With over 20 years experience, Mary edits emerging and award winning authors working in these forms: novel, memoir, short story, essay, mixed-genre, romance, mystery, sci-fi, YA and scholarly work. One-to-one sessions are also available. For inquiries please visit: www.maryrakow.com
Testimonials
“Mary is the most interesting thinker I know.”
—Jeremy Foss, visual artist represented by Victoria Munroe Fine Art
“Mary Rakow is a breathtaking writer and passionate teacher.”
—Sam Dunn, author of Failing Paris and Not By Accident
“Mary Rakow is a brilliant writer … who has a perfect ear for the music of the time in which she lives.”
—Ilya Kaminsky, poet, author of Dancing in Odessa and Musica Humana
“Mary Rakow …displays an enormous amount of insight and character in her lectures and critiques and this is what motivates me to write, stretching my abilities beyond anything I would have thought possible. … enhanced my writing as well as my life.”
—Hilary Zelman Katersky
“Rakow is a brilliant editor and an astute reader who …is also blessed with the gift of empathy so that when she turns her attention to a work in progress her recommendations reflect a deep and uncanny feel for one’s purposes and for the given work’s goals, even when those purposes and goals are apparently at odds with her own customary aesthetic”
—Peg Boyers, poet, author of Hard Bread
“Mary Rakow is …an extraordinary human being with integrity and perseverance, striving for purity and truth in our work”
—Susan Bernard, author of Marilyn Monroe and Marilyn: Intimate Exposures
“…At the first meeting, I knew that it was going to be an extraordinary experience, one that I would never have again. Mary Rakow imparts to her students a rare view of the world and the sacredness of language in it. She sets a level of excellence, in both life and writing,that is extraordinary.”
—Dianne R.
“Genius is not a strong enough word for her talents as writer and mentor–she possesses an idiosyncratic brilliance whose keen, empathetic gaze makes all work under the tutelage of her pen shimmer. She holds the bar high and makes us do things we think we can’t. She makes us smarter than we ever thought we could be. She cuts through the conventions of received notions and gets writers to their own truth, their original, idiosyncratic thinking. And, of course, there is the line, word by word, the liturgy of the line. She makes it holy.”
—Julianne Ortale, author of How Sin is Unsaid, Dialogues and a Story
“Working with Mary is one of those transcendent experiences where you begin to love language…our writing becomes essential and is precisely what you want and need to say.”
—Madeleine G.
“Her concentration is uncanny, her perceptions half-Delphi, half-master locksmith. With Mary, you get it all–mechanics and poetics, meaning and originality, the truth of the writing and the deeper truth of the soul.”
—Jody Hauber, author of Everything Is What it Seems, forthcoming
“As a veteran of numerous writing workshops and classes, my experience with Mary Rakow was utterly unique and unparalleled… It will leave you changed as writer and human being.”
—Marrie S.
“I am working on my first novel … her excitement is contagious.”
—Michael S., San Francisco
“I’m a beginner who decided at last minute to take an introductory writing workshop by Mary Rakow this past fall. I so enjoyed the experience that I decided to continue … she creates a supportive environment in which a writer can feel safe… She is perceptive, with an endlessly creative mind….”
—Bryan G.
“Mary’s style is marked by both compassion and precise, invaluable insight.”
—Kathryn M., San Francisco
For inquiries please visit: www.maryrakow.com
