Green Mountain Prose

Client Testimonials

Ellen Lesser

The hardest thing for a dedicated writer to find is the complete editor. By complete I mean the kind of editor who will read your work and recognize the overall flow of the story, who visualizes the whole and senses just where the pace is off, who sees that this section has way too much dialogue and that section could be best served by a different sentence structure, who can suggest simple changes that lead to vast improvements. Ellen Lesser is that kind of editor. She is exacting, relentless on detail and generous with advice. At Vermont College she is famous for using several different highlighters when working on manuscripts, each color signifying a distinct element of the editorial process. Besides her formal five-star qualifications—a deep sense of commitment and responsibility and years of teaching experience—Ellen is extremely intelligent, uncannily so, and her irrepressible exuberance and lively sense of humor make her a winner, hands down.

Nicolas Papandreou, author of A Crowded Heart

Athens, Greece

Whatever qualities it takes to be a brilliant mentor, Ellen has them. She expertly blends sharp analysis with supportive encouragement; combines incredibly perceptive reading with intriguing and helpful suggestions for fine-tuning; mixes a light but thorough and almost hilarious style of commenting with detailed responses and ideas expressed in complete, richly nuanced sentences. It is so valuable to a learning writer to feel validated in one’s creative endeavors; Ellen does this not through coddling but through what must be a kind of empathy for the creative process itself, understanding its vulnerability even while knowing that direct criticism is the best policy. It takes such patience and sincerity to meld these seemingly opposite perceptions, and shows an enviable gift—a genius—for teaching.

Tim Nason

Dresden, ME

I have known Ellen Lesser since 1994, when I enrolled in the Vermont College MFA program. She was my advisor during my second semester in the program and the first person who had enough faith in my work to whisper the word novel in my ear. Since then, I have worked with numerous other advisors and editors and Ellen is always my first and most trusted choice. Ellen’s response to a manuscript is multi-layered and heartfelt. Her attention to detail is unsurpassed. She has the ability to look at a manuscript and see which elements are working and which still need attention. She is candid, but respectful, and capable of diffusing a writer’s natural defenses as she explores where the story wants and needs to go. A manuscript from Ellen Lesser returns as a rainbow of highlighter colors tracking plot, structure, character development, themes, and images. This rainbow is laced together with notes and questions designed to open the author’s eyes to depths still to be plumbed and the richness that lies just beneath the story’s surface. In short, she will make you think and she will do so with generosity and respect for both the writer and the manuscript.

Elizabeth A. Peterson

Boston, MA

I clearly remember the experience of receiving the manuscript review of my novella from Ellen Lesser—a hefty, typewritten report, followed by a prodigious amount of multi-colored line editing on each page. "Hopeless," I thought, first about my own writing, then about Ellen, deciding her critical intensity to be dangerous to my writer's ego. But as I plucked up my courage and began reading the feedback, my mood immediately changed. Not only was Ellen's reading of my work incredibly skillful, but the nature of the feedback was consistently both affirming and engaging. Ellen has mastered the fine art of offering incisive, illuminating critique—on structure, point of view, plot, character development, voice—while maintaining respect for the writer's control over his or her own work. Ellen knows how to ask the right questions, how to offer effective guidance, and, most importantly, how to bring out the best in the writer him or herself.

Guy Thorvaldsen

Madison, WI

I have been repeatedly impressed with Ellen Lesser’s reading of my work. She has the ability to intuit where a story means to go long before it’s gone there, and to sniff out wrong turns. I especially appreciate her willingness to put herself on the line by coming right out and saying what she thinks without apology or soft-pedaling; yet her directness is entirely without harshness. I always felt she was genuinely invested in my work—in my improving both the piece at hand and my skill as a writer. I cannot end without expressing my appreciation for Ellen’s enthusiasm for this work. She seems to come at it with exceptional energy, a distinct lack of self-inflatedness, and a huge appetite for other people’s fiction. As her student, one can’t help but feel that she genuinely likes reading one’s work, taking it apart and engaging with it. What better kind of reader could one want?

Joan Leegant

Newton, MA

* * *

Christopher Noel

Chris Noel was an invaluable reader of both my books, Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy. His clear-eyed comments, and sure knowledge of novel structure, improved my manuscripts immeasurably.

Darin Strauss

Brooklyn, NY

I have now completed two novels under Noel’s caring guidance and unwavering eye to detail and to the most essential needs to fulfill the promises and premises of a book. He is responsive, conscientious, timely and so helpful in delivering the messages of what needs to happen, to get done, to lift the book. He explained his edits so simply (frequently eloquently) in the margins of my working drafts and more extensively in his accompanying letters. And those letters conveyed positively what the book already was and what it still needed. He gave me the hope and the direction I needed, making his points without demeaning or demoralizing the writer in me no matter how daunting the task he may have left me with. Technically, he provided brilliant analysis with a down-to-earth style, steering me clear of structural errors with good insights through all the murkiness that writing brings. I most appreciate his approach of mixing micro detail—on such things as point of view, tense, awkwardness, grammar, etc.—with macro issues, dealing with plot holes, character development, and always the need to know more, to tell the reader the story behind the story.

Lloyd Devereux Richards

Montpelier, VT

Christopher Noel edited my novel, St. Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb, a manuscript I recently placed with an agent in New York. His comments not only helped me rewrite the book, they also made me realize what a collaborative process writing actually is. The writer's vision is SO limited. Without a gifted editor like Christopher, my book would have remained quite flawed since I (like most writers) was not able to pinpoint and analyze the problems in my own work. I am indebted to Christopher for his insight, his literary breadth, his honesty, and his sparkling intelligence.

Valerie Hurley

Charlotte, Vermont

As the editor for my novel, Chris Noel provided me with a new pair of eyes, a fresh way of seeing my way back into material which had become clouded for me. His ability to help me sharpen both language and theme were invaluable. With the knowledge he provided I was able to re-write scenes and produce others that gave a new dimension to the work. At the same time that it seemed I was adding to my material, I was also refining and paring it down, so that the book actually became shorter and more manageable. Chris was a highly astute reader and interpreter of what I had written. I always felt up to the challenges he posed, and to making the changes he suggested to me. I have had other editors from time to time, but no one, with the exception of Chris, has been able to define so accurately and objectively what my work is trying to say, and help me communicate it.

Susan Sonde

Baltimore, MD

Noel's comments on my novel were carefully worded to encourage a young author, and he was quite specific in his praise of much of the manuscript. Yet he also offered deep and serious criticism, all of which struck me either immediately or with thought to be right on the money. He challenged me to look at each character and each plot element and determine why it was there, whether it was helping or harming the novel, and whether it was doing as much as it could. He also challenged me to think about the philosophy of my book (highly appropriate, since the book is in someways philosophical). Never did he suggest that a certain philosophy was better than another, but what he did do was to point out places where I seemed to be inconsistent or vague, and pushed me to think deeply about what I was trying to say.
David Harris Ebenbach

Philadelphia, PA

Mr. Noel's efforts leave me with an indispensable body of information regarding my writing; that is, he has taken pains to draw out, through his critiques of my work, a clear picture of where my strengths and weaknesses lie...a crystallization of the meaning behind the aesthetic thrust of my work. The value this work holds for me is due both to the quality of Mr. Noel's insights and standards, and to the manner in which he relayed these concepts. He addresses his client as a party in an intellectual dialogue.... He is not stingy with praise and enthusiasm; nor is he reluctant to pointout the faults of a given text. His criticisms are always supported, never dogmatic. Moreover, he is inclined to address a story on its sub-textual level, an attribute I have found to be surprisingly scarce among writing teachers. In his willingness to speculate about the message of a story Mr. Noel not only demonstrates the exploratory, risk-taking nature of his teaching method, but also honors an all-important and oft-neglected fact—that a writer, through the story, is trying to get something across.
Naama Goldstein
Brookline, MA