Rosanne Fitzgibbon
Rosie Award shortlist announced.jpg)
by Carol Goudie
IPEd is pleased to announce the shortlist for the Rosanne Fitzgibbon Editorial Award, IPEd’s award for editorial excellence.
The award, known as the Rosie, rewards editorial excellence with a cash prize of $4000 and is based on both the quality of the finished work and submissions from editor, author and publisher about the editorial process and work of the editor.
The 2021 Rosie winner will be announced at an online awards event in the lead-up to the 10th IPEd Editors Conference.
The shortlisted editors are Johannes Jakob (The Bluffs) and Linda Nix (Australian Law in Context).
All editors nominated for the 2021 Rosie demonstrated a commitment and dedication to their craft. The shortlisted collaborations displayed an outstanding editorial capability in supporting the writer to create the best publishing outcomes.
Johannes Jakob overcame logistical complications to work with Kyle Perry on The Bluffs (Penguin Random House). Jakob was able to manage complex line edits demanding a high level of author trust, the result of the respectful rapport he built with debut novelist Perry. The result is a book that pulls the reader ‘from page to page with a freight-train momentum that starts with the first word and ends with the final full stop’.
Linda Nix assisted Ciprian Radavoi and Stephen Norris to deliver ‘a pantheon of ideas in a readable and admirably concise way’ in Australian Law in Context (Lexis Nexis). Nix’s diplomacy in achieving a single authorial voice, one tempered to the book’s genre, as well as her big-picture and small-detail editing, enabled the authors to dispassionately and even-handedly present multiple themes in an ambitious law book.
The Rosie honours the editorial contribution of Rosanne Fitzgibbon DE (1947–2012), whose professional life was spent chiefly at University of Queensland Press, editing fiction titles. She was the inaugural winner of the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship in 1992, which took her to publishing houses in New York, subsequently benefiting every author she worked with. Rosie was known and loved for her passionate commitment to her authors, often over several titles.
