I have always understood my role as an editor to be that of curious reader and responsive curator. These roles move in tandem. As a curious reader, I hold space for the author’s voice, offering a kind of figurative room, à la Virginia Woolf’s maxim. There is a deep joy, for me, in drawing close to language and breathing with the rhythms of a text. As a responsive curator, my discernment process starts in noticing the spirit of a manuscript and widens out to consider the manuscript in relation to the list of our other titles, the list in relation to the field at large. I am interested in resonances, especially unexpected ones. When a manuscript speaks to me as having good potential for our list, it is always the whole manuscript that speaks—its energy, a sense of aliveness. The initial decision to move forward is almost always based on intuition, on a feeling that there is something here. I aim to build a collection of titles in which each book stands strong individually while enriching the others. Book by book, hopefully the list feels both cohesive and dynamic, connected to its roots and always evolving.
—Suzanna Tamminen, director and editor in chief, Wesleyan University Press
Photo credit: C. Barrett