Are you familiar with KAA’s Cultural Accuracy & Sensitivity Editorial Services department? Led by KAA Senior Editor Hannah Gómez, PhD, the CASE department offers editorial guidance to authors and other creators who want to ensure their work is culturally accurate, sensitive, authentic, and socially responsible. That could mean anything from writing characters from different cultural backgrounds, setting a story in a foreign country, representing things like trauma or violence responsibly, or simply making sure you are treating your audience with the respect and care they deserve. Any genre of book and any writer can benefit from the help of a cultural accuracy and sensitivity editor. (And so can video game producers, ad agencies, museum interpreters, and anyone else who produces content for the public.)
Clients come to KAA’s CASE department because of our discretion, reputation in the publishing industry, and extensive pool of editors, some of whom work exclusively for us. You can learn more about how cultural accuracy and sensitivity editing works here, but today we wanted to share more information about some of the amazing editors we have on our team!
CASE editors have one major thing in common: they love to read and are passionate about making books the best they can be. To that end, many of them have held jobs in literary, publishing, and educational fields, including as composition and English professors, booksellers, librarians, literacy tutors, and even VP and Publisher of a Big 5 publishing company! A number of them are published authors who have achieved successes and honors including being nominated for an NAACP Image Award, being named writer or poet in residence at libraries and writing centers, and receiving the Newbery Honor Medal, Dylan Thomas Prize (Finalist), Schneider Family Book Award, Lambda Literary Award (Finalist), and Stonewall Book Award, among many others.
You may wonder what else qualifies them to do this unique, important job, and the answer is, it varies! Everyone comes with their own set of skills, lived experiences, and interests, and we match their expertise with a client’s needs when staffing projects. Whoever is assigned to your project will have close, deep knowledge of the identity, culture, niche experience, or marginalized community you’ve requested, as well as special training in how to provide substantive commentary and actionable advice for your project that takes into account the needs and sensitivities of the group or experience being represented as well as the creative or commercial needs of the client.
Our CASE team is fluent in more than 25 languages, including Amharic, American Sign Language, Finnish, Hindi, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish. (And we are proud to say we also offer translation services for some of those languages!) Together, our team has earned more than 60 master’s degrees, three law degrees, and more than 10 doctorates. While most of us are based in the US, UK, or Canada, our team is also made up of residents of or emigrants from countries including Brazil, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, and South Korea. They are also tribally affiliated or enrolled as Nanticote, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Métis, Lakota, and Salteaux, among other tribal nations.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about our CASE team is the stuff you wouldn’t expect to see on an editor’s resume but can often prove invaluable to just the right client–or just plain interesting! You never know what insight they may be able to provide based on their unique life experiences and professional roles. Check out some of these interesting job titles, impressive rankings, and fascinating hobbies our team has reported:
Zoo Education Specialist
- Americorps Fellow
- Chief Master Sergeant, US military
- Dressage Rider
- Emmy Award Winner
- Registered Nurse
Pastor
- Management Consultant
Climate Justice Organizer
Certified Yoga Teacher
Venture Philanthropy Associate
- Deputy News Editor
- Dramaturg
- Information Officer for Department of Public Safety
- Death Doula
- SEO Specialist
- Podcast Producer
- Certified Pilates Instructor
- Sonographer
Cemetery Restoration Volunteer
Director of Multicultural Education
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Ceramics Artist
Nonprofit Board Chair
Graphic Designer
Court Appointed Special Advocate
CASE editors can improve your manuscript or creative project by advising on all sorts of details, big or small. Once we corrected a travel guide that encouraged tourists to visit two historic sites located on opposite sides of a country in a single day. One of our editors made note of the unlikelihood of a particular surname for a character given the character’s father’s profession and the realities of the caste system in the country he was born in. Our editors with a background in education have provided suggestions for culturally diverse names and details for math word problems and literacy texts that still align with Science of Reading standards for different grade levels. An editor who was adopted as an infant advised a client writing a novel about adoption that breastfeeding is in fact not exclusive to birthing parents and thus did not qualify as a “clue” that someone was or was not a biological mother. An editor reviewing a food memoir and cookbook offered advice and examples of how best to present recipes or foods originating in cultures that were not the author’s so that their presentation would appear respectful and honor their origins rather than appear to be culturally appropriating them. An editor of a business book advised an author on language the author assumed to be “universal” but that would likely appear to be unwelcoming or antagonistic to marginalized communities.
Ready to see what a CASE editor can do for you? Reach out to KAA CASE today.
Categories:
Book Editing, Company Updates