Emma Curran, PhD

I’m a Classicist by training, with a PhD from Princeton University and an MA and BA from Dalhousie University. I’ve been editing and proofreading academic and trade manuscripts for more than a decade, and I’m a trained back-of-the-book indexer. I enjoy working with authors to make their writing clear, error-free, and persuasive, and I love the challenge of creating an index that leads your reader to exactly what they want to find in your book.

My expertise is in Classics, which is a multidisciplinary field; as an academic, I have worked extensively in philosophy, religion, history, mythology, and poetry. Although my background is academic, I have also edited and indexed a variety of manuscripts, from film prospectuses to cookbooks.

I have studied technical writing, which has made me comfortable with the many complex features of Word, as well as plain language principles and technical editing. As your indexer, I will read every word of your manuscript, using professional indexing software to create a streamlined, polished index. I never use AI in my work, and I do not subcontract.

Beyond my editing and indexing work, I’m a voracious reader in many subjects, from fungi to politics, marine biology to knitting. Some of my favourite topics are environmentalism, natural history, activism, cooking, and fibre arts of all kinds. When I’m not indexing, editing, or reading, I can be found hiking with my kids in the beautiful forests of British Columbia, feeding my sourdough starter, quilting, or planting native species in my local park, where I work as a streamkeeper.

You can learn more about my work through my website.

“Emma did a fantastic job with my book. My manuscript concerns quite difficult material in Greek philosophy. I was thrilled that she “got” my book, which means the index is an actually helpful guide to readers (rather than merely a list of words in the manuscript). For a book that I’ve spent a lot of time laboring over, I’m extremely happy to have an index that shows care and good scholarly judgment.” – Emily Hulme, Plato, Technē, and Philosophy as a Profession