Double take
Who doesn’t find a few words stubbornly hard to spell? When I encounter one of my bugbears, I scribble down multiple versions of it, and the correct one usually jumps out at me. For example, is it “accomodate,” “acommodate,” or…
A celebration of Canadian children’s books
The Canadian Children’s Book Centre announced the winners of seven awards for children’s literature at a gala event in Toronto last night. Our congratulations to all the winners, including Heather Smith, who won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for…
Storytelling in non-fiction business writing
While doing substantive edits of several business books this year, I found myself repeating the same thing over and over again to authors: “This section could use more of a storytelling style.” These books were about different business subjects, but…
Merrie-Ellen Wilcox’s After Life nominated for two major awards
How thrilling to see WCEA partner Merrie-Ellen Wilcox’s book After Life: Ways We Think About Death nominated for not just one, but two major awards: the $50,000 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the $10,000 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s…
Acknowledging Indigenous territories
West Coast Editorial Associates recently included an Indigenous territorial acknowledgement on the Contact page of our website: We are grateful to the Indigenous keepers of the traditional and unceded lands on which we live and work: the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh,…
A visit to one of the world’s largest rare book libraries
One afternoon last April, on a quest to gather information about biologist and author Rachel Carson for a book I would be writing, I guided my behemoth rental car along the grey streets of New Haven, Connecticut. The windshield wipers…
Over the moon(beam)
We're thrilled to announce that WCEA partner Rowena Rae and her sister, Elspeth Rae, have received a 2018 Moonbeam Award for their book A Duck in a Sock: Four Phonics Stories, the first in their Meg and Greg series of chapter books for…
Prize-worthy children’s books
Finalists were recently announced for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards and the Victoria Book Prizes, and we were thrilled to see three books we worked on for Orca Book Publishers among the nominees. Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of…
New book launch
Congratulations to WCEA partner Merrie-Ellen Wilcox, whose new non-fiction book, After Life: Ways We Think About Death (Orca Book Publishers), is launching in Victoria on September 8 (see time and place details below). Books will be available for sale, and a…
Story and structure: Opening our minds
At an October 2017 seminar in Vancouver, Greg Younging treated editors and other publishing folk to a sneak peek at his forthcoming book, Elements of Indigenous Style. Since the book hit stores in February 2018, it’s been sailing off the…