work from.
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Delivery is asynchronous via written notes.
Pilot Pricing: $225