Work with Me
I love the opportunity to get my hands into another writer’s work-in-progress, particularly in book-length form—poetry, fiction or creative non-fiction. It’s a privilege and joy to be a part of someone else’s creative endeavour and to witness it evolve. Learning how best to support another writer in their creative process was a significant part of my training through the MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia.
Support often involves helping a writer to see and hear their own strengths.
Sometimes the help needed is conceptual, like how a pile of poems might become a book or whether the chosen poetic forms are working well to serve the content.
It may be straight-up editing, polishing and fact-checking you need.
Or you may be looking for guidance in mapping out publishing opportunities for your finished work.
Here are four writing packages that address different approaches to supporting a writer’s work.
How it works
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One hour zoom session to discuss your project, the challenges and questions you have and your goals for the work
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In-depth reading of your manuscript
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Line edits and margin notes provided for each of the poems
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A full report (3 to 5 pages) addressing the project as a whole and what areas need additional attention or might be further explored. Focus on craft and form for individual poems as well as their placement in the collection, and how they are speaking together as a book. Suggestions for books by authors writing on similar themes or exploring form in similar or related ways.
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One hour zoom session to discuss next steps toward a polished manuscript and possible strategies for publication.
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How it works
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One hour zoom session to discuss your project, the challenges and questions you have and your goals for the work
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In-depth reading of your manuscript
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Margin notes provided throughout the manuscript
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A full report (3 to 5 pages) addressing the project as a whole and what areas need additional attention or might be further explored. Focus on handling of themes, energy and cohesion.
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One hour zoom session to discuss next steps toward a polished manuscript and possible strategies for publication.
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How it works
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One hour zoom session to discuss the manuscript, place questions on the table and address any areas you feel require particular attention.
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An in-depth reading with line notes and margin notes throughout.
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A report to document impressions of the work and any fine tuning that is not specifically related to grammar.
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One hour zoom session to discuss the report and margin notes as well as next steps for the manuscript.
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How it works
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One hour zoom session to discuss the state of the manuscript and your goals or hopes for the publication experience.
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An in-depth reading of your manuscript. No notes provided unless requested (additional cost).
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A researched submission plan – list of potential publishers and their open submission periods - with timelines. A draft version of a custom submission package that could be used as a template.
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One hour zoom session to talk about the submission plan.
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Note
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I am also open to creating a custom working agreement to address your specific project and the support you feel that project would benefit from.
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Each package involves a signed contract and a deposit to begin our work.
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Please contact me with questions or to get started!
Tonya Lailey is the reader of my dreams—insightful, articulate, and deeply intuitive. She understands not just what’s on the page but also what’s between the lines. Her feedback is generous and sharply attuned to both the heart of the work and the clarity it needs to reach its fullest expression.
Tonya brings a rare kind of emotional intelligence to manuscript reviews. She engages the work with deep sympathy, intellectual rigor, and an unwavering commitment to what serves the work best. She will help you see your own writing more clearly. Tonya will both clarify and champion your work.
Author of The Head, Great Plains Press (2024)
Assistant Lecturer, Communications and Composition
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
School of Mining & Petroleum Engineering
University of Alberta
Tonya Lailey is an adept and sensitive reader. She approaches other people’s writing with a poet’s eye and a generosity of spirit, gently excavating nuance, encouraging the work to reveal its inner secrets. She has a knack for understanding the larger picture without losing, or getting lost in, the details. It is an honour to have Tonya read one’s work; she treats it so carefully and thoroughly, it’s like sending your story or poem or book to the spa for a day. When you get it back, it's refreshed and ready to stretch deeper.
Author of What Fills your House Like Smoke, Thistledown Press (2024)
I totally recommend Tonya as an editor. Her work on my chapbook was invaluable. She gave me big picture suggestions followed by very detailed notes and line edits, on every poem in the collection. Some of the questions she posed gave me insight into my intention and the structure, form and content I used in the poems.
She was able to see, and pull together, threads that I hadn’t been conscious of. Through her lens I have become more enamoured and therefore confident about the work I’m submitting.
- Nancy Issenmann
Poet, Winner of the 2004 Poet’s Pause Competition, Listening Category. Author of The Name of Yes.
Nancy's poetry can also be found in the anthology The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling (Goldfinch Press).