Welcome
Thank you for visiting my site. On this page I tell you a bit about myself and my business and business practices.
Mary Newberry Editorial Services is a sole proprietorship, within an extended community of colleagues. I am active in professional organizations for editors and for indexers.
Since 2000, after completing a BA in political science and literary studies and an MA in English and many years running my own and other people’s businesses, I have worked full time as a freelance editor, indexer, and teacher. My early passion was dancing, and it’s the self-discipline I learned then that is probably my greatest indirect asset now.
I have a long-term relationship with social justice and diversity and enjoy working in these arenas. I work primarily in the humanities, on academic, government, literary, creative arts and general interest texts and, now, in memoir. My clients are individuals and publishers, as well as governments.
Substantive and stylistic editing of literary non-fiction and scholarly writing are specialties of mine. I enjoy complex materials, helping to bring clarity and concision to emerging ideas. I often work with scholars for whom English is an additional language.
About half of my time is spent indexing for books. I developed the indexing course for Toronto Metropolitan University's Publishing Program and taught it for ten years, mentoring the new instructor in 2021. In 2016, I won the Ewart-Daveluy Award for excellence in indexing. Nigel Beale's podcast, Biblio File, features an interview with me, "Mary Newberry on the Joys of Indexing. Yes, Indexing."
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In Going Public: A Survivor’s Journey from Grief to Action (Between the Lines 2020) by law professor Julie Macfarlane, editor Mary Newberry was challenged with a personal story of sexual abuse interlinked with a discussion of the current legal context. Macfarlane said that Newberry was “the best editor I have ever worked with by far.” Newberry’s respect for the author’s voice showed throughout her work, as did her clear commitment to help the author, not just practically but emotionally as well. Shortlisted for Editors Canada, Tom Fairly Award for Editorial Excellence, 2021 |