Happy New Year from the EdWA committee
Welcome to 2022 everyone!
On behalf of the Editors WA committee, I thank everyone for their support over the past year. We look forward to another exciting year in 2022.
Despite the challenges of fluctuating COVID-19 and border restrictions in 2021, we still delivered a huge range of workshops, speaker presentations and networking opportunities. The year opened socially with our Cafe society meetup at The Shorehouse in Swanbourne and, while additional in-person meetups were difficult to arrange, we also hosted several online socials for people to meet and greet their fellow editors. The online get-togethers gave regional members the chance to engage more with our social activities as well, and we were also joined by interstate and international editors wanting to meet more WA editors – an excellent show of collegiality.
Our first speaker presentation of 2021 was by Per Henningsgaard AE on the topic of Book publishing in WA. He led the way for our other speakers: Sherryl Clark on the topic of Developmental and structural editing for fiction; Dr Renée Otmar on Starting out or crossing over to fiction editing; Stephen White on Government and geo(science) editing; and Rebekah Sheedy on Copyright and seeking permissions. We also held two workshops: Fiction structural editing with Louise Thurtell, and the Grammar refresher course with Linda Nix.
In addition to the networking and professional development opportunities, we launched two new book clubs: Read like an editor and Fiction in translation. The Read like an editor book club encourages editors to read critically and discuss certain aspects of story structure and technique. The first session discussed how dialogue is used, while the second looked at beginnings. The Fiction in translation book club celebrates and interrogates the art of translation in fiction with the first session held in December to discuss Chinese science-fiction author Liu Cixin’s 三体 San Ti translated into English by Ken Liu as The Three-Body Problem.
As we go into the year ahead, you can expect more great presentations, workshops and book club sessions. To ease the load on branch committees, a collaborative approach has been taken to workshops across IPEd in 2022, with each branch delegated to run two online workshops. We urge you to keep an eye on all the events being run by various branches as we endeavour to provide a full range of professional development across the organisation.
We hope that 2022 will be a good year for you and we look forward to seeing you at the various events. If at any point you have queries, feedback or would just like to chat about what we’re doing at Editors WA, please contact me at edwa.president@iped-editors.org.
Happy New Year
Jess Gately
Editors WA President
New members
We are pleased to announce that the following members joined Editors WA in the second half of last year.
Associates – Erin Woodage, Katherine Mills and Mary Peterson
Students – Madeleine Delany and Lauren Bradford.
We welcome you to the branch and look forward to meeting you all at our events and workshops. If you have questions or feedback, please contact our President, Jess Gately, at edwa.president@iped-editors.org.
Director’s ABM report
I joined the IPEd Board as Director for WA about a year ago — my first meeting was 17 August 2020. The Board meets about every six weeks for about two hours at a time, so I’ve been to nine Board meetings, plus three Board & Branch Presidents meetings. We’ve also had separate Board workshops for governance training, strategic planning and risk assessment. It’s quite a busy job as I must read the branch minutes and finance reports for all seven branches, because directors govern the entire organisation, not just their own branches.
We also have to monitor IPEd’s overall financial situation and the activities of the many steering committees and working parties: professional development, academic editing, mentoring, accreditation, style manuals, awards and prizes, pay rates, communications, accessibility, the web site and the conference.
Our aim is to have a healthy, happy membership and financial situation, and both have been growing steadily while I’ve been on the Board. This past year we’ve been focusing on staffing issues — making sure IPEd staff are adequately resourced so they can do a good job in supporting branches, especially during COVID-19.
We’ve also been focusing on accessibility issues and inclusion plus affiliation with kindred organisations such as Australian writers centres and editors associations in the UK, Canada and South Africa, for example.
Other major issues you would be aware of, as you’ve received letters from CEO Karen Lee, and Board Chair Ruth Davies, are updating the website and the Australian standards for editing practice.
Catherine Macdonald
Event
Read Like an Editor Book Club – Introducing Characters
Date: Tuesday 1 March 6.00 pm to 7.30 pm AWST
Location: Online via Zoom
Details: To be a good editor, it’s generally recommended that you be a good reader. Develop your editing skills in this quarterly book club where you bring a book of your choice and discuss with fellow editors how the author has approached a particular topic, skill or format. With larger numbers of participants, we will split into smaller groups via the Breakout Room function of Zoom.
In our third meeting, we’ll be discussing introducing characters. Come along with a book of your choice, a short two-minute reading that shows how a character is introduced to the reader, and some thoughts on how the author has chosen to introduce the character (dialogue, description of looks, mood, position, action etc). Be prepared to discuss characters in broader terms.
Bookings: Close 6.00 pm AWST, Tuesday 1 March 2022. Book here.