Intro
Hi! I’m David, a writer and editor from Johannesburg, South Africa.
I have over seven years of experience as a full-time and freelance editor, working mainly in the education sector. I have done editing for academic institutes, cultural institutes, research institutes, marketing agencies, and NGOs. I have edited everything from academic course content to doctoral dissertations to poetry collections to scientific reports to funding proposals to art catalogues to spiritual guidebooks.
I have an MA in English Literature from Rhodes University and will soon be submitting my doctoral thesis, also in English Literature. I have a deep love of the craft of words!
Editing
I offer a full suite of editing services, from proofreading and copy editing to developmental editing.
My editing work embraces a variety of content and forms. Examples of larger projects include a treatise in economics, Enhancing the Credibility of Resolution (Nomos, 2022), and the memoir of an exiled anti-apartheid activist, The Way Home (UJ Press, 2024).
I have edited content for clients such as University of Johannesburg Press, Goethe-Institut, and the PR company, Narrate. In addition to editorial work for organizations, I have edited projects for individual writers in Germany and China. I have been described as an editor who works “with care and seriousness.”
If you are looking for an editor for your project, please get in touch.
Writing
My doctoral thesis is on Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Geoffrey Hill. If it’s poetry you need edited or would like some feedback on, I offer uncommon expertise. Studying the finest poetry has also honed my understanding of all kinds of prose, and the literary knowledge I bring to my editing and feedback is diverse.
My first collection of poetry, A World Apart (2023), gathered poems published between 2017 and 2021 as well as many unpublished poems. My poetry has regularly appeared in local South African journals, Stanzas and New Contrast. I am currently at work on my second collection.
“David Copeland brings his fine, controlling intelligence to bear on a charting of the breakdown of order.” ~ Basil du Toit
“Redemptive beauty” ~ Daniel Browde
Writer | Editor
David Copeland 