From the Editor

Abstract

From the Editor Brenda Machosky On Editing Dedicated to the Memory of Helen Tartar, editor extraordinaire Before I wrote my first book, I didn't fully understand how the "editor" really worked. In shepherding that first book to publication, I had the good fortune and excellent guidance of Helen Tartar, longtime humanities editor at Stanford University Press, underappreciated there and in a fit of downsizing, forced to relocate to Fordham University Press, where she was given the means and the opportunity to flourish, especially in her forte, working with young scholars. My book had its particular fits and starts and a bit of a challenge getting past the review board. I'll never forget sitting with Helen at a book exhibit, probably at the American Comparative Literature Association annual convention, a moment of quiet while everyone was in sessions, and figuring out the last revisions to my manuscript. It wasn't a long conversation, or a demanding one, but somehow, she was working her magic. I left that convention knowing exactly what I needed to do, and I marveled at her ability to help me figure that out. At that point, I started to know what an editor could do, to understand when writers talked about "my editor" and all that this relationship implied. I realized the full power of a talented and successful editor at the memorial service for Helen Tartar after her untimely death, again at a meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in New York City. Attendees were encouraged to bring copies of their books to display—too many to count and an awesome display of her range. But the stories told by those, like me, who were fortunate enough to work with her as an editor, deepened my understanding of what a good editor can do. Here were people, now well respected and established scholars, talking about their own "quiet moments" receiving her advice to get their struggling books through to publication. So now I am an editor, of a journal, a different kind of editing, and I am new at it. After a few issues in which I have learned the process, how to work with the publishing platform, and started to develop systems for solicitation and reviewers, I can now reflect on what it means to be an editor of this journal, Antipodes, and the editorial decisions I have already started to make. As I reviewed this issue's content, while simultaneously working on new submissions and calls for future issues, I started to reflect on my role, and responsibility, as an editor. The people I've admired most in academia have all been like Helen. They make the time to "pay it forward" to the next generation. Kuleana is an untranslatable Hawaiian word for something like fundamental responsibility. As an editor, my kuleana is to treat each submission with respect and encouragement. Teaching at a university without graduate students, editing is an opportunity for me to work with scholars making [End Page 3] their way into publishing, as an associate editor at Speculum did for me with my first article (when I barely knew what a page proof was, and the proof came in the mail!). And being an editor is a growth opportunity for me as I work with established scholars on publication. In editing a journal sponsored by an organization, the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS), I have been thinking of ways to make the project of each issue more shared, more collective. In the first issue I edited, there was already a special section devoted to the work of Alexis Wright, edited by Belinda Wheeler (33.1). And then, fortuitously, an opportunity to publish a special section on the topic of Southeast Asian Diasporic literature in Australia emerged from a Modern Language Association convention session that AAALS cosponsored (33.2). With volume 34, a pattern established itself, with a featured writer in the first issue of the volume and a special topic in the second. In this first issue of volume 34, Peter Mathews has edited the featured writer section about Brian Castro, and following, Eva Rueschmann is editing a special topic on film in...