New Partnership at BPA

Sara (right) and Frances (left) are officially Partners since June 2026. Alongside our Head of Operations, Peggy, we are now a gang of three – with a wonderful team of over 20 editors.

Sara and Frances met on a Curtis Brown Creative writing course 12 years ago, where they discovered they shared a similar taste in books and a train the same direction home. They have not stopped talking since.

When a writer friend told Sara that her feedback was exactly the same as her publisher’s, word got around about her talent for editing and before she knew it, she had more work than she could handle. It was then, in 2015, that she set up Blue Pencil Agency and took on other editors. She has since been published under a different name.

Peggy has been on the BPA team for more than three years, managing to keep on top of absolutely everything from rural France, taking great care in matching writers up with the right editor and publishing our blog, newsletter and now Substack!

Some of you will know Frances as our Senior In-House Editor and from our recent ‘Behind the Scenes’ events series. But for anyone who doesn’t know her, she is a struggling writer herself with a keen editorial eye, a love of character-driven novels and a passion for making other people’s stories work. Recently short-listed for the Caledonia Novel Award and long-listed for the Bath Novel Award with her novel, The Exceptions, she is one of the many writers who is ‘nearly there’, who’s had enough interest in her writing to believe there’s something in it but hasn’t made it over that line into publication – yet. We are sure many of our clients relate to this!

Sara and Frances have been mentoring each other's novels for years. They know what it takes to stand by someone else’s writing and carry another person’s book with the same care and attention they give their own. This is the ethos they want to share through Blue Pencil Agency. They also share a love of swimming in cold sea, the same postcode and chronic insomnia (which they’ll try to keep to themselves).

The only thing harder than writing is not writing.

So we keep going.

We’re looking forward to sharing the ride with you all.