EdTas President invites applications for IPEd Director
I continue to seek nominations for the position of IPEd Director for Editors Tasmania. While the job comes with significant responsibilities (IPEd’s directors are responsible for the governance of the organisation), the work involved is not onerous. Contact me for more information.
For the second year running, our pre-Xmas gathering will be lunch at the Man O’ Ross Hotel on 29 November. Join your colleagues for fun and fine food; book through the IPEd website.
I am excited by the possibilities of a hybrid conference. Access to recordings of presentations could mean I will never again have to choose between two or three equally enticing options in a particular time slot.
Elizabeth Spiegel AE
Member profile: Susan Scott AE
When our President requested a profile, I warned that it might be more about farming than editing at this time of year. My husband and I run a small sheep property in the Southern Midlands of Tasmania, breeding 1000 lambs each year for meat. Both of us having retired from our off-farm jobs, the farm now beckons. (He has been a shearer for 50 years and I have run the Oatlands branch of Libraries Tasmania for 27 years.) It was always my plan to do more editing post-retirement, and it looks promising.
Apart from a Diploma in Library and Information Studies, I have no tertiary qualifications. I became an Accredited Editor in 2014, and have worked on many different genres, including family history, poetry, general fiction and memoir. I also compiled and edited my own extended family history and found a passion for indexing in the process. This book, From the Proteus to prosperity: In the steps of John Walduck (1809–86), was the winner of the Tasmanian Family History Society’s Lilian Watson Award for 2019.
Currently, I am proofreading a young adult novel for a young Melburnian who wrote it while in lockdown, and also waiting on a family historian to finish her work. I have just finished copyediting another family history about a Midlands pastoral dynasty. Three young Sydney poets have come my way, and we are now the best of friends. But for COVID-19, I am certain we would have had at least one visit.
I also write a column called The Book Shelf for our tiny monthly Southern Midlands Regional News, and organise monthly writing challenges such as the perennial discussion on how to hang the washing out. Then I proofread the whole thing, usually around 40 pages, all on a voluntary basis.
Editing work feeds my addiction to accuracy, as well as providing opportunities for contact with like-minded word nerds such as yourselves. On the executive of Editors Tasmania, I juggle running the book discussion group and one or two community projects. Life is grand.
Susan Scott AE