Longtime Bob Woodward Researcher Evelyn M. Duffy Launches Editing & Coaching Firm for Nonfiction Writers

WASHINGTON - After working closely with bestselling author and Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward for over 13 years, editor and researcher Evelyn M. Duffy is taking her DC-based editing, coaching and research company full time in 2021. While working in-house with Woodward, Duffy spent nights and weekends building her company and editing book proposals and manuscripts for journalists and other nonfiction writers. 

In Rage, Woodward’s 2020 #1 bestseller, the author wrote of Duffy, “She is an organizational genius who effectively has acquired multiple PhDs in the presidency, government, journalism and modern life. Once again she served as full collaborator and in the spirit—and with the level of effort—of a coauthor.”

Since 2007, Duffy has worked feet away from Woodward in his home office in Georgetown on six books covering Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. She was intimately involved with the drafting, reporting, editing, production and marketing for each book and made extensive contributions to dozens of front-page Washington Post stories on national security and international affairs. She has transcribed hundreds of hours of interviews with confidential sources and on-the-record interviews with Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump. 

Woodward has repeatedly praised Duffy as integral to his work. “She knows how to keep secrets, and she knows how to kick me in the ass,” Woodward said in 2018. “And for that, I salute her.” In 2020, he wrote that she was “the better part of my brain.”

In addition to providing edits for dozens of novels, Duffy has edited and coached journalists from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, National Geographic, and Inc.com on books about history, politics, finance, popular science, health, and higher education. Recent nonfiction Duffy has worked on includes The Debt Trap (forthcoming, 2021), Accountable (2020), Union (2020) and Prisoner, by Jason Rezaian (2019).

“Fellow authors: consider Evelyn M. Duffy to help you,” wrote Josh Mitchell, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of The Debt Trap. “I was lost and overwhelmed writing my first book. She got me on track. When we met, she showed up with a long memo outlining how to organize my book. She's an outstanding writing coach.”

Christopher Haugh, co-author of Union, said, “With enormous grace and wisdom, the right amount of brutality, and a great sum of skill and patience, Evelyn went about helping us decide what was essential, what needed more attention, and what simply had to be forgotten altogether.”

Duffy, a New Jersey native and a graduate of the English & Creative Writing program at George Washington University (2007), lives in Washington with her wife. Follow Duffy on Twitter @_EvelynMDuffy.

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