The awards ceremony at Avid Reader Bookshop, Brisbane. From left to right: IPEd Chair Ruth Davies, Kerry Davies AE (winner of the 2023 Janet Mackenzie Medal) and IPEd Chair Karen Lee.
IPEd is proud to announce that the winner of the 2023 Janet Mackenzie Medal (the Mackenzie) is Kerry Davies AE.
The Mackenzie is IPEd’s highest award and honours the memory of revered editor, author and IPEd member Janet Mackenzie DE (1947–2018). The Mackenzie is given to an outstanding professional editor who has lifted the standard of the editing profession and/or given exemplary service to IPEd.
Kerry Davies is well known to many IPEd members. She first served on the Editors Queensland committee briefly in 1995, before moving to New South Wales. Returning in 2004, she served as Editors Queensland president for six years from 2010 and as Queensland director for IPEd from 2013. She has also been active in a number of IPEd’s working parties and standing committees. Kerry was IPEd Board Chair from 2015 to 2020, and oversaw IPEd’s transition to its current structure in 2016.
In recent years she has served on the Standing Committee for Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Style (now Communication and Style Standing Committee), the Pay Rates Working Party (now Pay and Conditions Standing Committee), the Finance and Risk Management Committee, the Standing Committee on Awards and Prizes, and the working parties for the second and third editions of IPEd’s Standards for Editing Practice.
Her contribution to the Pay and Conditions Standing Committee continues to be critical to advancing the recognition of editors as highly skilled professionals. The previous working party developed IPEd’s suggested rates for editing work, and Kerry remains committed to advocating for fair and reasonable conditions for freelance and in-house editors.
From 2015 Kerry was a member of IPEd’s advocacy group, the Style Manual Steering Group, lobbying the Commonwealth Government for a seventh edition of the Style Manual, and which also oversaw IPEd’s review of the current digital edition. She also contributed extensively as a member of the organising committee of the 2017 IPEd Conference hosted by Editors Queensland, and conceived and participated in the recent IPEd Ambassadors Program.
After stepping down as Editors Queensland president in 2016, Kerry took on the role of Budget Officer, a role she continues to fill today. In 2013 she was made an Honorary Life Member in recognition of her significant contribution to the Queensland Society of Editors, to the editing profession and to IPEd.
Kerry has more than 40 years of professional experience as an editor and journalist. She has worked in publishing and communications since 1977, mostly as a freelancer. Her extensive client list includes publishers; university, non-profit, government and corporate sectors; and private clients across many genres, both fiction and non-fiction. She has worked on more than 300 publications and projects. From 1990 to 1995 she managed Magabala Books, establishing publishing and administration systems for the then fledgling Indigenous publisher. Her next planned project is to co-author, with Stephanie Holt AE, the third edition of The Editor’s Companion, continuing the work of the late Janet Mackenzie DE.
Congratulations, Kerry, from all at IPEd. You deserve this great honour.