Please remember that presentations
- Must be ten to fifteen minutes long (per person).
- Must be accompanied by a two-page handout (per person).
- Must cover material that will be of interest and value to the class. That is, presentations must supplement course content.
- Must be well organized and well delivered. (If you want to use the colloquium room, please let me know, and I'll try to reserve it for you.)
- Will receive letter grades.
Your presentations can be based on interviews with professionals in the field of editing and publishing (I've suggested several below) or be the product of your own research.
Possible Interviewees
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| George Beetham Jr. |
George E. Beetham Jr., executive editor of
The Review, a weekly newspaper in northwestern Philadelphia, and author of the earth-science column
Adventures on Earth.
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| Thomas Farber |
Thomas Farber, novelist, essayist, short-fiction writer, recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, publisher and editor-in-chief of
El León Literary Arts.
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Bill Hamilton (right) with Buddy Bess,
of Bess Press, at the Frankfurt Book Fair. |
William Hamilton, director and publisher of the
University of Hawai‘i Press. Also serves as director of East-West Export Books, which markets the books of fifty-five North American scholarly publishers throughout Asia and the Pacific. Entered book publishing in 1969 and, prior to assuming the directorship at Hawai‘i in 1987, held sales, marketing, editorial, and executive positions in commercial publishing with Addison-Wesley and Macmillan. Taught workshops on book publishing to hundreds of would-be writers in the state. Member of the editorial board of the literary journal
Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing; contributing author to a widely used trade book on book publishing; project manager for
Atlas of Hawai‘i (third edition), the four-volume
Hawaiian National Bibliography, 1780-1900, and
The University of Hawai‘i: A Portrait. Also serves on publishing-related committees in the U.S., Canada, and China.
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| Gary Mawyer |
Gary Mawyer, fiction writer,
anime scholar, managing editor of the
Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing, a prominent medical journal published by the University of Virginia.
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| Anjoli Roy / Aiko Yamashiro |
Anjoli Roy, former Abernethy fellow at
Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, guest editor of
Manoa’s winter 2010 issue
(Wild Hearts), coeditor of
Vice-Versa: Creative Works and Comments. Aiko Yamashiro, coeditor of
Vice-Versa: Creative Works and Comments and
Routes, an anthology of works about TheBus in Hawai‘i.
 |
| Frank Stewart |
Frank Stewart, poet, essayist, recipient of the Hawai‘i Award for literature, editor of
Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.
Sample Questions
- Were you selected for your position from a field of applicants? If so, why do you think you were chosen?
- If you founded your own organization, can you tell me what your mission was when you started? Has it changed over the years? If it has, please explain how and why.
- What kind of training/assistance did you receive when you started?
- Do you have assistants? If so, how many are there? What qualifications must they have? What kind of training do they get?
- What kinds of computer software and hardware do you use in your work? Did you receive formal computer training, or did you learn on the job?
- Tell me about your editorial policies:
• How do you select manuscripts for publication?
• What kind of copyediting do these manuscripts receive?
• How do you handle authors whose manuscripts you edit extensively?
- Would you be willing to give me samples of your forms? For example, production schedules, agreements or contracts with authors, and/or editorial policies. These will be shared with my classmates as part of my presentation; if you like, I can return the samples to you after my presentation.
- Do you ever receive praise or criticism from the readers of your books/issues? If the latter, how do you handle it?
- What books/issues are you working on right now?
- Tell me your favorite editing story.
Possible Research Projects
- Create a fictitious company and discuss your product, policies, and organizational structure. For example, you might create a company called The Copy Cats, which offers copyediting and proofreading services to individuals, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses. You could describe your services in detail, including your rates; explain how you correspond with your clients about their material; list who's on your staff and describe each person's area of expertise; list some of your clients and describe how you've helped each one. If you choose this kind of presentation, please create a five-page manuscript that shows your editing. (This manuscript will be the handout for both you and your partner.)
- Report on the career of someone who shaped publishing in Hawai‘i. For example, you might chart the transformation of student writer Mahealani Dudoit into the editor and publisher of the ground-breaking ‘Oiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal.
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| Mahealani Dudoit |
