“Michelle Niemann is that great editor you thought you would never find. Her work excels on every level. She finds solutions to the largest structural problems, while paying attention to the minutia that drive every writer to distraction. Yet all this is done with such kindness and generosity that one never feels anything but gratitude. And she is quick too. She truly inspires confidence, never gives up, and always suggests viable options. As a lifelong teacher of writing, I can count on one hand those who successfully taught me. She is one of them. I don’t know how I got along without her for so long.”

— Michael P. Cohen, author of The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness (1984), The History of the Sierra Club 1892-1970 (1988), A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the Great Basin (1998), “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique,” Environmental History (2004), coauthor of Tree Lines (2017), and Granite and Grace (forthcoming from University of Nevada Press in 2019).

“Working with Michelle made an immensely stressful process—finishing a draft of my first book manuscript—actually fun. Her careful reading of chapter drafts, smart insights about structure, quick responses to my own ideas for revision, and calm demeanor helped me better understand how to communicate my argument while also reminding me why I care about this argument. She is a brilliant editor who shows that writing is an inherently social act.”

—Mary Mullen, Assistant Professor of English and faculty member in the Center for Irish Studies, Villanova University

“Michelle Niemann is the single best editor I have ever worked with. Her deep knowledge of several fields in the humanities and social sciences, her sharp intellect and sense of what makes for persuasive arguments, and her meticulous attention to detail have been enormously useful to me in improving both the substance and the form of my book chapters and essays on three different projects. She is also a superb project manager who knows how to keep as many as fifty contributors to a volume on track and on time. With her additional excellence in proofreading and indexing, she delivers manuscripts that press editors praise, with real astonishment, for their polish and consistency, leaving their in-house copy-editors with only minor tasks. Michelle accomplishes all of this with a consistent good cheer and sense of humor that helps even the most harried of writers through the editorial process.”

— Ursula K. Heise, Marcia H. Howard Chair in Literary Studies, Department of English, Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, UCLA, and author of Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species and Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global

“Michelle is a gifted editor, researcher, and collaborator. The Writing Gym in particular offers an innovative and flexible structure for ongoing writing support, and Michelle does a brilliant job of balancing big picture thinking about one’s projects and goals with nitty gritty and practical strategies for cultivating a regular writing practice.”

— Allison Carruth, Associate Professor, English Department, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and Institute for Society and Genetics, UCLA, and author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food

“I am now using a really good editor who is in the environmental humanities . . . She is the best editor I’ve had, and I know quality . . . now, when I’m writing for a popular audience or need an editorial clean-up, she’s my ‘better call Saul’ (the Hail Mary lawyer from Breaking Bad).”

— Susanna Hecht, Professor of Urban Planning, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA, and author of The Fate of the Forest and The Scramble for the Amazon and the “Lost Paradise” of Euclides da Cunha 

“Your comments on the first draft were focused and incisive, thank you. Having such a smart, efficient editor is incredibly helpful when one is pushed for time!”

— Greg Garrard, Associate Professor of Sustainability in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, author of Ecocriticism, and contributor to The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities

“I am amazed you figured out a better structure for my essay. I can’t imagine being able to do that for someone else’s writing, but I think it worked.”

— Stacy Alaimo, Professor of English, University of Texas at Arlington, author of Bodily Natures: Science, Environment and the Material Self and Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times, and contributor to The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities

“I had the great fortune to work with Michelle for several years when I was a graduate student first formulating my own research. Michelle’s assistance was invaluable and covered the gamut of what I needed, ranging from very specific guidance on matters large (focusing a research question; reorganizing a paper) and small (clarifying ambiguous sentences) to encouragement and motivation. I never left an appointment without feeling that I knew what to do, and that I could do it. During the time I worked with Michelle, I published my first academic articles, was awarded three fellowships, and won several national awards. I don’t think that any of that would have happened without her help.”

— Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

“The person who has most helped me bring this book [Recomposing Ecopoetics] into the world is my former doctoral student, Michelle Niemann, whom I hired initially so that I could have an informed and insightful reader responding to my chapters as I produced them during my fellowship year. Her comments prompted revisions that have significantly sharpened the arguments in this book.”

— Lynn Keller, Martha Meier Renk-Bascom Professor of Poetry at University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women and Thinking Poetry: Readings in Contemporary Women’s Exploratory Poetics