A collective of PhD students is organizing this workshop on Navigating Book Publishing as/for Racialized Academics with Fiona Jeffries (she/her), Acquisitions and Development Editor for Fernwood Publishing. Fiona will discuss the process of publishing a book—exploring topics, including but not limited to, preparing book proposals, coordinating contributors, timeline, editing, copyright, and other best practices. 

Are you interested? Please save the date and RSVP here so we can share any updates and get some of your feedback. The event will be in person at the McGill Education Building Learning Commons (1st floor, 3700 McTavish).

Do you have a class scheduled at that time? Let us know in the RSVP, and we will contact the prof and let them know about the event so they can be flexible in their scheduling, and encourage interested students in attending.

More context:

In the social sciences, and in education in particular, publications other than in peer-reviewed journals are often undervalued as a mode of knowledge production. This is particularly true in some of our departments. We remember on several occasions during graduate seminars where professors have undermined book chapters concerning its value as currency within the institution. However, such an assessment inherently undermines their intellectual value, transformative potential, and contribution to meaningful scholarship. We would like to offer an opportunity for graduate students and junior faculty to learn about book publishing whether via the form of a single author book manuscript or co-editing a volume.

As students participating and coordinating many reading and study groups, this has been a recurring interest for a wide diversity of students, and these workshops will offer important discussions that we have not seen in the last decade of grad student offerings. We also believe that these workshops will appeal to and rally students across disciplines into a meaningful dialogue about knowledge mobilization and accessibility.

Why Fernwood

Here, we center this workshop (among a series) for (emerging) scholars whose academic work attends to the political goals of social justice, specifically those of Black studies and anticolonial studies. We invited Fiona Jeffries, an editor from Fernwood Publishing, because of Fernwood’s mission statement, and the political commitment of their publications.