After more than twenty years teaching creative writing and journalism at leading universities and colleges, Elizabeth teaches, edits manuscripts, coaches privately, and is part of the regular fiction faculty every year at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
Through her business Don’t Sweat the Essay, she helps those applying to the most selective colleges and universities with their essays and applications. For help with essays, please send an email.
If you are interested in manuscript evaluations, editing, or private coaching, please send an email.
Elizabeth’s editing work includes decades of editing fiction, nonfiction, and memoir for individuals, nonprofits, and businesses. She has edited leading literary writers and journalists who appear in her three acclaimed anthologies, including Joyce Carol Oates, Sigrid Nunez, Jonathan Safran Foer, Katha Pollitt, Mary Gordon, Rita Dove, Jane Smiley, Marge Piercy, and Susan Stamberg.
“Elizabeth Benedict held my hand through my whole essay, and she did
it in a graceful way that made me feel that all the insights and
changes were my own.”
—Caroline Leavitt, NY Times Bestselling novelist and contributor to What My Mother Gave Me.
“Elizabeth Benedict is a fantastic editor to work with. The
anthology wouldn’t have been what it is without her vision and plain old
line editing.”
— Mary Morris, novelist, travel writer, Sarah Lawrence professor, contributor to What My Mother Gave Me.
“I’ve been reading Elizabeth Benedict’s fiction for years and was
thrilled to learn she also edits. I recently hired her to review three
fiction manuscripts for me. She provided prompt, sharp, and useful
comments on the pages and in our conversations. She has been helpful in
large and small matters, including where to begin a novel, how to convey
necessary information about my characters, and how to add energy and
texture to prose. I have worked with other editors on these manuscripts
but have found Elizabeth’s responses to be by far the most incisive.
Because I write often about the law in my fiction, her knowledge of law
and lawyers has been invaluable to me as well.
— Rangeley Wallace, author of Things Are Going to Slide and No Defense.
“What a splendid job you did on the novel! It inspired me to work
extra hard on the revisions. Many new sections have been added or redone
as per your incisive comments…. Would it be possible to meet and have
your comments and additional marvelous editing before I leave the city?
You are the best!”
— Sidney B. Silverman, NY NY