Editors NSW

The juggling act of memoir editing and ghostwriting

Topic: Working with other people's stories is a complex, delicate and ultimately rewarding task. Lucy Palmer of The Memoir Makers is a passionate writer and editor who brings patience, intuition and years of experience to her work on other people's personal memoirs.

In this talk, Lucy will discuss her work as an editor and ghostwriter of memoirs, touching on many topics – such as how to:

Edit for clarity and flow while retaining the subject's authentic individual voice

Get "inside the subject's head" and draw out what they really mean

Deal with transcripts – condensing, editing, and turning a spoken voice into a written one

Edit memoirs where the subject's first language is not English

Presenter: Lucy Palmer is an award-winning journalist, memoir writer, and editor. A year ago, Allen and Unwin published her acclaimed memoir, “A Bird on My Shoulder”, and the University of Queensland published “Playing the Game: Life and Politics in Papua New Guinea” by Sir Julius Chan, for which she acted as ghost writer, editor, agent and publicist.

Lucy was the first European woman to walk across both the Simpson and Great Sandy deserts, a distance of more than 1500 kilometres.

She has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald, the BBC, and Radio National and was awarded a Gold Medal at the New York Arts Festival for her radio documentary, Birdsville to Alice. Lucy lives in the Southern Highlands.

Event details:

Time: 6.30 pm for 7.00 pm start

Venue: Level 1,

Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts

280 Pitt Street, City

Bookings: Click here to book the October meeting

Cost: $20 members; $25 non members; $10 concession

And you can find all meetings and workshop details listed under the Events tab at the top of the home page.