It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind when EFA LA’s chapter coordinators sat down and planned out 2020, but the turnout was fantastic! Using the EFA’s Zoom account, members were able to attend our summer meeting without getting on a freeway. Editors poured in from as far away as Agoura Hills and Newbury Park in the north and San Diego in the south—that’s a coverage spread of 167 miles as the condor flies! Linda Ruggeri moderated the meeting, while Maria Alonzo ran the chat room. The agenda was informal, with members introducing themselves and their businesses. A range of editorial-related fields were represented from page and cover design to translation to permissions, and, of course, the usual suspects were there too—fiction, nonfiction, academic, education, and children’s book editors. Our question for the partygoers: What topics are of interest to you for career growth? New editors were interested in client-list building; networking and pricing were also popular interests. Publishing trends, conference engagement, and customer relations were also proposed. We updated members on the EFA rates survey and Welcome Program and on the LA Times Festival of Books, which has gone virtual. Two more Zoom meetings were scheduled for October and December.

Caption:

Left to right, top: Linda Ruggeri, Janet Long, Maria Alonzo, Sara Lawson; second row: Marcella Lopez, Elizabeth von Schoff, Ricardo Stanton-Salazar, Christine Van Zandt; third row: Tammy Ditmore, Helga Schier, Lorraine Martindale, Heather Rothman; bottom: Felicity Helfand, Susan Shankin, Chris Kolwalchuk’s pug, Karen Ehrmann. Not pictured but very much present: Judy Gruen and Pat Davies.

Janet Long
Los Angeles Chapter Co-Coordinator