June 2026 Editors Victoria

President’s report

By Margaret Trudgeon 

Would you believe that we’re nearly at the end of our 2025–26 committee term? It’s gone so fast, but we’ve achieved quite a bit over the year. More about the committee a bit later, but first, let’s look at the events of May.     

On 12 May we were honoured to host Jessie Kindig, senior editor at Yale University Press and contributing editor at Lux, who spoke about “Editing as a feminist: publishing, literature and social change”. We drew a crowd of over 40 people to hear her talk. Kylie Howard has written an engaging report about it, which you can access here. Jessie was an eloquent speaker and her thoughts on editing as a feminist were extremely insightful.   

As I write, we are about to host Zia Racho-Knight, senior content developer at Pearson Australia, who will talk about educational publishing, in “The clever country? Australian educational publishing in the age of AI”. Numbers are looking great for this event too – it’s great to see so many members attending our events! As this is my area of speciality, I’m particularly looking forward to hearing her insights on educational editing into the future. As I see it, textbooks will be around for a while yet.   

Secretary Donald Ritchie is now busy planning for our upcoming annual branch meeting (ABM), which will take place on Wednesday 15 July. For entertainment, Kylie Howard has managed to secure Sue Butler, well-known editor of Australia’s own Macquarie dictionary for many years. She’ll be talking about the link between food and culture in “Eat your words: food culture represented in Australian English” It promises to be an entertaining and informative talk and will follow the more traditional proceedings of our ABM, where the old committee will be serenaded out and the new one heralded in.    

We’ll be advertising the ABM a bit later in June. Please take time to register for it – it’s free for all members of IPEd, whatever level of membership you have. We need as many full members as possible to register and attend so that we meet our quorum of 20 to approve the new committee. You will also get to enjoy Sue Butler’s talk for free if you register and attend!   

You should receive an email soon (around 15 June), containing information on the ABM, committee role descriptions and nomination forms. Then on 1 July you’ll receive reports for the current office bearers, minutes from the 2025 ABM and the agenda for this year’s ABM. A few of us are swapping roles and a couple are standing down from their positions, so we would love to see a few more people consider joining us on the 2026–27 committee year. If you’re interested, please contact me (edvic.president@iped-editors.org) or Donald Ritchie (edvic.secretary@iped-editors.org) for further information. This year we are particularly looking for someone to fill the positions of secretary and events officer.    

And congratulations to fellow committee member Cecile Shanahan, recipient of an IPEd scholarship to the APA’s Residential Editorial Program, held recently in Sydney. Read on to learn about her experience at the program.  

On 12 June we are holding a networking lunch at Arcadia Cafe – all are welcome, and we’d especially love to meet with anyone who is interested in being on the committee. But even if you’re just a bit curious, please come along. We’d love to see you there! You can book here.   

New members welcome

 2026 has seen many new members join us! Welcome to:   

Professional member:   

• Timothy Paul Roberts 

Associate members:   

• Maggie Chen    
• Angeline Ferdinand   
• Sam Himawan   
• Tracy Joyce   
• Amy Leitans   
• Fiona O’Brien   
• Matt Richardson    
• Elyse Strecker    
• Mohammad Uddin    

Student and Graduate members:   

• Felicity Anderson   
• Nicolas Assaf    
• Alex Bayliss    
• Denis Heagney   
• Leah Ingram   
• Kristian Larin    
• Cassidy Meddings    
• Alyssa Millar   
• Liz Phung   
• Sarah Riddell    
• Tomy Willsher   

Residential Editorial Program (REP), 27–30 April 2026, Sydney   

The 2026 REP was held at the beautiful Q Station in Manly. This year, 15 mid-career editors participated in 4 days of intensive workshops with a range of highly experienced industry practitioners including Grace Lucas-Pennington, Jo Butler and Brandon Van Over, who acted as mentors for the program.  

The REP has become renowned in the Australian publishing industry as a defining professional development opportunity for editors. The program has run since 1999, with more than 135 Australian editors benefiting from the opportunity for advanced training and professional collaboration.   

Freelance editor Cecile Shanahan was the recipient of the IPEd scholarship position at REP in 2026 and found the experience “transformative and inspiring”. Cecile says she learned so much, not only from the 3 mentors and other participants but every guest speaker who generously shared their time and knowledge.”   

REP participants attended workshops on cultural consultation and culturally sensitive editing, editing First Nations voices, structural editing, career paths, editing in the age of AI and editing different genres, while also working, in small groups with a mentor, on a manuscript selected for the program. At the end of the week, the manuscript’s editor joined the program to discuss their editing process in bringing the book to publication.   

Cecile said, “Editing the manuscript on your own before the program and then coming together to workshop your ideas for the structural edit was already an invaluable experience. But to then hear from the manuscript’s editor about the final decisions made and how and why they were implemented was just the icing on the cake. It’s rare to be able to spend time ruminating over editing decisions with others but incredibly worthwhile when you can.”   

Throughout their time at REP, participants – who came from a range of backgrounds and roles including senior editors, commissioning editors, nonfiction editors, commercial and literary fiction editors and children’s fiction editors – heard from industry experts. These experts were Rachel Bin Salleh, Grace Lucas-Pennington, Winnie Dunn, Alisa Ahmed, Ali Lavau, Roberta Ivers, Tom Langshaw, Vanessa Radnidge, Sophie Hamley, Kalhari Jayaweera, Robert Watkins, Dr Agata Mrva-Montoya, Jo Butler and Meredith Curnow, the APA’s Editorial Working Group chair.   

“As a freelancer, most of your contact with publishers and other editors is via email. To be in the room with a range of publishing professionals, who are so giving of their time and expertise, was an unrivalled professional development opportunity,” said Cecile.   

She added, “I would encourage any editor considering applying to REP in 2028 to do so. Being selected was a career highlight.”   

Cecile would like to thank the Australian Publishers Association and the APA Editorial Working Group and acknowledge the support of Creative Australia, the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund and IPEd.