ABOUT
Marissa van Uden is a writer, editor, and nature-lover originally from Aotearoa New Zealand but now based in Vermont, where she lives in a little cabin in the woods overlooking a beaver pond. She is the EiC of Violet Lichen Books, an imprint of Apex Book Company, and the series editor of the ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction annual anthology. Other anthology credits include the award-winning The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird and the Strange Microfiction anthology series (Strange Libations, Strange Machines, and Strange Locations). Her short stories have been published in Vastarian Literary Journal, Dark Matter Magazine, Los Suelos, Small Wonders, and others. You can also find her at @marissavu.bsky.social or instagram @marissa.vu and @violetlichenbooks.
TESTIMONIALS
Marissa is the best editor I have ever worked with. Deeply cares about the stories she makes better. I’ve grown a great deal from working with her and I’ll continue to do so as much as I can for the rest of my career.”
Working with Marissa as a developmental editor was a wonderful experience from start to finish. She identified story issues that had escaped both me and my critique partners and made her suggestions with such insight and enthusiasm that I was left energized rather than anxious about the revisions ahead. I have no doubt my book is much stronger thanks to her guidance. Can’t wait to work with her again!
Marissa is a fantastic editor. … Her line edits are some of the best I’ve seen. I highly recommend her.
Your work is extraordinary. I can’t even begin to enumerate what I like about it. It’s all wonderful.
It’s kind of creepy, how you get in my head and know what I mean even when I write it badly. Some authors I know resent the edit process, but it felt empowering to share the vision with you. I learned more during these edit sessions about my own weaknesses and how a reader views my words than I have in any other experience.
Marissa has reset my bar for creative collaborators. From the firm guiding hand, to the side conversations about literature, to the different points of view she was able to get me to look at my own work, our time together was invaluable.
Marissa is a consummate and talented editor, always challenging me to look at my own work with fresh eyes and think again how to make it better. I attribute much of my growth as a writer in the last two years to working with her, and I count it a privilege to have had that opportunity. I cannot recommend her enough.
RECENT POSTS
ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction
The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction ECO24 Edited by Marissa van UdenA must-read annual showcase of the best nature-based science fiction and fantasy short stories published around the world every year. Featuring works by rising stars and established names, this...
Announcement: Launching Violet Lichen Books imprint!
Wow I completely stopped updating my blog a few years ago due to the pandemic and then taking on a lot of new responsibilities at various publishers. It feels fitting to return to the blog today with a really exciting announcement. Today Apex Book Company launched my...
New release: HUNTER’S MOON by D. A Godwin
Happy release day to Hunter's Moon by D. A Godwin! This novel is the beautiful, twisty and surprising sequel to Eyes of the Blind. It's SO fun to edit books like these, where the author is cleverly revealing new elements of the world, building on previous...
Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey…
I stumbled across this beautiful quote by GRRM on why he writes fantasy - how great is this? It so perfectly captures my love for fantasy, science fiction and all its wild colors. We fantasy readers are the children who dreamed of hunting the forests at night and...
The Cities of Dead
By ALYS ARDEN. The Cities of Dead Gothic Horror / Fantasy Novel "Old World witches collide with the French Quarter’s strangest denizens, setting off events that could tear the fabric of the Natural and Supernatural worlds, and only the most elusive, mischievous Voodoo...
HP Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME
I recently re-read HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time for an SFF Audio Podcast episode. It's one of my favorite Lovecraft stories because it's got all that obligatory cosmic horror, primordial masonry, and "unguessable horrors" (as Lovecraft calls it in...