By Michèle Drouart HLM
Fiction writers and editors cannot help but be impressed by the names of best-known authors that Rosanne Fitzgibbon worked with. It is striking, and you go straight to the thought, “What a fine editor she must have been!” Just one of those many greats was Kate Grenville. The long list also includes Peter Carey and Thea Astley.
Born in Newcastle (NSW), Rosanne Fitzgibbon graduated from Newcastle University and soon afterwards moved to Brisbane, where she married and had twin daughters and a son.
Rosie – as she came to be called – is best remembered for her role as fiction editor at the University of Queensland Press (UQP) from 1989 to 2005. Besides editing, she assessed manuscripts and judged stories for competitions; she was a champion of the short story and story collections. She also produced “scholarly publications in literary studies” (Munro and Abbey). In 1992, she was the first recipient of the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship to undertake interviews and research in book publishing in New York.
Rosie’s perfect blend of precision, clarity, generosity, kindness, humour and a personal touch became her hallmark, and some of her often quoted observations to writers bring out these traits. She was editing a novel by her sister, Marion Halligan, when Marion told her, “Don’t tinker with my prose!” She replied, “Look, Marion, I’m the editor. It’s my job to tinker. You’re the writer. It’s your job to ignore me” (Munro). Of her own skill, Rosie said, “I’m not a writer. I’m a reader. It is other people’s writing that I know about, that I can see whole and clear, laid out like an architect’s plan” (Munro). According to Marion, “she would tell you what the problems were, but it was up to you to fix them – or not” (Halligan).
A founding member of the Society of Editors (Qld), Rosie had “an unwavering commitment to literary excellence”; publisher Lisa Highton saw her as both “a brilliant editor and a lovely woman” (Munro). Literary agent Mary Cunnane noted that Rosie nurtured the authors she worked with partly by cultivating relationships “not just with writers but with agents as well” (Sims). Working with her at UQP (1980s and 90s), Craig Munro found her to be “always a valued mentor and friend to her colleagues” (Munro).
Rosie’s love of travel included walking the Camino. She also “took pleasure in theatre, cinema, art galleries, books” (Halligan).
Besides editing, Rosie was a teacher. During her time as a freelance editor, she gave a variety of seminars, workshops and masterclasses for the Writers Centre, the Society of Editors and the Literature Board.
A month after Rosanne’s death from brain cancer in 2012, Jay Verney paid the following tribute: “She was someone who helped writers stay the course and she did it with a quiet grace and dignity that I’ll always remember.”
IPEd is proud to offer its biennial award for editing excellence in Rosanne Fitzgibbon’s name. The award is supported in 2025 by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
There could be no better way to honour Rosie.
Sources
Marion Halligan (Rosanne’s sister), “Rosanne Eleanor Fitzgibbon”, obituary in the Newcastle Herald, 2 September 2013.
Craig Munro, “Rosie Fitzgibbon”, obituary in Fryer Folios, July 2013. Craig Munro, UQP’s publisher from 1983 to 2000, is a biographer, book historian and the author of Literary lion tamers (Scribe, 2021).
Craig Munro and Sue Abbey, “Vale Rosanne Fitzgibbon”, in media release from Creative Australia (formerly Australia Council for the Arts), 23 August 2012.
Bruce Sims, review of Craig Munro’s Literary lion tamers, in The Newtown Review of Books, 09 February 2021.
Jay Verney, entry posted in Friends, tagged “Rosie Fitzgibbon”, on 5 September 2012.