What's in Store for Red Pencil 2025?
The Northwest Editors Guild's 9th biennial Red Pencil Conference will take place on Saturday, November 8, 2025! This year's theme is Framing Our Future: Perspectives on a Changing Industry. The 2025 Red Pencil conference will explore how editors can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our industry during this time of rapid change.
With an inspiring keynote and a full day of sessions led by experts in our field, we'll examine the myriad challenges and opportunities facing editors today. These include the dizzying growth of AI, rising censorship and intellectual property theft, and preserving the diversity and value that is vital to our industry.
Happy Pride Month
June is LGBTQ+ Pride month, so we want to take the opportunity before it ends to highlight just a few of the editorial organizations and resources on representation and accuracy regarding these vibrant and beloved communities.
Gift Ideas for Editors and Other Literary Folk
Scrambling for gift ideas to wow the literary friends and family on your list this holiday season? We have a few suggestions for you! Disclaimer: Neither the author of this list nor the Northwest Editors Guild is being paid to advertise any of the companies below, and neither has any affiliation with them apart from the fact that several have received a lot of the author’s money over the years. Alas, she receives no discount for this privilege.
Cursing with Style with Erika M. Weinert, The Werd Nerd
Most editors of fiction (and probably at least a good portion of nonfiction editors, too) have had at least a few unusual expletives come across our desks. But if you start to feel like your latest style sheet would be bleeped on network television, you might need a style guide that covers more inventive swearing than Merriam-Webster and the Chicago Manual of Style are equipped to handle. You might need something like Cursing with Style: A Dicktionary of Expletives, available now, by Guild member Erika M. Weinert.
Content Warning: Since the subject matter is all about swear words and how to use them, this blog post contains significant amounts of adult language, as well as some slurs. We are discussing the words and their uses in a professional context, but if you don’t want to see words that would be censored on network television, consider skipping this blog post.
Meet the 2022 Board
Our all-volunteer board of directors changes a little bit every year, with most members serving a two-year term on the board that ends in February. This year we're saying farewell to 2021 board members Jesi Hanley Vega, Laura Whittemore, and Alison Cantrell, and welcoming new board member Megan Christy. MariLou Harveland, Kris Ashley, Sarah Peterson, Laura Shaw, Alicia Ramos, Erica Akiko Howard, and Ivonne Ward continue their service.
Instead of our usual formal biographies, the board this year decided to answer some fun questions as their introductions.
How to Get the Most Out of the Guild’s Member Directory
As a member of the Guild, of course you want to make sure that your profile on the member directory presents you in the best possible light to potential clients who might find you via our search page, but there’s a lot more to that than just selecting your areas of specialty (and keeping them updated as your career progresses). For example, did you know that clients can leave recommendations on your profile? Read on a few top tips on how to get the most out of the member directory.
Editing Certificate Programs — Are They Worthwhile?
Back in November of 2020, the blog committee surveyed Guild members to learn more about their opinions of editing certificate programs. We had a general sense, before we started, that a fair portion of Guild members had completed an editing certificate, but what we really wanted to know was: How worthwhile did editors wind up finding those programs after they’d completed them?
Welcome, 2021 Board Members!
Every year the Northwest Editors Guild’s board loses some past members and gains a few new ones, and every year here on the Guild’s blog we take a moment to introduce you to the dedicated volunteers on our board who work so hard to keep things running smoothly. This year we say farewell to outgoing board members Erin Cusick, Michael Schuler, and Matt Bennett, and hello to new members Sarah M. Peterson, Erica Akiko Howard, Alessandor Earnest, and Ivonne B. Ward!
Find out more about the new (and ongoing) board members below, and be sure to say hello if you meet them at an event.
Going ‘Whole Whale’ into Children’s Literature: An Interview with Karen Yin
I’m happy to say that my little boy is very interested in books, so I’ve spent a lot of the last few months cuddled up on the couch reading board books and other children’s literature.
Lucky for me, I was able to chat over email about this exact subject with Karen Yin, well-known in editing circles as the force behind the Conscious Style Guide, and familiar to Guild members as the wonderful keynote speaker at our 2017 Red Pencil conference! She has recently made the dive into children’s literature with an upcoming picture book geared toward three-to-six-year-olds entitled Whole Whale, due out from Barefoot Books in May 2021 (preorder here).
Covid-19 Changes for Editors
Almost all of us have experienced some changes in the work we do and the way we do it thanks to Covid-19. We wanted to know how those changes are impacting our members, so the Guild’s blog team recently reached out to the membership via email for stories of how the pandemic was affecting their work. We received an interesting spread of responses!