If you’re thinking about submitting a manuscript to a publisher but you want the guidance, skills, and experience of a professional editor, Honey House can connect you to some of the best. Over the next few weeks, we will introduce you to a handful of professionals we recommend.
Today, meet Taylor Byas. Taylor is an award-winning poet and essayist, the Associate Editor of The Cincinnati Review, Acquisitions Editor of Poetry at Variant Literature, and a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati.
Taylor’s work, like these three poems at Empty Mirror, may leave you breathless. Here is her poem “South Side” which won Frontier Poetry’s 2020 Award for New Poets.
Taylor is also an accomplished editor. She says, “I myself write and edit in a lot of different modes, including narrative, prose poetry, formal poetry, and hybrid, and I also edit fiction and nonfiction. I feel confident providing edits and feedback across a wide range of projects. I edit poetry chapbooks and full-length collections as well. I have worked with full-lengths of up to 80 pages. For me, my extreme cut-off would be 100 pages, as poetry collections tend to be shorter than that.”
To work with Taylor, see her rates, and to read more of her superb work, visit her website.
Taylor’s Editorial Philosophy
“In true poet fashion, let me begin with a metaphor; editing is like being hired to clean the windows of a skyscraper so that the owner can see the world anew. Unobstructed. The two foundational elements of my editorial philosophy are collaboration and possibility. As an editor, it is my job to help the author see and remove barriers between the current draft and their ultimate vision for their project, to help them uncover different potential routes to get there. I never want to participate in anything that moves a writer away from their goal, and I believe that the editorial process should be a dialogue instead of a one-sided ‘corrective’ process. It is in conversation that we better understand the work of others, and it is in conversation that I believe we are most open to things outside of our typical tastes and biases. Editing, to me, is an invitation for connection and intimacy. It is a call to learn about what we don’t understand. It is an opportunity to transform our literary landscape into something that mirrors our own diversity of experiences. It is opening the gates to those who have been knocking, unheard.”
Taylor’s Bio
Taylor Byas (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is now a PhD candidate and Yates scholar at the University of Cincinnati, an Associate Editor for The Cincinnati Review, an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus, and a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contest, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist for the 2020 Frontier OPEN Prize and the 2021 Pigeon Pages Poetry Contest. She is the author of the chapbook Bloodwarm from Variant Literature, a second chapbook, Shutter, from Madhouse Press, and her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in August of 2023. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, forthcoming from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.
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