State of the Guild 2021
By Jesi Vega
If you’re relatively new to the Guild, you are probably unaware that back in the day, prior to the pandemic, the Guild would host an annual potluck in Seattle. In addition to providing an occasion for members to eat yummy food and get to know each other better, the potluck was also the site of the Guild’s Board President’s “State of the Guild” address. This address served as a report-back to the members, but it was also an opportunity to educate members about the current scope, vision, and goals of the Guild as well as the work done by our Board of Directors (here are the 2019 and 2020 addresses). Once the pandemic hit, however, and the Guild’s potlucking days receded into the past, what was once a live “address” migrated to the internet and became a blog post.
So here it is, the State of the Guild, circa 2021, as told by your current President, Jesi Vega.
I’ll start at the beginning. In 2019, Editors Guild President Elaine Duncan took me to coffee and invited me to join the Guild’s Board of Directors. Back then, when not only potlucks but other Guild events were still held in person, I’d been volunteering and attending member meetings so Elaine knew of me as a committed Guild member. Even though, at the time, I had little idea of what our board actually did, as an editor whose work centers writers of color, I accepted Elaine’s invitation with the expectation that my commitment to equity and representation would make a positive impact on the board and on the Guild in general.
Then 2020 happened. First, in March, most of the Guild’s plans for the year became obsolete. And then in June, white America’s consciousness was jarringly raised by the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matters protests erupting all over the country. Like so many organizations, the Guild responded to the pandemic by taking all our events online, and responded to the unrest by releasing a statement of commitment to a just and equitable society.
Photo of a woman’s hand writing “2021: Survive!” on lined notebook paper by Meruyert Gonullu from Pexels.
When I began my term as president of the board in January 2021, I was both hopeful that pandemic restrictions would subside and excited to build on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work we’d begun in 2020. The previous October, our entire board had attended an equity training led by educators from Seattle’s HeARTwork Collective and in 2021 we’d hoped to bring that training — or something like it — to the membership at large. However, I soon discovered that simply keeping the Guild up and running in yet another pandemic year was a feat in itself.
As the results of our most recent member survey (to be reviewed in detail in a future blog post) revealed, for many editors the pandemic barely put a dent in the editorial workload, so in 2021 our all-volunteer board remained busy with work and personal lives in addition to their Guild duties. Nevertheless, the technological wonder that is Zoom meant we could continue to hold events online and we successfully hosted six Member Meetings, 22 Regional Meetings, nine Editor Mentoring events and 36 Happy/Coffee Hours, as well as a number of board recruitment and Red Pencil planning events. In addition, Guild volunteers continued to produce monthly blog posts, the Guild started delivering job opportunities via email, and we maintained a healthy number of discussions on our email list.
Speaking of that member survey, that in itself was a triumph on a number of levels. With responses from 188 members, the survey gave Guild board members a comprehensive look at who our members are, the work they do and the benefits they gain from Guild membership. By sharing basic information about themselves and their careers, and giving us feedback about their participation with the Guild, Guild members who contributed made us better prepared to serve them in the coming year and give them more of what they want. To everyone who took the time to fill out the survey — thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting the Guild to continue growing and serving editors in the Northwest.
Still, you may wonder, what of my personal commitment to literary justice and the Guild’s promise to “continue working toward a just and equitable society that honors and values Black lives?”
In May, I launched the monthly Editors of Color Coffee Hour. Recognizing that Guild membership is overwhelmingly white, I reached out to editors of color all over the country, inviting them to come together in a virtual safe space where we could connect, vent and grow together — and they came! Editors from a wide variety of backgrounds have joined in from Washington, California, Texas, New York, Canada, and even Barbados. For editors accustomed to being the “only” person of color, or only one of a few, in most professional settings, the opportunity to get to know each other and compare notes has been a rare privilege. Aside from our Zoom meetings, we also keep the conversations going throughout the month on our group’s community Slack channel. To say it’s been a satisfying experience would be an understatement.
And yet, despite this overwhelmingly positive result, I learned that editors of color bonding on Zoom and Slack didn’t satisfy the needs of white editors who want to do their part to increase diversity in our field and support literary justice. Certainly many Guild members, individually or otherwise, are already engaged in this work, but, for much of this year, the Guild’s additional DEI efforts remained unformed. Thankfully, earlier this month, the Executive Committee revised the Guild’s Strategic Plan for DEI to incorporate what we learned this year and to renew our commitment to diversity. We did this with an eye not only towards the needs of white editors and editors of color, but also addressing the reality that our membership needs to be educated about their own biases, racism and privilege before they can take meaningful steps.
A culture of diversity and inclusivity at the Guild must be more than a matter of optics; it must go deeper than counting Black, Brown, Asian and Indigenous faces at meetings or among our members and clients. It must be a matter of understanding the complex relationships between the often unconscious things we think and feel, the actions we take, and the society we live in. It must be a matter of recognizing our own toxic patterns of white supremacy and misogyny, even when those are deeply embedded and unconscious. In simplest terms, a culture of diversity and inclusivity at the Guild demands that we show respect for everyone with whom we interact, whether we share a race, ethnicity, ability, gender, orientation or beliefs with that person or not.
This is why the board also expanded the Guild’s programming policy and Code of Conduct this year. Discovering that tensions behind the scenes had hampered some of our best efforts, we realized that members lacked a discreet way to make complaints or seek mediation when personality conflicts arose. This lack of recourse allowed conflicts to simmer and, in some instances, caused frustrated volunteers to step away from their roles. Starting in 2022, whether you’ve had a negative experience or interaction with another Guild member, a board member, or a Guild program, you will be able to let Member Services know (anonymously or not) via a link on our Code of Conduct page and through the program evaluations we will be distributing at the close of every program.
Lastly (and thank you for reading this far), this State of the Guild must include a shout-out for the incredibly dedicated board with which I’ve served, including my stellar Executive Committee of Editorial Witches: Secretary Sarah Peterson, Treasurer Laura Shaw, VP of Member Services Kris Ashley and VP of Board Development MariLou Harveland. I also want to acknowledge our volunteer coordinator Allison Cantrell and board members at large, Alicia Ramos, Erika Akiko Howard, Laura Whittemore, and Ivonne Ward. In addition to the board, Jill Walters continued to reliably maintain our social media presence and Kristen Stein worked assiduously on our blog until moving on from the role in July. And, in case you could possibly be unaware, the Guild would be lost without the steadying wisdom and service of administrator Jen Grogan.
Before I close, I want to again acknowledge VP of Board Development, MariLou Harveland. When I somewhat reluctantly accepted the position of president last year, I doubted I could handle all the logistics that would come with it. MariLou promised she’d be there for me every step of the way and she was. I couldn’t have done any of this without her and even if I could have, I would not have laughed as much and enjoyed it so thoroughly.
Lastly, please consider volunteering in the coming year. If the Guild has been of benefit to you, there are so many ways you can return the favor: board service, coffee/happy hour hosting and blog writing are just a few. The State of the Guild would not be what it is without the generosity of its member-volunteers who are dedicated not only to the craft and profession of editing, but to maintaining a place where we can continue to gather, learn and grow. We’d love you to join us in keeping the Guild strong.
