Services

Interested in improving your writing or receiving feedback on your story? Interested in an editor that can put your story in its most advantageous form? 
If so, I offer three services: manuscript critiques, editing, and custom mentorship.

  • Manuscript Critiques

    This option is for work (short stories or novels) that will undergo moderate to extensive revision. I will focus on voice, point of view, characterization, imagery, plot, and theme, as well as other elements that need attention.

  • Editing

    This option is for work (short stories or novels) that will benefit from cuts and/or minor rewrites. My goal is to make your story’s strengths stand out so the work is in its most advantageous form.

  • Custom Mentorship

    This option is a flexible service for those looking to better their fiction over the course of three to five months (or longer). What this service looks like depends on the writer’s goals and needs.

 Don’t know which service to choose? I can help you decide the service most appropriate for the story—or writer—at hand.

 

My Experience

 

I hold a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA in fiction from Stonecoast’s low-residency program. I have classroom teaching experience in writing as well as experience as a professional writing consultant. I spent a year and a half working for The Stonecoast Review, a print publication, serving as the managing editor and then editor-in-chief for Issue 10.

 
 

My Clients

Writers whose work I have edited have published in such journals as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Harvard Review Online, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Notre Dame Review, The Southampton Review, McSweeny’s, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. They have also gone on to win prestigious awards, such as The Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction.

 

Testimonials

  • “Morgan Talty, in addition to being one of the fiction writers I’ve had the most pleasure working with, is also an exceptionally talented editor. Rare is the writer who can give others the same wisdom, experience and dignity one brings to one’s own work. Any writer at any stage of development would be fortunate to work with him.”

    — Rick Bass, winner of the 2016 Story Prize

  • “You couldn’t wish for a better editor than Morgan Talty: smart, sensitive, thorough, the right combination of honesty and motivation. He’ll offer insights that will elevate your writing and inspire new ideas. I highly recommend him.”

    — Aaron Hamburger, author of Nirvana Is Here

  • “During my tenure as Nonfiction Editor of the Stonecoast Review, I worked with a few different Editor-in-Chiefs. Unique to Morgan is his rare combination of macro and micro view. The larger picture of what a piece aspires to accomplish and ultimately can accomplish are often two diverse entities, and Morgan can gently tug at the thread of concept without unravelling the surrounding work. Then he can evaluate the greater context the words will live within, and offer unsentimental editorial, directing prose to where it garners the greatest opportunity to be read and noticed. Many editors evaluate on one level or the other, Morgan wields true ambidexterity.”

    — J Brooke

  • “As a writer who has worked with numerous editors, I was struck by how conscientiously Morgan edited a short story of mine. With a keen eye for detail and an excellent sense of what to include in or leave out of a story, Morgan Talty caught several potentially embarrassing gaffes in a story I went on to publish. He was personable and professional in communications and always respectful delivering feedback. I am grateful for Morgan’s insights and would work with him again without hesitation.”

    — Alice Hatcher

  • “Morgan has a unique gift as an editor. I’ve worked with plenty who have the impulse to make revisions based on how they believe a story should look, sound, and feel. Morgan took a refreshingly different approach, making an effort to really grasp the story I was telling and suggesting revisions that were true to my voice and the heart of the work. His edits pulled the piece together and made the language tighter in ways I hadn’t considered, and the piece was so much stronger for it. I would happily trust Morgan with any future writing.”

    — Jessica Klagmann