Friends, 

First, I want to say how pleased I am to meet those of you who attended! Getting to know each other and sharing our journeys, experiences, and wisdom with one another is exactly what I am hoping for with this cohort! I look forward to getting to know you as time goes on and forming friendships and working relationships. 

To that end, there are a few things from the meeting I wanted to share with everybody because we are looking at putting together some resources and doing some things in this chapter that I think will benefit everybody. I'm very excited to share them all with you! 

First, we now have a Google Sheets document that folks are using to share their contact information and expertise in a way we can quickly and easily reference to reach out to folks, share jobs if needed, or network. You can find that at this link: here

The intent of this document is not to replace the Community at community.the-efa.org but to provide a quick reference document for folks to find individuals in their geographic region or folks who work in their specialties if they need to refer a client or want to ask a question. I encourage folks to put their information on there so we can find each other easily! 

Second, I am going to be working on composing a document (again, community edited) that will have information on local bookish events that we could consider having an EFA table at and/or share tables at for those of us who are also authors or generally be present at. I have a beginning list (thanks Kayleigh!) and hope others will add to this over time. I'll be sending out an email with that list in the coming days as I create it. 

Lastly, I am looking to compile a list of schools with writing programs where we could see if we can speak with professors/staff there to work with those folks. This does not need to be limited just to our local area since with digital tools, we can speak to people across the country. 

To explain this, it's soapbox time!

As an EFA board member, one of my big pet projects is going to be fostering more partnership with colleges and the EFA. The reason for this is two-fold. Obviously, writing programs (and editing programs) are where we will find up-and-coming authors who are looking for editors. We will also find up-and-coming editors who would be interested in joining the EFA as colleagues! This is one of the big places we can help the EFA grow as an organization as well as help authors learn about us as a resource.

The other (and more personally important) reason for this outreach is because we all know someone, or are that someone, who has been taken advantage of by bad actors. Whether it was as an author who was bilked out of money for services or as an editor who was mistreated, underpaid, or otherwise treated poorly. Those stories are a dime a dozen, and you cannot throw a plushie (throwing rocks is just mean) without finding someone in our community who has been affected in that way. If the EFA can step in and provide access, awareness, and resources to authors and editors to help them avoid those pitfalls and bad actors, we will be doing a major service to the entire writing and publishing community. 

To that end, I am hoping we can develop a working partnership with local colleges (or even high schools!) where we can have editors speak and act as resources for those communities to help foster a safer, healthier, and more inclusive publishing environment for our future generations.

Okay, off my soapbox. 

The last order of business is that I intend to set these meetings up to be monthly! There are folks looking for community, mastermind groups, co-working, chances to meet for coffee with other folks in the offline world, and other things, and I want to encourage and develop this here in New England. I know us New Englanders are largely the "get off my lawn" kind of people, but we do have an affection for coffee, so maybe that will be the magic word. Coffee. ;) 

Keep an eye out for future events. I will be setting up next month's meeting pretty soon. I expect they will be lunchtime meetings for about an hour unless we schedule a speaker, in which case I'd like to set up an hour and a half to allow for introductions, a good in-depth session, and a chance to chat afterward. 

Take care, friends! And please, if you need anything, have questions, or are looking for support, send me an email. I'm here to serve the community as best I can.

Warmest regards,
E. Prybylski
EFA New England Chapter Coordinator
EFA Board Member