Training the Eye: How to get your Manuscript Publish-ready

What does it mean to be publish-ready? What are publishers looking for? Has your writing stalled? Harriet Allan is one of New Zealand’s most respected and experienced publishers. At this workshop she will suggest different ways to review and edit your own work to ensure it is in the best possible shape. It will cover many different aspects, from considering your readership, to making the best first impression, sizing up your characters to driving the story, checking your narrative and many other details, big and small.

After starting with a medical publisher and then Oxford University Press, Harriet Allan worked at Penguin Random House and its earlier iterations for nearly 35 years. She edited and produced books of all genres for both adults and children before becoming fiction publisher in 2000, in which role she published numerous award-winning novels and literary nonfiction titles, working with some of New Zealand’s pre-eminent writers, including Janet Frame, Fiona Kidman, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Owen Marshall and Charlotte Grimshaw. She is currently working as a freelance editor, mentor and manuscript assessor. She was awarded an MNZM (New Zealand Order of Merit) for services to publishing in 2024.