Amanda Saint – Editor

Amanda Saint is an author, editor and publisher. Her debut novel, As If I Were A River, was longlisted for the 2016 Guardian Not The Booker Prize, a NetGalley Top 10 Book of the Month and a Book Magnet Blog Top 20 Book of 2016.

Remember Tomorrow has been compared to Margaret Atwood’s writing and called a modern-day version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Her short stories have been widely published and long and shortlisted for several prizes.

Amanda’s the publisher and commissioning editor at the independent press, Retreat West Books, which she founded in 2017. Her authors have won or been listed in several prizes, including the Costa Short Story Award, Sunday Times Short Story Award and the Literary Consultancy First Novel Prize.

As a creative writing tutor and editor, Amanda has helped many authors to develop their work, including Felicia Yap, Chloe Esposito, Melanie Hudson and Ruby Speechley.

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Why we love Amanda

An author and an independent publisher, Amanda’s approach always directs writers to the right path.

What Amanda says about editing

As a creative writing tutor and editor, I love helping people to take their ideas and make them into compelling, pacey and emotionally resonate novels whatever genre they’re writing in. I especially enjoy helping writers to understand how their story ideas can work in novelistic terms and finding the best way to tell the story.

I read across many different genres and bring my knowledge of story structure, characterisation and the importance of setting all working together, to all of the editorial projects I work on. I focus on finding the heart of the story and ways to make sure that the edits let that shine through and that everything is revealed through the characters in action. So that readers become completely immersed in their world.

Genres I particularly enjoy working in include literary fiction, contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, and YA. I also like working with short fiction writers on stories to form collections and novellas; and memoirs.