By Deborah Shaw AE
I’m always interested in learning about how editors and book people find their way into the industry. Many editors seem to fall into editing unintentionally. Perhaps they became the “word person” at their office, or they applied for a job at a publishing house without it being their dream job, but it became that.
Claire Mabey’s journey shows how niche interests can get you work anywhere, even as far away as Belgium.
Claire joined us as our guest speaker following our Editors ANZ annual branch meeting in September. Her talk, “A look at the books”, walked us through her editing, writing, publishing and writers festival career. And she shared her views on the current state of the Aotearoa book festival scene and publishing scene more broadly.
Claire opened her talk with an image of Hildegard of Bingen, a figure she’d studied as part of her art history honours degree. After graduating, she completed the Whitireia publishing diploma. She worked within the Aotearoa book and festival scene, but during her master’s, she got an email from a Belgian publishing company looking for someone who specialised in mediaeval scholarship. Her dissertation on Hildegard and her Whitireia experience helped get her the job. Those niche interests sometimes do pay off! (I’ve had a similar experience – one of my semi-regular clients chose to work with me because we both studied philosophy at the University of Otago, albeit in different years.)
After enjoying her time in Belgium, and later the UK, Claire felt Aotearoa calling her back, and she returned to the book festival world. In 2014, she started Verb Wellington. She loves the energy that people bring to festivals – the writers, the readers, and for Verb, the performers. She highlighted the recent performance of poet Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh and her event dedicated to Keri Hulme.
But the festival scene is changing, particularly around funding. Creative New Zealand is “drastically underfunded”, and this year some festivals got a lot less funding than usual, while many festivals didn’t get any. She’s predicting that this is a lull, not a full negative downward spiral. But organisers are having to think more about using the public funding they get and tapping into private sector funding too. She also gave the example of partnering with Te Matapihi, Wellington’s new library, to host events.
In addition to her festival work, Claire also loves her role as the books editor for The Spinoff. It’s brought her back into the book world through her writing, editing and curation. She gets to publish serious stories (like this one on Narrative Muse, which she wrote), and less serious stories (like this one where guest writer Luke Wilson ranked Tolkien’s Hobbits).
Like the festival scene, the publishing scene is suffering from underfunding. The stressors of the wider economy have meant that for many readers, books “are being seen as a bit of a luxury item”.
Claire has also experienced the publishing industry from an author’s perspective. Her book, The Raven’s Eye runaways, was published last year by Allen & Unwin. She really enjoyed the publishing process and loved her editor, Jane Parkin. “Phenomenal” was Claire’s quote.
For the fiction editors among us, Claire said that her experience gave her the perception that there’s a demand for great fiction editors and homegrown fiction more broadly. She sees the scene moving in a positive direction, with lots of people writing. “It’s great for New Zealand to have this sense of thriving in our storytelling,” she says. Though she also acknowledges how competitive the industry is.
During the Q&A, Claire shared her thoughts on what editors can do to help make the editing and publishing process better for authors. We discussed dream festival speakers, funding for festivals and literary endeavours, and how festivals can share resources. We also shared our favourite festivals from around the country.
Thank you to everyone who could make it on the night.
Verb Readers and Writers Festival 2024 – 7 to 10 November, Wellington
Some of my favourite articles from Claire:
A recording of this presentation is available to purchase and view until Friday 10 January 2025.