The Book Edit aims to get your manuscript in the best possible shape

Hi, I'm Emily Pedder, and I founded The Book Edit with a deep commitment to the transformative power of editing and mentoring writers through their creative journey.

For the past 20 years, I've dedicated my career to the craft of writing—as an author, developmental editor, writing mentor and coach, and creative writing lecturer. Throughout this time, I've seen firsthand how crucial it is for writers to be read by someone who truly cares about their work, and the remarkable growth that occurs when a writer receives thoughtful, dedicated editorial guidance.

My editorial experience spans genres—from literary fiction to thrillers, crime novels, historical fiction, science fiction, Young Adult stories, and memoirs. It's been my privilege to guide many writers through their creative process, watching them flourish and eventually publish with both traditional and independent publishers.

Beyond The Book Edit, I co-founded and currently direct the Novel Studio, and I head the writing short courses at City St Georges.

When you work with The Book Edit, you're not just getting an editor—you're gaining a partner who genuinely cares about your story and your growth as a writer. I look forward to meeting you and helping your work reach its full potential.

How We Work

The Book Edit is a bespoke book editing service. We work with a team of handpicked professional editors, all of whom are also writers. This means that whoever works on your project also understands what it feels like to be edited. They all know how challenging, and how transformative that experience can be.  Between them our prize-winning editors have written for such major publications as The Guardian, Independent, The Times, The Financial times, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, New Scientist, and New Statesman and have had fiction and non-fiction published by the likes of Fourth Estate, Random House and Little, Brown.

Editorial team

Crime Fiction and Children’s Fiction: Caroline (writing as Cass) Green’s debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller and her second, In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. Don’t You Cry is her third standalone thriller. She is also an award-winningauthor of fiction for young people. Her first novel, Dark Ride, won the RONA Young Adult Book of the Year and the Waverton Good Read Award. Cracks was recommended on Radio 4’s Open Book programme and Hold Your Breath won the Oldham Book Award.

Fiction - novels: Kirstan Hawkins is a writer, creative writing teacher and anthropologist. Her first novel, Dona Nicanora’s Hat Shop, was published by Random House in 2010. She has taught on the Novel Studio at City St George’s University of London for over five years, seeing a number of students to publication during that time. She also provides intensive tutoring and mentoring to writers through the Circle of Misse writing centre in France.

Fiction - short stories and novels: Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone is a published author and editor and has been working as a creative writing teacher and mentor for over 10 years, helping writers make the best of their writing. She has taught courses and seminars for City St George’s, Bishopsgate Institute, The Guardian, Cambridge University and others. Students she has worked with have gone on to find places on creative writing MAs, MFAs, City St George’s Novel Studio, or have found agents and publishers. Among others, she is very proud to have edited M L Stedman, the New York Times best-selling author of The Light Between Oceans.

Fiction - novels; Non-Fiction - memoirs: Penny Rudge was born by Lake Michigan, brought up in commuter-belt Surrey and now lives in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In 2010 Little Brown published her first novel, Foolish Lessons in Life and Love, a black comedy about a self-deluding young Londoner. Penny earned a doctorate in Literature & Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2016. She is currently finishing her second novel, Kindness is a Language, a coming of age love story, and developing a third, an as-yet-unnamed thriller. She believes in the importance of ‘finding the bones’ of the story — the skeleton under the show of personality (to adapt from Jack Kerouac) — and loves the challenge of working with other writers to enable them to unearth, connect and polish their own.

Mentoring - fiction: Rosa Rogers is a Doctor of Philosophy in The Contemporary Novel: Practice as Research. Her debut literary novel Composition (2021) was completed as part of her PhD at the University of Kent. Her short stories, poetry and visual art have been published and/or exhibited in The Menteur (Paris), Stirred Press, Northern Quarter, East Street Arts, The Media Centre and Vortex Gallery. Rosa has performed her work across France and the UK. She is the creator of community projects: Poetry etc. and Tales of a Town and is the former Co-Director of Vortex Gallery. She is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing University College Cork.