Recent Projects

Witness to Water

Cover of memoir edited by Hilary Smith

Pete McBride had a big challenge on his plate: how do you take two decades of photography, films, National Geographic articles, and one of the most physically demanding river journeys ever attempted, and find the throughline that turns all of it into a coherent memoir?

A book that was just "Pete McBride's greatest hits" would have been easy. A book that makes a statement was the harder ask.

Before starting work on this book, I watched every film Pete had ever made. I read every magazine article and essay I could find. I traced his work from the Colorado headwaters down through the desert, looking for the patterns and obsessions that ran through all of it.

Then we sat down for a series of long, recorded interviews. From those conversations, I developed a structural throughline—and we built the book around that spine.

Love, Service, Wisdom

Cover of self-help spirituality book edited by Hilary

Jorge Luis Delgado is a master of his tradition — but English is his second language, and Inka spiritual teaching is fundamentally an oral, relational, and embodied practice.

The challenge was to translate that into a spirituality book for English-speaking readers without flattening the depth, the metaphor, or the sacredness of the source.

I started by reading everything Jorge had previously published to understand the shape of his thinking and the threads he'd already laid down. Then we began an extensive series of interviews to develop the chapters together.

We enjoyed working together so much that in November of 2025, I traveled to Peru to interview Jorge for his next book, The Way of Illumination.

Mentality Wins

Cover of psychology book edited by Hilary Smith

Between them, Dr. Jonathan Jenkins and Dr. Kim O’Brien had decades of clinical practice with elite athletes — but their manuscript wasn't yet translating that expertise into a self-help book a reader could actually use. The structure was unsettled, the voice between the two co-authors hadn't fully merged, and the chapters weren't reliably converting clinical insight into clear, actionable routines.

I read the draft carefully, looking for where the real book was hiding inside it. The strongest chapters told me what the book wanted to be. The weakest told me what was getting in the way.

From there, I worked with Jonathan and Kim to restructure the book and weave in their personal stories as lifelong athletes along with case studies from their work with elite performers.

Healing the Five Wounds of the Heart

Cover of self-help book edited by Hilary Smith

Marie came to me with the hardest kind of starting point: piles of material and no organizing principle. She had years of coaching practice, talks, podcast appearances, and healing work, but the book she wanted to write didn't yet have a center.

I listened to hours of Marie's talks and podcast appearances to find what she was already saying that she might not have recognized as the spine of a book.

One day I was listening, and I heard her use a phrase in passing: the five wounds of the heart. I knew, the moment I heard it, that I'd found the organizing principle for her self-help book.

Healing the Five Wounds of the Heart went on to be translated into Italian, Spanish, and several other languages, and published around the world. Marie is now at work on her second book.