President’s report
by Margaret Trudgeon AE
I think there are a few of us counting down the days until the upcoming IPEd Conference. I’m really looking forward to a bit of break from the Melbourne winter and a busy 6 months of editing duties to attend some engaging events, catch up with other editors and refresh my enthusiasm for the editing profession.
On Friday 20 June, Editors Victoria had its most successful lunch in ages. After a few quiet lunches we were a bit bowled over by the number of people who wanted to attend, ending up with 18 attendees – a great mix of newly minted and more experienced editors, and a sprinkling of editing students. If you missed out, we’ll be holding another one in a couple of months. Stephanie Holt AE kindly took a photo of us all, which you can check out below. At my end of the table, there was a lot of talk about how people set editing fees and try to convince clients to pay a reasonable price for one’s services. It seems the younger editors are facing many of the same issues the more experienced of us discovered when we set out on our paths. If anything, it seems even more challenging now as people seem to expect a lot for very little return.
Things will be a bit quiet on the EdVic front during July as we gear up for the conference, but we do have one speaker event organised for 8 July at 7 pm, organised by our inclusion and access advisor, Thirangie Jayatilake, with speaker Jeanine Leane, a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic, who will talk about editing anthologies for diverse voices.
Against the backdrop of the conference, Editors Victoria is getting ready for our annual branch meeting (ABM), which is coming up on 13 August via Zoom at 6.30 pm. This is where we appoint our new committee members for 2025–26 and farewell those who are stepping down. Quite a few of us are planning to stay on for another year. At the moment we are all busy writing reports and we’re looking around for people who might be interested in joining the committee, either on the main committee or on one of our subcommittees. If you’re interested in joining us, please contact me on edvic.president@iped-editors.org. I can send you out a position description and some information about the committee.
As part of the ABM we are offering a free speaker event to all EdVic members who Attend. This year we’ve been lucky to secure well-known and very successful children’s author Andy Griffiths, and his wife and editor, Jill, as our speakers! They’ll be talking about their collaboration in writing and editing Andy’s many books, including the Treehouse series and the JUST! series. We will be opening up bookings very soon. (IPEd members from other states and Aotearoa New Zealand are also welcome to attend the speaker event portion [from 7.30 pm] for the usual fee.)
As always, we are hoping as many of our members can attend as possible, not just to see Andy, but to support your hard-working committee, show your support for Editors Victoria and catch up on what we’ve all been doing for the past year. I’d like to thank each of our committee and subcommittee members for their hard work over the past year! But more about that next time!
In the meantime, enjoy the conference!
Welcome to our new members
Associate member:
- Olivia Shenken
Warm winter reads
Your social media may be swamped with the Northern Hemisphere’s summer reading lists but here in Australia and New Zealand we currently need books to read in the cold winter months. So, here’s some “non-beach reads” recommendations:
- Toni at random: the iconic writer’s legendary editorship by Dana A Williams (HarperCollins, 2025)
- The introvert’s guide to leaving the house by Jenny Valentish (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
- A different kind of power: a memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, 2025).