Report on the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship 2003-2004

A report from editor and writer Rowena Lennox, recipient of the 2003 Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship award.

Named after the distinguished literary editor, the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship (BDEF) is awarded biennially to an Australian editor to work with publishing houses in the United States for up to three months. The BDEF is sponsored by the Literature Board, the Australian Publishers Association and individual Australian publishers.

The successful recipient of the 2003 BDEF was Rowena Lennox, an experienced freelance editor and writer whose project was to work with several publishing houses to study the writing of life stories and how these books were treated editorially.

In her application, Rowena wrote,

'I wanted to devise a project that would allow my writing and my editing practice to converge rather than diverge. Some of the most challenging and stimulating editing that had come my way was in the area of history and biography, and my first book Fighting Spirit of East Timor: the Life of Martinho da Costa Lopes won the 2001 NSW Premier's General History Award.'

'I didn't want to have to hide my writer's hat while I presented myself as an editor, or vice versa.'

Rowena's project investigated how successful books that combine imaginative writing and real people and events are developed editorially and then positioned in the market. Memoir, biography, history and fiction are separate genres, and are treated in a different way by publishers.

'The project was very open-ended,' she said. 'I wanted it to have a dynamic of its own, to lead me where it would. While I was interviewing people about my topic, researching the origins of the various books that interested me and observing the way books are displayed in NYC bookshops, more questions came to mind.'

'How do authors conceive and describe their books, especially if they are writing in genre-bending areas: memoir/current affairs, or fiction/history, for example? How do agents pitch books to editors? And after the hard work of writing is done, and all the editorial hurdles have been overcome and there is a book or a set of proofs, what does the marketing department do and how do publicists get that precious media attention?'

Rowena was in the United States from August to October 2003 and spent time with the following publishers: Doubleday Broadway, Hyperion and St Martin's Press.