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Melanie Faith, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
As well as being a development editor for the press, she too has a hand in choosing which books will get published. Melanie inched her way up the VLP ladder by first submitting a writing craft article to the blog (now offline) the press used to publish. Then she became a VLP author, debuting with her popular writing reference book, In a Flash! This then turned into the Flash Writing series, and two more books were born. Jessica, the publisher, then started sending Melanie full manuscripts to evaluate in order for her to consider them for publication. Her evaluation notes were so extensive and brilliant, that she decided Melanie needed to be hired.
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Alexis Paige, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
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Just like Melanie, Alexis scored her role at Vine Leaves Press by first becoming an author here. Her memoir in vignettes, Not a Place on Any Map, was the winner of the 2016 Vine Leaves Press Vignette Collection Award. Her second book, Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life, also from Vine Leaves Press, is a memoir of writing craft and neurodivergent creativity. Alexis began editing for Vine Leaves in 2017, doing dozens of copy and development edits on manuscripts of all genres. This editing work, plus her ongoing nonfiction writing, led to her current role as Creative Nonfiction Acquisitions Editor. While she continues to do development editing, Alexis also helps to shape and grow the Press’s catalog of nonfiction writers.
Her essays appear widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Longform, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, Fourth Genre, The Pinch, and on Brevity, where she was an Assistant Editor from 2013-2019. Winner of the New Millennium Nonfiction Prize, Alexis has also received “Notable” mentions in Best American Essays and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Assistant Professor of English at Vermont Technical College, she holds an MA in poetry and an MFA in nonfiction. Alexis lives in Vermont with her husband and a rotating cast of rescue animals. |
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Alana King, Copyeditor & Proofreader & Acquisitions |
As well as being a copyeditor and proofreader for the press, Alana is responsible for compiling and creating our monthly round-up newsletters. After earning a B.A. in English from Texas State University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Memphis, Alana King is currently working on a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research interests include American Literature and History, the literature and history of marginalized and non-mainstream populations, film studies and history, and war and genocide studies.Outside of school, she also proofreads and edits blog posts, articles, and manuscripts and also serves in readership or editorial positions for lit journals and publications.
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Melissa Slayton, Development Editor & Acquisitions |
As well as being a development editor for the press, she also has a hand in choosing which books will get published. She is one of the people behind the scenes who the publisher passes full manuscripts to when they need to be considered for publication. If Melissa says it's a firm yes, then the chances are, you're in!
Melissa has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C. Her work can be found in the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, San Pedro River Review, Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2015, Pinesong, the South Carolina Yearbook, Apalachee Review, Comstock Review, Lyric Magazine, The Poet’s Word, and TINGE. She currently plays keyboard for Kael Jackson. |
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Peter Snell, Acquisitions |
Peter Snell is solely responsible for acquiring books at VLP as he's not just your average slush pile reader. He was a bookseller at Barton's Bookshop in Leatherhead, UK, for 20 years and has been an avid reader from the age of three or four. He definitely knows a potential good book when a manuscript reaches his hands. He has a BEd Hons degree in history and is a qualified teacher with an earlier background with IBM where he became familiar with PL1, Fortran 4 and 80 column cards. It has been his mission in recent years to champion new writers, traditionally published or otherwise, and discover new talents and those not yet fully recognised. To this end he has surrendered most of his autonomy when choosing the books he reads and subsists on a diet of author submissions and publishers' proofs and pre-pubs.
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Daniel Gooding, Acquisitions |
Daniel Gooding is a proofreader and copy-editor at Zedolus Proofreading & Author Services. As an author, his short fiction has appeared in Stroud Short Stories: Volume 2 and the anthologies Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond and First Came Fear: New Tales of Horror, both published by New Lit Salon Press in New York. He has previously written non-fiction for The Guardian and CILIP Information Professional magazine, and he also has a library Master’s degree. He currently lives in Bath.
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JJ Toner, Copyeditor & Proofreader |
As well as being a copyeditor and proofreader for the press, JJ Toner will sometimes dip his toes into aquisitions if we need another male perspectiveBitten by the writing bug in my early teens, he finally started writing again in 1996 after half a lifetime of procrastination, and has been a full-time writer since 2007. For 35 years he worked with computers, first as a petroleum geophysicist, then with medical and veterinarian scientists, accountants, engineers, and in a variety of industries, from health care through manufacturing to shipping. His work took him all over Europe, and yet he found the time to marry, build a home, father three kids, and get his golf handicap down to single figures. Major writing influences include (in no particular order) Frank O’Connor, James Thurber, Patrick Campbell, PG Wodehouse, Samuel Beckett, Eoin Colfer, Colin Bateman, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, John Steinbeck, John Le Carré, Robert Harris, Christopher Brookmyre, Richard Dawkins, Ellis Peters, Charles Dickens, Raymond Chandler, Isaac Azimov, John Wyndham, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Sheckley, R. A. Lafferty and, of course, Douglas Adams..
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Amanda Vink, Copyeditor & Proofreader |
Amanda Vink is a writer, editor, garden-walker, and library-lurker. She is the author of And We Call It Love (West 44 Books), Marjorie Hart and the Tree of Life (Kaledena Press), as well as numerous children’s fiction and non-fiction texts. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. She is a product of the New York public school system and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the State University of New York at Fredonia. She lives at the edge of Lake Erie with her husband and rambunctious cat Milford, where she hosts weekly creative writing workshops and works to build a global literary community.
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