You want to craft a clear, compelling manuscript that precisely conveys the nuances of your discoveries and thoughts. But it’s hard to get the distance you need to edit your own work.

I can bring fresh eyes to your project. I edit with an eye to audience and to helping make your work accessible and engaging for your target readers. Depending on the service you select, I can provide thoughtful feedback on structure and argument or home in on sentence- and paragraph-level details to ensure a logical progression of ideas.

I’m Ellen Tilton-Cantrell, Ph.D. As an editor, I am inspired by William Germano’s call to be “attentive, objective, compassionate, relentless.” My mission is to help you realize your vision for your work: I respect your unique voice as I assist you in expressing complex thoughts clearly.

My love of deep, engaged reading and wordsmithing drew me first to academia and later to editing. I earned my Ph.D. from Yale University in Japanese literature and my editing certificate from UC Berkeley Extension. I have now been editing for scholars for nine years. My clients have published books with a variety of presses, including Princeton University Press, Columbia University Press, University of California Press, Duke University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, The University of Chicago Press, Oxford University Press, University of Virginia Press, University of Michigan Press, Routledge, University of Hawai’i Press, and University of Toronto Press.

In 2024, I created a sustainable productivity curriculum (“Building a Writing Practice that Works for You”), which is a core component of both my summer book development workshop and my small-group coaching program. As a coach, my goal is to support you in developing a writing practice that truly works for you—your unique brain and working style, your life and whatever responsibilities you are juggling, your body and energy levels.

This summer, I will begin offering one-on-one coaching on a limited basis. I’ll offer sustainable productivity coaching to help you with things like creating schedules and plans that feel supportive, working through emotional and logistical barriers to doing your writing, clarifying priorities, bringing more fun or pleasure into your writing practice, or setting any needed boundaries. I’ll also offer writing coaching, a hybrid of sustainable productivity coaching and editorial consulting, where we can discuss both the writing process (and possibly your larger work life or home life, if helpful) and your writing itself.

I named Tilia Editorial after the linden tree (genus name Tilia). Linden trees are everywhere in the area of Minneapolis where I work. Also, I think of editors as being like arborists for manuscripts—pruning, shaping, and helping them grow into their fullest potential. I edit and coach to help you and your writing project flourish.

Experience & Credentials

I began editing professionally in 2016 and have been supporting academic writers full-time since 2018.

I’ve run my intensive summer workshop (Crafting Your Scholarly Book) twice now, in 2024 and 2025. In addition to offering it again this year (from May through July 2026), I am drawing on the sustainable productivity curriculum I developed as a component of that workshop for the half-year-long small-group coaching program that I’m launching in June 2026.

I’ve listed other experiences and credentials relevant to my work with scholarly writers below.

• Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University

• Editing certificate, UC Berkeley Extension, Professional Sequence in Editing

• B.A., magna cum laude, in English and Japanese (double major), Carleton College

• Professional development:

  • Courses on academic developmental editing and scholarly book proposal development (through Manuscript Works, the Editorial Freelancers Association, and Ideas on Fire).

  • The Foundations course from the MentorCoach coach training program.

• Visiting assistant professorship in Japanese language & literature, Carleton College

• Position as creative writing instructor, The Blake School

• Writing consultations with students as campus writing center tutor, Carleton College

• Experience doing professional Japanese-to-English translation, both freelance and as part of a job at the Aomori Prefectural Government

• 8 years spent living in Japan in immersion environments (attending local schools in Tokyo as a young child and as an adolescent, doing extended homestays during two periods of advanced language study, working at the Aomori Prefectural Government, attending a graduate seminar at Waseda while doing dissertation research).

  • I am bicultural in certain ways because of the years I lived in Japan as a child, and I understand the importance of being attentive to (sometimes subtle) cultural and linguistic contexts. I also have a keen appreciation for how difficult academic writing can be in a language that isn’t your first or dominant language, or that isn’t the primary language in which you were educated!