We’re thrilled to (finally!) introduce Jessica Hemming, the newest member of our Collective. Not wasting any time, Jessica has already taken on several editing projects since joining us. Curious about the work she does? So were we! Cascadia Editors co-founder Judith Scholes recently caught up with Jessica to chat about her story.
Jessica, you’ve been editing for many years now. Can you tell us what kind of editing you do? What is your particular specialty?
Sure. I’ve been doing various kinds of editing since I was a graduate student—which was a while ago—starting with helping other grad students with essays and occasionally professors with book manuscripts. Those were informal jobs, but I then did a year of formal bibliographic editing at the University of Leeds in England, soon after I finished my PhD. My editorial work at the journal Folklore began at around the same time; so, it’s mostly been quite academic editing.
Ah, yes—that’s usually what I’m diving into! Tell me more about Folklore and your history there.
Folklore is the journal of The Folklore Society, an association in London for anyone interested in folk traditions—scholars and non-scholars. I was taken on at first as a book reviews editor and subsequently as assistant editor, and held those two positions simultaneously for quite a long time. Since 2013 I have been Folklore’s editor-in-chief. It’s a great job because the articles are so varied: the field is extremely interdisciplinary and the authors come from all over the world. With four issues per year, I’m always learning new things and I get a lot of practice working with writers whose first language is not English. And with publishers. I work very closely with our publisher’s production department.
It sounds like—through Folklore—you’ve engaged with writers at every step of the publication process. You’ve also worked with students for many years. Until very recently you were teaching medieval history and English literature at Corpus Christi College in Vancouver.
Yes! So, teaching is great, but as you know it does demand all your time and energy. After 17 years at Corpus—working for Folklore all along too—I decided I wanted to turn to editing full time. Also, my whole family up and left the city to buy a multi-generational horse farm on Vancouver Island!
A wonderful place to write! How are you connecting with authors in need of an editor, now that you’re in a rural area?
Islands are full of writers! I’m active in a number of communities, both virtually and in person: I am continuing with my own research and I attend conferences; the journal keeps me in touch with a huge pool of writers, some of whom write non-fiction in addition to their scholarly articles. I also have a lot of former students and helping graduate students prepare papers for submission to journals is a specialty of mine.
Now that I’m no longer based at a university, I am expanding beyond academic editing into a range of non-fiction areas, in both book and essay format. Particular interests include place-writing, environmental and nature writing, children, animals, gardening, small farms . . . Plus, my interdisciplinary humanities background means that I can also edit books that present the results of complex research in accessible form to a general audience.
Well, this all sounds really exciting! Thanks for sharing, Jessica. I look forward to regular news (and pictures!) from the farm, perhaps on this very blog? In the meantime, if you could wave a magic wand and edit one or two non-fiction, non-academic books that are already published, what would they be?
What a fantastic question! There are so many, many options, but here are two: Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses (2021) and Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran (which is really two books, first published in 1986 and 1995).