Seligman’s inside dope on editing

In the weekend Globe & Mail, Sarah Hampson interviews Ellen Seligman, publisher of fiction and vice-president of McClelland & Stewart, one of Canada’s oldest publishing companies. The company’s faced some upheaval of late, what with Random House flexing its corporate muscles more than it has before. But Seligman’s in a celebratory mood, having just won the Canadian Book Association Libris Award for editor of the year – an honor, she says, is due to what she’s learned over the years from editing the likes of Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry and Leonard Cohen:

“You read a book, and maybe one can say what maybe needs work or what could use revision here and there. So, a reader might be able to do that. But if you’re really going to be useful, I think an editor has to understand what is possible to do. So you learn to develop the idea that ‘Okay, this is this book’ and you learn to make a distinction between what changes would make it another book as opposed to what can be done with the rough parameters of what the author wants to do with this book. I’ve learned that over time, and not from any specific author,”

What about the state of Canadian literature, then and now? : “Now there are writers from all over the world who are Canadian. They’re bringing a new out-of-Canada perspective, and that is something very different,” Seligman said. “Don’t forget that Michael Ondaatje was once considered an experimental writer. I remember fighting with the sales department to sign [his first novel] In the Skin of a Lion. They were trepidacious. But it was a huge success. Suddenly, the world grew up.”

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