President’s report
by Margaret Trudgeon AE
November was a busy month for Editors Victoria, featuring a key event and a couple of workshops, along with a networking lunch, two coffee mornings in Ballarat and an in-person planning meeting for the committee to work on next year’s offerings.
On Tuesday 19 November our inclusion and access advisor, Thirangie Jayatilake, interviewed two notable advocates on the topic of diversity in publishing – Susannah Bowen and Radhiah Chowdhury. They related their personal experiences in the publishing industry and reflected on some of the issues. Thirangie has written a short report on the event, and the recording will be available soon if you were unlucky enough to miss it on the night.
We held a networking lunch at Arcadia Cafe in Fitzroy on 14 November. There was just a small group of us on the day, but we enjoyed some great conversation and food (see photo, which was taken sometime after we had finished eating!) and we dawdled there until mid-afternoon. It was great to see some new faces, with a couple of editing students and a publishing intern turning up to see what we are up to. It was also great to catch up with Stephanie Holt AE and former committee member Bridget Blair AE. Jenn Zabinskas also held two coffee mornings in Ballarat during the month, attracting a similar number of people. It’s great to see the regional areas supporting their local editors.
In PD, Hilary Cadman’s editing tools workshop sold out. Hopefully we can run another one in 2025. Nadine Davidoff’s “Editing narrative non-fiction” also proved popular, held in late November. That will conclude our PD offerings for this year, but Sophia is working on an exciting calendar of workshops for next year, including plain English with Philip Bryan (in person); editing ebooks with Sarah Fletcher; editing point-of-view with Nadine Davidoff, and a grammar refresher, also with Nadine.
On 21 November we held a committee planning day to review our year and discuss plans for next year. We were lucky to be able to use the board room at the Wheeler Centre, which had great facilities including a large screen to beam in those members who couldn’t make it. It felt very official! We followed it with a delicious lunch at The Moat downstairs. I’d like to thank all the committee members for their hard work over the year. There have been a few new committee members join this year and they have worked tirelessly to learn their new roles. And our subcommittee members shine with their enthusiasm and fresh approaches!
By the time this report comes out, we will be about to hold our in-person Christmas event with Graeme Simsion, who will talk about his experiences as an author and the editor–author relationship. The elves are working hard behind the scenes to create some amazing gift packs for lucky attendees. I hope you can make it! It should be a really enjoyable evening.
Kylie from Events also has some great plans for 2025, beginning with Debbie Lee talking about self-publishing in February, and another presentation on editing annual reports. We’ll also be running some more events on diversity in publishing topics.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, with some sort of break from work. We’ll be taking a month off from our Editors Victoria duties, but we look forward to seeing you all in 2025 for another jam-packed year of events, PD, lunches, coffees and the return of cuppas!
See you next year!
Margaret