Editors — Good Light Editors

Gina Pugliese

Co-Founder

Hi! I'm Gina Pugliese, a writer and editor with a PhD in English literature, with an emphasis in feminist, queer, postcolonial, and Black studies. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. +

I have written award-winning arts journalism for Southwest Contemporary and served in editorial capacities for DARIA Art Magazine, the Santa Fe Literary Review, and the Santa Fe Writers Project (a small book press). In 2026, I brought together talented colleagues in the literary scene to co-found the Good Light Editors, who, beyond providing editorial services, organize and moderate literary events and readings. Additionally, I hold a certificate in Editor in Book Publishing from a course facilitated by Penguin Random House editor, Julia Wallace.

Trained and experienced in developmental, line, and copy editing, one of my specialties include identifying your writing's main idea and target audience, while offering direct and honest feedback to focus and elevate your work. Whether I look at your novel, nonfiction manuscript, memoir, or another genre of writing, I help you deepen your research and concepts; pinpoint your central claim; achieve clarity, concision, and continuity; evolve your characters and plot; attend to structure; develop a brand and social media presence; imagine book cover designs; understand the current book market; and craft eye-catching query letters to agents as you pursue publication.

Additionally, drawing from years of experience as a higher education specialist, I provide thesis and dissertation editing; college application feedback; and biography development and ghostwriting. As an arts writer, I also assist with artist statements and other forms of writing related to the fine art world.

In my private life, I dote on my cat to an embarrassing extent, partake in the bitter disappointments and small triumphs of desert gardening, and get my money's worth from my Criterion film-streaming service.

Find a list of books I have edited and learn more about me from my website. You can also subscribe to my Substack and follow @gina.yo.gina on Instagram.

I believe that an editor should be a writer's most devoted reader, spending time and care with the project you have poured your sweat, blood, and tears into. I promise you thorough and thoughtful feedback as I cheerlead your vision, amplify your voice, and pave a path to getting your writing out into the world whether through traditional routes or self-publishing.

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Steve Jansen

Co-founder

Steve Jansen is an Albuquerque-based investigative reporter and arts writer who has won and been nominated for state, regional, and national awards, including the Best of the West, Maggies: The Magazine Awards of Western Publishing, and the National Association of Black Journalists Awards. +

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Maggie Grimason

Co-founder

I've been an arts writer and editor for more than a decade, and in that time, my work has appeared in Playboy, Hyperallergic, and numerous local, regional, and national journals. +

I've also collaborated with local galleries (516 Arts, Friends of the Orphan Signs) as well as birds + Richard in Berlin, Germany, on interpretive essays for exhibition catalogs. I've been writing creative nonfiction for even longer, and my work has appeared in Ploughshares; I was also granted an Urban Enhancement Trust Fund grant in 2023 to work on a novella in this genre about ghosts, grief, and memory.

I've always had an interest in the natural world, which led me to more than 5 years of work in avian conservation, where I developed a science writing and editing practice that complements my arts writing. I find that both disciplines attempt to grapple with—and sometimes answer—very complex questions. I'm particularly interested in where science and innovation bump up against our daily lives, and I have published articles in this vein in Undark (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and The Revelator (Center for Biological Diversity). I've also ghostwritten articles for TechCrunch. For two years, I co-edited a journal of nature writing called Slow Death on Saddleback.

I've edited books for the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the City of Albuquerque. I've also contributed editing services to numerous nonprofits, including the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative (Georgia), and Gift of Life (Texas). I currently work with Clarion West (Washington), a nonprofit that supports underrepresented voices in speculative fiction.

I have been on-staff as the arts & lit editor at Albuquerque's former alt weekly, the Alibi; managing editor at arts journal Southwest Contemporary; and senior editor at conservation nonprofit Hawks Aloft. I currently serve on the Industry and Academic Advisory Team for the University of New Mexico's Technical and Professional Writing Program. In 2025, I earned a certification in audio description (AD) for blind and low-vision audiences, which has extended and challenged my writing practice.

I'm particularly interested in helping individual writers, as well as groups and organizations, develop and strengthen their long-form nonfiction projects.

You can read some of my published work on my website.

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Rowena Alegría

Editor

Ro began her career editing poetry magazines. At The Denver Post, she worked as copy editor, copy chief and business editor. +

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Serena Jean Rodriguez

Editor

I'm a poet, editor, educator, and writing advocate who believes that every piece of writing—whether poem, dissertation, personal essay, or technical document—holds a story that deserves to be shaped with care, clarity, and intention. +

My editing focuses on helping writers find and trust their voice while shaping language into something vivid, precise, and deeply human.

With more than a decade of experience, I've been a poetry editor for the Santa Fe Literary Review, a one-on-one learning specialist, and a tutor in creative and academic writing. I've worked with writers at every stage: from first-time storytellers learning how to put vulnerability on the page to seasoned writers refining manuscripts for publication. I teach and edit across all levels of creative analysis, academic and personal essays, and technical writing, with special emphasis on poetry manuscripts, theses, and dissertations.

Originally from Mississippi and Virginia, I currently live in New Mexico where I serve as a Creative Writing Assistant Professor and English Coordinator at Institute of American Indian Arts. I hold a BFA and MFA in Creative Writing with concentrations in poetry and creative nonfiction. I approach editing as a collaborative, imaginative process—not simply correcting grammar but using grammar as an art form that strengthens rhythm, clarity, imagery, and emotional resonance.

My own writing explores motherhood, pregnancy, the body, grief, place, medical trauma, and personal narratives that exist within inherited histories and lived vulnerability. These themes deeply inform the way I work with others: with curiosity and attention to the emotional core of a piece. My work has been published in Poetry, Inverted Syntax, Santa Fe Literary Review, among others; I am the winner of the Santa Fe Accolades Poetry Contest 2017, The Roadrunner Review Poetry Prize 2022, a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 2020 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize finalist for The Georgia Review. In my free time, I enjoy sleeping in, spending time with my cats, and growing more tomatoes and marigolds than any one person should. When I'm not in my garden, you can usually find me wandering the bosque or eating all the tacos with my partner and kiddo.

Whether you're shaping a poem, revising a dissertation, building confidence in academic writing, or trying to capture the exact feeling living inside your work, I'm passionate about helping you create language that is honest, powerful, and unmistakably your own.

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