Diane Young

I am a professional book editor who has worked in-house or on a freelance basis for many publishers, including Coach House, Dundurn, Firefly, Harlequin, Lorimer, Madison, Penguin, and Stoddart. Recent examples of award-winning or shortlisted books that I have edited include Bill Wodhams’s Thirty Feet Under (shortlisted for the 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Best Unpublished Manuscript Award), M.Z. Urlocker’s The Man From Mittelwerk (shortlisted for the 2023 Crime Writers of Canada First Novel Award), Ray Bazowski’s The Future (winner of the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Best Unpublished Manuscript Award), Elle Wild’s Strange Things Done (2017 Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and 2015 Unhanged Arthur for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel), and Pamela Mordecai’s Red Jacket (finalist for the 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize).  

Other examples of recently edited books include Susan Mockler’s Fractured (Second Story Press), J. D. Kurtness’s Aquariums (Dundurn Press), Eddy Boudel Tan’s The Rebellious Tide (Dundurn Press), Craig Shreve’s The African Samurai (Simon & Schuster), and Steve Williams’s Hook (Amazon).

My editorial experience includes autobiographies, biographies, children’s books, crime fiction, literary fiction, memoirs, middle-grade fiction, mysteries, romance, women’s fiction, and young adult books. My skill set includes acquisitions, story coaching, developmental editing, structural and substantive editing, stylistic editing, copy editing, consulting, and manuscript evaluation. 

I am the author of a middle-grade children’s novel, See No Evil, published by Orca Press and a past evaluator for CANSCAIP’s Writing for Children Competition.

For more information, visit www.dianeyoungassociates.net, view my profile on LinkedIn, or contact me personally by email at diane@dianeyoungassociates.net.