Hi! I'm Andy, the director of the Narrative Craft.

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I really appreciate you being here.

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I created the Narrative Craft to cross-pollinate anthropological and speculative fiction ecosystems, throwing in a dash of queer magic for good measure.

 

I support cultural anthropologists and fiction authors, invigorating, improving, and polishing their writing. I'm passionate about speculative fiction, and my interests range from YA to literary, and from novels with horror elements to fantasy romance. Novels with creative worldbuilding, intriguing characters, and social justice themes excite me.

 

I've worked with New York Times bestselling authors and Hugo finalists, and I’ve edited translations of novels by Nobel Prize for Literature nominees too. As an anthropology developmental editor, I’ve edited ethnographies published with top university presses, including Stanford University Press, Indiana University Press, and University of Minnesota Press.

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Ethnography gives me the opportunity to combine my academic and fiction developmental editing knowledge and skills, and I run workshops on these topics at universities and writers conferences across Europe, and online in the USA.

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I’ve published ethnographies myself with Routledge and University of Toronto Press, so I know firsthand how difficult a large writing project can be!

Some manuscripts I’ve recently enjoyed working on include: The Notorious Virtues (Alwyn Hamilton), Thorn Season (Kiera Azar), Queen of Faces (Petra Lord), Listen Closely (Leon Egan), Under the Neon Lights (Arriel Vinson), and Croatian Tales of Long Ago (Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic).

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If you’re interested in working with me, get in touch. I offer a half-hour consultation to anyone interested in hiring me, where we can discuss your project in detail. I’m also happy to read a short extract and offer some brief initial feedback or edits if I feel we’re a good fit. Please take a look at my website for more details.

 

Selected Credentials:

• MA (Cantab) from University of Cambridge (Clare College) in Natural Sciences, specializing in History & Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine

• PhD from University of Manchester in Social Anthropology

• Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP 

• CIEP Copyediting Suite (Merit)

• Club Ed Developmental of Editing of Fiction Certificate

• University of Chicago Graham School: Certificate in Editing (Developmental Editing Pathway) (in progress)

• C2 Certificate in Croatian-English translation and Goethe C2 German certificate

 

I'm an advanced professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, and a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association, the Society of Authors, the LGBTQ+ Editors' Association, and the British Fantasy Society.

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First, I trained as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Manchester and University of Cambridge. Then I put my skills into practice, working at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies in Zagreb, Croatia, and then in Germany at the Institute for Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. 

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Researching and writing was my passion, and I published two monographs – one on football fan subcultures in Croatia with Routledge, and a more recent one (co-authored) on shipyard cultures in Croatia and Poland, published with the University of Toronto Press.

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I loved the writing, but not the demands an academic career made on my life – overwork is common in the sector and I wanted the freedom to choose where to live and work. Publishing a novel was also on my life bucket list, so I pivoted to book editing partly to achieve these goals.

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Besides my academic research career, I have trained in a counselling approach called transactional analysis and in TEFL teaching, and have extensive postgraduate teaching experience in cultural anthropology and academic writing at several UK and European top universities.

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The counselling training in particular helped me out with the pivot away from academia, which can be tricky, as what you research becomes a big part of who you are.

 

All these experiences inform the webinars and workshops I teach on storytelling craft for anthropologists and fiction authors.

Oh, and I'm fluent in Croatian and German, and speak Spanish, Czech, and a little Mandarin too. I love working on editorial projects with authors from all these language backgrounds!

​​​​​​​​Cultural anthropology is all about understanding and describing lived human experience. It uses a method called ethnography, where you live and work alongside a social group you write about, and then draw conclusions from that experience to make broader arguments about what it means to be human. 

 

Science fiction and fantasy fiction also often explore how the world and human societies could be different. There's a great synergy between cultural anthropology and science fiction and fantasy, as I learned when I studied science fiction studies as part of my master's studies, when I wrote about Blade Runner and cyberpunk.​​