Amanda Lewis

Your best friend in the book-writing process

I’m an award-winning book editor who has worked inside the top publishing houses. Now I help artists and environmentalists shape their world-changing ideas, as a coach and editor.

“I have been very fortunate to benefit from Amanda Lewis’s sharp editorial eye, as well as her political wisdom. Over the years I have been deeply impressed with her fierce dedication to quality publishing, and by the positive attitude she brings to her projects. It is a joy to work with Amanda, and I can’t recommend her highly enough.”

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

Just the facts:

• I worked as editor and associate managing editor at Penguin Random House from 2008 to 2016. I understand the demands of traditional publishing, from securing an agent and writing a book proposal to working effectively with your publishing team.
• From 2016 to 2022, I was Editorial Director at Page Two, the leading hybrid publishing house in the world. I know how to work outside the confines of traditional publishing, and meet the unique demands of entrepreneurs.
• I’ve edited authors including Naomi Klein, Michael Bungay Stanier, Charles Foran, Gary Barwin, Tzeporah Berman, Yann Martel, Edmund Metatawabin, Astra Taylor, John Vaillant, Paul Seesequasis, Clayton Thomas-Müller, Kate Harris, and J.B. MacKinnon. I’ve also edited posthumous collections by Jane Jacobs and Carol Shields.
• Books I’ve edited have become #1 national and international bestsellers.
• Books I’ve edited have won major awards including the RBC Taylor Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, Governor General’s Literary Award, BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, Hilary Weston/Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, Edna Staebler Award for Non-Fiction, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, Ontario Legislative Assembly Speaker’s Book Award, Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and the Banff Mountain Book Award for Adventure Travel
• Books I’ve edited have been nominated for the National Business Book Award, Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Trillium Book Award, and Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.

“I had the good fortune to work with Amanda as the editor of my most recent book, The Good Fight. The opportunity to work with a true editorial partner like Amanda is exactly why I left traditional publishing to move to a hybrid publisher for my third book. From development through substantive editing, I felt like Amanda had the perfect deft touch…knowing when to push me to make my ideas clearer and when to let my unique voice and my idiosyncrasies shine in all their glory. The Good Fight is a better book because of its excellent editing, something I wish my other books could have benefited from. Now if only this recommendation had the benefit of Amanda’s editing!!!”

Liane Davey, author of The Good Fight

Awards and honours:

• Recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts First-Time Creators’ Grant for my first book, Tracking Giants (coming in spring ’23).
• Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
• Winner of the 2020 Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for my work on Indigenous Relations by Bob Joseph with Cynthia F. Joseph.
• Winner of the Garner Book Publishing Award for my studies in publishing at Simon Fraser University.
• Winner of the Rosemary Shipton Award for Excellence in Copy Editing for my studies in publishing at Ryerson University.
• Recipient of a SSHRC Canadian Graduate Scholarship, Graduate Entrance Scholarship, and the Butler Award, for my graduate work at the University of British Columbia.

“You hope your editor will seem as excited as you are about your work and will inspire you to make it better and then better again, but you also hope your editor will bring a combination of experience, knowledge, creativity, insight, kindness, encouragement, flexible thinking, rigour, professionalism, fun, and the ability to see issues and solutions on both the large and small scale. All those hopes were realized when Amanda Lewis worked with me on my novel, my twentieth published book. My novel and I couldn’t have had a better experience.”

Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates

Career highlight:

• I am one of the few editors to have edited books by consecutive hereditary chiefs: Chief Robert Joseph and his son Bob Joseph, both chiefs of the Gwawaenuk First Nation.

“Amanda is generous, meticulous, deeply incisive, and an extraordinary champion for writers and their work.”

Sean Michaels, author of Us Conductors

Good to know!

• I use she/her pronouns.
• I’m a place-based person, endlessly inspired by the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. But I left my heart in NYC.
• I live in a log house on a small island between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. I’m grateful to live, work, and play on the unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw.
• I’m a big-tree tracker who searches remote forests for the largest trees in British Columbia (the subject of my first book, a travel memoir coming in spring 2023).
• Beastie Boys are my fave band.
• I’m passionate about film, and Seth Rogen is my professional crush.
• My fave creative fixer in film is The Wolf in Pulp Fiction.
• I love coffee and pizza, though rarely at the same time.
• I’m excellent at long-distance walking, and hiked the Kumano Kodo, a UNESCO World Heritage pilgrimage route in Japan, in 2019.
• I biked from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Atlin, BC with bestselling author Kate Harris to celebrate our work on her beautiful book, Lands of Lost Borders. We saw four bears along the road, and set off the bear horn in a pizza restaurant twice.
• I am a dedicated yogi and meditator, and completed 200+ hour yoga teacher training, plus training in trauma-informed yoga.
• I was born in Dublin, and hold dual Canadian and EU (Irish) citizenship.
• I believe art will save us.