Beyond the Margins: Australian editors in conversation series | Q&A with the editors and creators
Beyond the Margins: Australian editors in conversation is a series of interviews with some of Australia’s most well-respected editors. In six written interviews and four audio interviews, they share their experiences, advice for aspiring editors and view of the industry.
The series originated from discussions within the editorial department of University of Queensland Press in 2023. We were concerned that the editor role so often went uncredited, making it difficult for emerging editors to learn about their field.
The interviews are far-ranging and fascinating, with topics as diverse as AI, tracked changes, the problems of the red pen and the ideal length of a structural report, not to mention memories of working with Barry Humphries, Lindy Chamberlain and more.
We are very thankful to the participating editors for giving us their time, humour and expertise, as well as University of Queensland Press for their support of the project. The Institute of Professional Editors has gone above and beyond to give Beyond the Margins a permanent home and help it find its audience. - Jacqueline Blanchard, Managing Editor (UQP), Felicity Dunning, Senior Editor (UQP), Margot Lloyd, Co-director (Pink Shorts Press)
What sparked the idea for Beyond the Margins, and why did you feel now was the right time to document the stories of Australian editors?
Felicity Dunning: Jacqueline, Margot and I were working together in UQP’s editorial corridor, and, as mid-career editors, we often complained to each other about the lack of professional development opportunities for Australian editors. We also queried why editing is such an ‘invisible’ and ‘behind the scenes’ role, and what makes editors stick with this career when they may never receive recognition for their incredible work with authors. This led to us wondering about who Australia’s best editors are, where they are now and whether they would be open to mentoring current and emerging editors. Brave and bold Jacqueline proposed that we could try contacting them and asking them to share their wisdom, and suggested IPEd might like to be involved in the project, and a few weeks later we were deep into a project application and the hunt for interviewees!
The project brings together some of Australia's most respected editors. How did you select the interviewees, and what range of experience and perspectives were you hoping to capture?
Felicity Dunning: Initially, we wanted to find Australia’s ‘best’ editors – those who had worked on award-winning and renowned Australian fiction and non-fiction, and who had been working in the industry for decades. The only problem was that these editors proved almost impossible to find! Many editors are only recognised in the author’s personal acknowledgements (if the author chooses to mention them), but newer additions of classic Australian books often don’t include the original acknowledgements. We were able to identify some editors through researching the titles they’d worked on, but we also reached out to contacts in the publishing industry (particularly experienced book publishers) to ask who their top editors were. We wanted to kick off the project with these more experienced editors as a legacy project and to celebrate their ‘invisible’ work – the list of the titles they have worked on and the authors they have worked with is phenomenal!
Margot Lloyd: We were also aware of trying to capture a broad range of experiences – those who had perhaps a more traditional career rising through the ranks of a big publishing house, and those who’d had to forge their own way at smaller presses, or even starting up a company of their own. It was difficult to track down contact details for everyone, and a few remained elusive. We were very sad when we heard Bruce Sims had died – that was very early in the project, and his name came up with so many of the editors that we spoke to. We were also aware that there’s so little money in editing, and here we were asking people to do yet more unpaid work to talk about it! We were so grateful to everyone who took the time to answer our questions.
What was the most surprising, thought-provoking or memorable insight that emerged from the interviews?
Felicity Dunning: My favourite insight came from Erica Wagner’s interview, as she speaks about how her confidence and involvement with projects has evolved over her career. Her description of becoming too attached to and protective of projects she was working on struck a chord with me, and I’ve got a quote from her interview written on a post-it note that I’ve stuck to my computer: ‘healthy detachment is very, very good’. It’s an excellent reminder every time I log on to start work!
Margot Lloyd: I loved talking to Mandy Brett and hearing her say that she gets cold feet at the beginning of every edit. Me too! Very very reassuring. I also just loved the picture that evolved of the different ways all these editors I admire so much approach their work. There were some common threads in the answers, but many differences, making it very clear that there’s no one ‘right’ way to be an editor.
The conversations cover everything from AI and tracked changes to structural reports and red pens. Were there any topics that came up repeatedly, and what do they reveal about the state of editing today?
Margot Lloyd: AI came up a lot! But so much of what we discussed was really about author care; the question of how to bring an author with you as an editor, how to be blunt or gentle when it’s needed, how to share a vision of what the book can be and bring it to life without overstepping the mark. There were many pieces of advice, big and small, that circled this one main point. And then, because we were asking editors about their careers, there was a lot of discussion of how people got started. What their first role was, who gave them their break, that kind of thing, which is so interesting to anyone thinking of making a career in editing.
Felicity Dunning: Something else that really stood out is that many of the problems we’re experiencing in the publishing industry today are similar to (and sometimes the same as) issues our interviewees were experiencing back in the seventies and eighties! These include issues around recognition of editors’ work, what’s expected of editors (and the low pay that often accompanies a high workload), and how we distinguish between the roles of editor and publisher in Australia. There are also some interesting insights in the interviews around why these problems developed (and why they have stuck around since).
What are the plans for Beyond the Margins in the future – will there be further instalments of interviews?
Felicity Dunning: We hope there will be further instalments! We had originally planned for multiple stages of the project – starting with legacy editors, then mid-career editors and then young/emerging editors – and we still have many names on our draft list of editors we’d like to contact in future! Editing can be a lonely business sometimes, and the connection and community we found while working on Beyond the Margins brought us great joy and a sense of feeling seen – we hope everyone who reads and listens to these interviews has the same experience.
