Kelly Besecke at Bookmark Editing

👏🏼 The same is true of splitting infinitives. 👏🏼

This is what we're talking about.

"A Chicago pope implies the existence of an MLA pope and APA pope."
--Hector Diaz on Bluesky
👍👍

I'm here.



My niece gave me this awesome bookmark for my birthday. If you find it as funny as we do and you're working on an academic book, I'd love to work with you and make this bookmark a lot truthier!

Currently editing an NIH R01 grant application to fund important research that will help people who are doing very, very hard unpaid work. 💝

Because my work involves a lot of close reading, I don't read as much in my leisure time as I'd like to. But books are still a big part of my non-work life! Here are ten books that have my attention these days.
1️⃣ The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, which I listen to on a loop on audiobook. I've been reading and rereading these since I was a teenager--they're my "comfort books." ☕️
2️⃣ How to Train Your Dog! I've been reading this while on vacation lately in anticipation of a puppy coming into my life later this year. 🐶
3️⃣ No Bad Parts is a popular introduction to Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic modality, that my neighborhood book club has gotten into. If you've ever said, "Part of me feels this and another part feels this" or "I'm of two minds about that," this book gives you a way to honor and communicate with these different inner parts of yourself and get to know others in a deeper way too. 👩‍👩‍👧‍👦
4️⃣ Desserts to Live For. I eat mainly nutritarian, and this is a fun expedition back into baking, only in a healthier (and very yummy) way. 🧁
5️⃣ I was a fantasy novel lover as a kid and still am in my heart. I loved the Prydain series and sometimes listen to it on audiobook too. A Fflam! 👑
6️⃣ Continuing the fantasy novel theme, I also listen to the Harry Potter series from time to time, though by the time it gets to the end, it's more stressful than relaxing! 🪄
7️⃣ The Book Proposal Book actually is work-related. It's a new book written by an academic writing coach to help authors navigate the scholarly publishing process. Recommend! 📚
8️⃣ Further to my upcoming dog project, Inside of a Dog is about dog cognitive psychology! 🧠
9️⃣ Like, Literally, Dude is on my "to read" list and is also work-related. Editors and other word geeks talk about descriptivism and prescriptivism in language, and my sense is that this book is a big ol' love letter to descriptivism. 📖
🔟 I have to include my own book, right? You Can't Put God in a Box is a love letter to progressive religion and spirituality and everyone who's uncomfortable with religious conservatism but doesn't want to throw the spiritual baby out with the bathwater. ✝️☯️🔯🕉☪️☸️

A lot of great scholars are writing in English as a second or additional language. I absolutely love helping them communicate their brilliant research and insights in a clear, compelling, and reader-friendly writing style!

Behind the scenes! I took a trip to Rochester and NYC last week to celebrate my niece's graduation from her master's program and visit with friends and family. Ten other highlights: 1️⃣ Lake Ontario, 2️⃣ Rochester's Lilac Festival, 3️⃣ the Manhattan skyline at night, 4️⃣ Shakespeare & Co., 5️⃣ the Upper West Side where all the movies were filmed, 6️⃣ Central Park, 7️⃣ the Imagine mosaic, 8️⃣ the Manhattan skyline during the day from Central Park, 9️⃣ a cool restaurant bathroom, and 🔟 Mets game!

"We asked Kelly to edit one section for the new third edition of The Nonprofit Sector, with chapters by economists, sociologists, and a scholar of contemporary religion. Different voices, disciplines, career stages. Good work, but the chapters needed to mesh well, which they did not. She made every chapter much better, more coherent, and better integrated. All four chapters were greatly improved. I was so impressed with her editing that I asked her to work on our chapter, an 80-plus page political history of American philanthropy. She strengthened the arguments and tightened the comparisons across the different eras. I recommend her enthusiastically!" - Woody Powell, Stanford University

Just for fun! Mine's "Happy Birthday, Queen!: Identifying Bodies in an Intersectional Framework" - What's yours? 👩‍💻🧑🏻‍🎓😄

Seriously, good headings and titles work to connect with readers and carry them along with the logic of your manuscript's argument and storyline. Advising on headings and titles is part of what I do when I work on a developmental edit for an academic manuscript.

I get it about the challenges and joys of revising a dissertation for publication as a book, because I've done it myself: my first book, published with Oxford University Press, was a revision of my dissertation. For the past 13 years, I've loved helping my clients transform their dissertations into their first academic books!