Brian Kimberling - Editor
Brian Kimberling is the author of two novels published in the US and UK, by Pantheon and Tinder Press respectively. He has also written for The New York Times, NPR, and others.
Brian’s first novel, Snapper, about an aimless ornithologist in southern Indiana, was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2013. His second novel, Goulash, which is set in Prague, was also translated into Czech.
Brian has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and a long history of teaching, mentoring, collaborating with, or otherwise consorting with fresh distinctive talent. He has worked extensively in publishing and journalism. He has also written and produced three plays. His interests include short stories, climate change writing, and contemporary British domestic fiction. Every couple of years Brian re-reads The Odyssey and cooks the food Odysseus eats in between reads.
Brian was born in southern Indiana, but for the last twenty years he has called southwestern England home.
Testimonials
- M. Rosen
- Tom G.
WHY WE LOVE BRIAN
Brian’s humour shines through in his reports. His complimentary style will make you feel at ease as he scrupulously assesses your work.
WHAT BRIAN SAYS ABOUT EDITING
Editing is a curious mix of sympathy and syntax — rallying to a writer’s cause in the first case, and sharpening weapons in the second. I know from my own experience of being edited how indispensable a kind editorial eye can be, and how something that seems impossible to a writer can be a mere cut-and-paste operation when viewed from a different angle. An editor is a kind of counsellor who encourages, assists, and polishes — in a world full of algorithms making automatic recommendations, the editor is the algorithm’s opposite thing.
My own writing is comical, historical, international, and ecologically freaked out. I’d welcome anything along those lines but I would be even happier to work on material completely alien to my own experience — something outside the algorithm, as it were.
What Brian works on
Manuscript assessment
Developmental Editing
Post-editorial guidance
Line-editing
Copy-editing
Proof-reading
Genres Brian specialises in
Brian's published books
Snapper
With wry humour and real freshness, SNAPPER charts the disastrous love affair between career birdwatcher Nathan Lochmueller and the place that made him.
Nathan Lochmueller studies birds, for just enough money to scrape a living. He drives a glitter-festooned truck, the Gypsy Moth, and is in love with the enigmatic and free-spirited Lola. Around them swirls a remarkable cast of characters: the proprietor of Fast Eddie’s burgers, the genius behind ‘Thong Thursdays’, a snapping turtle with a taste for thumbs and a German Shepherd who howls backing vocals. As he creeps through the undergrowth observing the birds he loves, Nathan must come to terms with the occasionally absurd turns his life has taken, and grapple with the dilemma that faces every small-town boy: should he stay, or should he go?
Goulash
Eager to escape stifling small-town Indiana, Elliott moves to Prague, where he gets a job teaching English. It’s 1998, and the Czech Republic is moving with increasing rapidity out of the shadow of communism and into the wilds of twenty-first-century capitalism. Elliott meets his students in a variety of pubs and conducts his lessons over pints of local Radegast beer. He gets his shoes stolen by an experimental artist who engages Elliott in a number of eccentric schemes. And he meets Amanda, an English teacher from the UK, with whom he falls in love.
Together, they try to make a place for themselves as strangers in this strange land. They explore the dark history and surprising wonders of their adopted city, touring the twisting ancient streets and encountering expats, movie stars, tobacco executives, a former Soviet informant, and the president of Poland. But the forces that are reshaping the city are also at work on them, and eventually it becomes evident that their idyll must end – that change is the only reality one can’t outrun.
