President’s report
By Margaret Trudgeon
I hope everyone managed to get a bit of a break from work and other duties over Easter. March was a pretty active month for the branch. We started off with a trip to the theatre to see The Dictionary of Lost Words when 10 EdVic members turned up to enjoy a meal at The Barre in the Arts Centre followed by the show.
On 18 March, we heard Pallavi Narayan, an editor from India, speak about the publishing profession in India and Singapore, where she has had extensive experience working in the industry. Our inclusion and access adviser, Thirangie Jayatilake, fielded questions towards the end of the session. It was a fascinating talk and we hope it is the start of a long association with our fellow editors in India.
In late March, the committee held a planning meeting at the Wheeler Centre, where we discussed the upcoming ABM and our next committee term. We are still finalising a date, but we should be able to announce it soon. It was great to see many of our committee members in person and catch up on how they are going.
One of our members, Kim Smith, is hosting a morning coffee in Oakleigh on 12 April. If any other editors are keen to host a lunch or coffee morning in their area, please contact me. You don’t have to be a committee member to do this, and we can facilitate targeted advertising to your area at this end. It’s a great way to meet up with other editors in your area and reduce a bit of the isolation of working from home.
On 3 May, student adviser Steph Huddleston will be hosting her first “Ask an editor” session online, aimed at editing students around Australia and New Zealand. She has three practising editors lined up to talk about their experiences working in the areas of magazines, books, comms and government departmental editing.
Our Events subcommittee is also setting up an online talk by the Australian Copyright Council on their resources for editors, planned for the evening of 21 May.
Recently I received some archival material from one of our members and am looking to house it, either at the Victorian Archives Centre or the State Library. If you have experience and knowledge of archiving materials and might be interested in helping out the committee with this process, I would love to hear from you, as it’s not an area I’m very familiar with. Some of the material includes folders and CDs from a previous conference and some books from the old Editors Society of Victoria signed by past editing luminaries, including Janet Mackenzie. If you would like to help out, please contact me at edvic.president@iped-editors.org.
New members
Welcome to last month’s new members.
Student/graduate members
- Carianna Briggs
- Nicole Priest
The Dictionary of Lost Words
By Lee Ellwood AE and Kylie Howard
On Thursday 7 March, about 14 Victorian members enjoyed the Sydney Theatre Company’s stage production of The Dictionary of Lost Words at the Arts Centre Melbourne. It’s an imaginatively staged adaptation of Pip Williams’ bestselling novel that explores the inclusion and exclusion of women’s words through a fictional perspective of the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary. The play ran for around three hours, including interval, so many of us met up beforehand at an onsite restaurant to build up our strength.
While the outing wasn’t a formal EdVic event, we did coordinate it as a gathering, and we’re hoping to be able to host more face-to-face get-togethers throughout 2024. We’ll be looking out for talks, plays, movies, exhibitions or other events that draw editors like moths to flames, but if you know of something suitable, let us know at edvic.events@iped-editors.org!
