Portfolio

A selection of published work and editorial projects, arranged roughly by type. Not everything I have written is listed here — some pieces were published in magazines that have since gone offline, and some were private commissions where the work belongs to the client rather than to me. What follows is a representative sample of the kind of work I do.

Personal essays

The kitchen table, in winter (2026)
On a habit of long winter afternoons spent at a kitchen table doing nothing in particular — and why the nothing is the point. About 2,400 words. Published on this site.

A second-hand book, with marginalia (2026)
On finding another reader in the margins of a paperback bought in a country market. The essay wanders into questions about privacy, connection, and the strangeness of reading someone's thoughts in pencil twenty years after they wrote them. About 1,800 words.

The woman next door (2025)
On a neighbour who lived alone for thirty years and the small things she taught me without ever meaning to. The longest personal essay I have published — about 3,200 words — and the one that drew the most correspondence from readers.

A walk, taken slowly (2025)
On the same village walk taken a hundred times, and what changes. A short piece — about 1,400 words — written after a spring afternoon when the familiar route looked entirely different.

Letters that didn't get sent (2025)
A set of three short essays about correspondence: letters written, never posted, found years later in a drawer. About 2,000 words total across the three pieces.

Longform features

On the question of the second house (2025)
A reported feature on the moral question of owning a second home in a small village where local families can no longer afford the first one. Interviews with residents, estate agents, parish councillors, and one family who sold their home to a second-home buyer and moved to a town thirty miles away. Originally commissioned by a regional features magazine; lightly revised for this site. About 4,800 words.

The vanishing pub (2024)
A reported piece on the closure of an old pub in a particular village, and the slow work of a community trying to buy it back through a community share scheme. The piece follows the campaign over eighteen months. About 5,000 words. Published in a regional magazine and subsequently anthologised.

Three women, one allotment (2024)
A profile piece following three women who share an allotment plot in a market town. The piece is about the allotment, but also about friendship, routine, and how shared physical work creates a kind of conversation that sitting in a kitchen does not. About 3,600 words. Published in a small literary quarterly.

Editing projects

Developmental edit — memoir manuscript (2025-2026)
A 78,000-word memoir by a first-time author writing about growing up in a mining community in South Wales. Three rounds of structural feedback over eight months, focusing on chronology, narrative arc, and the balance between personal memory and social history. The manuscript is currently with agents.

Line edit — essay collection (2025)
A collection of twenty-two short essays by an academic moving from journal writing to a general-audience book. The editorial brief was to preserve the writer's analytical precision while making the prose accessible to readers outside the field. Sentence-level editing across 64,000 words.

Editorial consultation — literary magazine (2024-present)
Ongoing advisory role for a small literary magazine published twice yearly. Reading submissions, helping shape each issue's structure, occasional feedback on individual pieces. The magazine publishes fiction, essays, and poetry from emerging writers.

Copy edit — local history book (2024)
A 42,000-word local history of a Cambridgeshire village, written by a retired historian. Copy editing for consistency, factual cross-referencing, and preparation for small-press publication. The book was published in late 2024.

Anthology contributions

The Rural Reader (anthology, 2025) — contributed the essay "On the question of the second house" (revised version).

Slow Correspondence (anthology, 2024) — contributed a short essay on the practice of writing letters by hand in an age of instant messaging.

Working together

If you are looking for an editor, or if you would like to commission a piece of writing, email [email protected] with a few words about your project. I am happy to discuss scope, timelines, and rates over email before either of us commits to anything.