2022 Recipients of the Lee d'Anjou Volunteer of the Year Award and the President's Award for Volunteer Service

Lee d'Anjou Volunteer of the Year Award

Patricia MacDonald (Editors Atlantic)

Patricia MacDonald has been working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader since 2000. She has developed a niche in sports editing but keeps things interesting by working in other genres as well. Her clients include Human Kinetics, the Canadian Kinesiology Alliance, HarperCollins and Firefly as well as independent authors, many of whom are repeat clients. When not editing she enjoys reading and being involved in the local theatre community as an usher.

When the Editors Canada conference was announced for Halifax in 2013, Patricia signed on as the volunteer coordinator. Two years later, she repeated this role for Editing Goes Global, the first international editing conference. At that time, she was also serving as chair of the volunteer management committee. She joined the national executive council in June 2015 as director of volunteer relations, a position she held for six years. Of her volunteer work, Patricia is most proud of the role she played in planning four Editors Canada conferences, initiating the biennial French-language conference and developing the Editors' Vine, the translation and editing group, and VolunteerConnect.

President's Award for Volunteer Service

Victoria Bell (Editors Ottawa–Gatineau)

Victoria Bell is a Certified Professional Editor and member of the Editors Canada certification steering committee (co-chair 2019–2021). She is a manuscript editor with the Canadian Medical Association Journal and freelance editor of fiction. She lives in Ottawa with her partner, writes novels in her spare time and watches too much baseball (go Blue Jays!).

Natalia Iwanek (Editors Toronto)

Natalia Iwanek is a Toronto-based copy editor and student affiliate of Editors Canada.

Fazeela Jiwa (Editors Atlantic)

Fazeela Jiwa is a writer and editor with a special interest in social justice and radical politics. Specifically, she is an acquisitions and development editor with Fernwood Publishing, and she does developmental and copy editing on a freelance basis for publishers, magazines and individual authors. She is certified through Simon Fraser University's professional editing certification program.

Amber Riaz (Editors British Columbia)

Amber Riaz works at Independent Evaluation Group, World Bank as an editorial assistant, where she supports the publishing team in preparing reports for publication and performing other administrative duties as needed.

In addition, Amber edits academic books, journal articles and dissertations/theses, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, through her own freelance editing business—A4 Editing. Amber has edited scholarly work in multiple fields like literature, history, economics, finance and business for independent scholars and academic publishers. She has also worked on memoirs, fantasy fiction and children's literature.

Amber has completed courses on editing, copyediting and indexing. She volunteers regularly on Editors Canada committees including the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) task force. She is passionate about matters of inclusion and diversity as they apply to the publishing industry and works hard to keep up with discussions about conscious language and its use in manuscripts.

Amber earned her doctorate in English from Western University (Ontario) in South Asian Literature. Her BA and MA were in Comparative Literature. As a scholar, she is passionate about feminist literary theory and the representation of Muslim women in literature, film and theatre.

In her spare time, she loves to read fiction, knit, hike and experiment with fusion cooking.

Jess Shulman (Editors Toronto)

A Certified Professional Editor, Jess has been a freelance editor since 2016, editing fiction/non-fiction for publishers and indie authors and doing a fair amount of corporate writing and editing. Before launching her business, Jess Shulman Editorial, she spent seventeen years working for three of the world's biggest companies, General Electric, Aon and Deloitte. She has a degree in electrical engineering from McMaster University and a certificate in magazine journalism from Ryerson University, and she's been a member of Editors Canada since 2014. She served on the certification steering committee from 2015 to 2021, including two years as chair.

For fun, Jess sings in a (very casual) folk/rock/country cover band and plays guitar and mandolin, and she likes reading, watching TV, hiking, fitness and doing yoga. Since early in the pandemic, she's also become an avid crossword puzzle solver and constructor—and in March 2022 she proudly published a puzzle in The New York Times. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two teenage kids, a cat and a dog.