Luke Wallin and Eva Gordon - Fiction and Nonfiction

About Our Manuscript Consultants:
We are a father-daughter team of writers and editors. We recently wrote The Everything Guide to Writing Children's Books, 2nd Edition, from Adams Media in January 2011. Luke Wallin is an award-winning author who teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Spalding University. Eva's prizewinning essay, "The Heart of the Woods," is featured in The 2010 New Southerner Literary Edition. (See New Southerner magazine on the web.) For an interview with Eva, go to the website of The Battered Suitcase magazine.

Eva holds a degree from the writing concentration program of New School University, in New York City. She has edited a number of book manuscripts, including the manuscript for Luke's book, Conservation Writing: Essays at the Crossroads of Nature and Culture. Eva has published journalism, fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry; she is working on her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Spalding University.

Our Writing Evaluation Services:
We offer manuscript critiques and professional development in writing skill and in career building. You have worked hard on your manuscript and now you are almost ready to send it out into the world. But you would like a supportive writer/editor to read it carefully, and help you bring it to a higher level. We will address issues of believable motivation, authentic dialogue, the interior lives of your characters, and more.

We also offer mentoring/coaching. This includes suggestions for developing your work beyond the current manuscript, reading lists to deepen your knowledge of your writing area, and advice about appropriate publication targets and career building. We can help you clarify your goals, and balance writing, teaching, a day job, and family life. When your manuscript is ready, we can help with your book proposal.

Editorial Perspectives We Bring:
We bring diverse perspectives to your work, including male/female, older/younger, rural/urban, and Southern/New England backgrounds. If you wish, we will each read and, after discussion between ourselves, respond to your manuscript. We will point out the things we agree on, and if we disagree with each other about something, we will explain why. So you have the option of getting two sets of eyes on your prose.

Eva studied fiction and nonfiction with writers at Eugene Lang College at New School University. She worked as an intern for Mendel Media Group (literary agents) and O, The Oprah Magazine (Books Department). Luke earned an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he studied with Richard Yates. Luke's eight novels for children and young adults have won awards and recognition from the American Library Association, The Library of Congress, and The Smithsonian Institution, among others. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has taught at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, and as a Fulbright Professor at University College Dublin. Luke has served as guest editor in fiction (2010) and in nonfiction (2009) for The Louisville Review.

Genres We Help With:
We can show you how to bring your Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Writing for Children and Young Adults to another level. Luke publishes in all three areas, and teaches all three in Spalding University's brief-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Eva co-wrote The Everything Guide to Writing Children’s Books, 2nd Edition, with Luke, and she publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; currently she is writing a middle-grade mystery novel with Luke.

Manuscript Consultations and Professional Development:
Send an email to stories@lukewallin.com, and tell us about your project. Do you have a novel, a memoir, or a children's book in need of a professional reading? Are you interested in our coaching work, to further your development as a writer? Would you like help with a book proposal, or with identifying publishing targets? Would you like help with clarifying your career goals, and balancing their pursuit with day job and family?

Sample our Writing:
Read Luke's essay about an adventure with Eva, "Sharing Sacred Ground," published in Far from Home: Father-Daughter Travel Adventures, ed. by Wendy Knight, at lukewallin.com. In fiction, read "Collecting Butterfish," published in The Louisville Review and in the anthology High Horse, ed. by Sena Jeter Naslund and Kathleen Driskell, at lukewallin.com. For a recent magical realism story of Luke's, visit Moon Milk Review dot com and read "Monster," in the March 2011 archives; "Monster" was selected for the anthology MMR 2011, published in Jan. 2011.