Editor
Patrick Merla is a long-established editor who has worked with the manuscripts of authors, both novices and world-famous names, in all stages of the publishing process, from structuring proposals and line editing drafts to copyediting and proofreading collected-works editions destined for the World English marketplace.
A veteran of the magazine, newspaper, and book businesses, he has worked with authors as various as award-winning science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, Russian scholar Simon Karlinsky, novelist and memoirist Edmund White, and poets May Sarton and James Merrill. He is experienced with the requirements of publishers as various as The New Yorker and Out magazine, Alfred A. Knopf and the nonprofit offices of Social Accountability International, and with the requirements of a variety of forms:
- Fiction
- Biography and memoir
- Art catalogs
- Legal guidelines
- Collected letters
- Literary criticism
Credited in the acknowledgments pages of countless volumes, he has been described as "extraordinary," "a secret weapon," his work as "magic," "excellent," "meticulous," so in tune with authorial style as to be "invisible."
Longtime editor of several publications — film editor at SoHo News; editor of Christopher Street, the New York Native, and the James White Review — Merla has edited such figures as John Ashbery, Brad Gooch, Allan Gurganus, Thom Gunn, Richard Howard, Fran Lebowitz, Bette Midler, Joyce Carol Oates, James Purdy, Debbie Reynolds, and Tennessee Williams.
His own pieces on books, film and theater, and popular music, have appeared in Newsday and a number of magazines, among them House Beautiful, Interview, Out, POZ, and Saturday Review; his interviews for Theater Week, the New York Native, and Christopher Street include cover stories on Joan Baez, Kate Nelligan, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Rivers, and Eric Roberts.
He has published two books: The Tales of Patrick Merla, a collection of fairy tales in the classical mode (Ballantine / Available Press, 1985); and Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming-Out Stories (HarperCollins, 1996).
Critical publications include:
- A biography of Larry Kramer, "A Normal Heart," in: We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer, Festschrift compiled by Lawrence Mass (St. Martin's and Cassell, London, 1998).
- "'What Is Real?' Asked the Rabbit One Day" in: Only Connect: Readings in Children's Literature, 2nd ed., compiled by Sheila Egoff (Oxford University Press, 1980).