Sensitivity Reader

Sensitivity reading provides an additional set of eyes on your work to help support diversity, equity, and inclusion in your writing. It can be difficult to know what we don’t know–am I accidentally being homophobic? Am I accurately representing the lived experiences of real people who are like the characters in my story? Am I uncritically reproducing harmful stereotypes? Am I combating rather than supporting racism and white supremacy?

My goal is to help you address these questions in your own work and provide useful feedback and ideas for strengthening your stories and their ability to depict a complex and diverse world of human potential.

These are not editing services–I won’t distract you with critiques of story beats, sentence construction, or typos. Instead, we can work together to focus on your characters, setting, plot, and world to determine how your writing can be sensitive to the needs of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Expertise and Interests

• Queer, trans, and gender non-conforming experiences.
• Poverty and working-class background.
• Rural American cultures and experiences.
• Neuroatypical characters and experiences.
• Whiteness, and in particular combating white supremacy.

As a sensitivity reader, I strongly believe that it is important for you to receive feedback when you write about characters from marginalized identities and, in particular, marginalized identities that are not your own. I also emphasize the importance of hiring readers to evaluate your characters from dominant cultures–you may find your white, straight, male, cisgender characters are embodying white supremacy in ways you do not want.

I am happy to read in any genre, including both fiction and non-fiction, but I am particularly versed in science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres. I am happy to read works of any length.

Services and Rates

Length:

• Stories of any length are accepted.

Rates:

• Between $0.02 and $0.05 per word for first reads.
• Rates are determined by the complexity of the work and the type of feedback desired.
• Stories under 5,000 words are charged on a flat fee basis as though the story were equal to 5,000 words.
• Second reads may be called for in some cases after you have had the opportunity to integrate feedback. We can discuss rates for second reads on a case-by-case basis.

Feel free to contact me with questions. Include a short excerpt of your work and we can work together to determine a price that fits your needs and story. For authors on a tight budget, we can make a plan for me to read only the most relevant portions of your story. In general, however, your story will be stronger if you are able to have a sensitivity reader engage with it in its entirety.