After a Loss, an Editor’s Community Shows Up
By Christine Steele
Being part of a membership association means finding others who share your interests on a similar topic, who can talk about your craft with the same enthusiasm you can, and who you look forward to collaborating with year after year whether at in-person or virtual conferences. But what it eventually leads to is finding your community and feeling a sense of belonging.
Despite finding this with ACES, some of us still might feel lost or disconnected in the world because we’re on different time zones and spread across the globe. We also have life challenges that weigh us down.
Karen Yin, who experienced the biggest challenge of her life this year, found support and community when least expecting it and it’s helped her heal. Yin is the 2017 ACES Robinson Prize winner and the author of The Conscious Style Guide: A Flexible Approach to Language That Includes, Respects, and Empowers. Her life’s possessions were destroyed in the Altadena, Calif., fires in January this year.
When I found out that ACES leadership wanted to replace her award, it seemed perfect to present it to her in person at an ACES edibuddies meetup that I planned for August 23. What a wonderful moment it could be for Yin surrounded by support and a community that she’s been a part of for so long. Six of us met with her and had a great lunch, even laughing over numerous typos on the menu. When Yin received her award, she was overcome with gratitude.
A few days after our meetup, Yin wrote a heartfelt post about receiving the trophy and what it meant to her. It captures more than the replacement trophy but about what the gesture represents. Her post follows with her permission:
In 2017, the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) awarded me the Robinson Prize for my innovative approach to editing and for taking risks with my ideas about “conscious language.” An editor since the age of 14 (shout-out to my high school journalism teacher Mrs. Bortz), I cherished my hard-earned trophy and kept it at eye level in my favorite place in the house, my office. (Hence my Instagram username @karensoffice.) To me, it was a symbol of hope and acceptance, that thinking the way I do while being the person I am can be inspirational.
Fast-forward to that blustery evening on January 7, 2025, when my partner and I saw the blaze of the Eaton Fire from our street. We self-evacuated to a hotel, and while we slept, our house burned down. In the months that followed, I thought about my most precious things as little as possible in order to get through the day. It wasn’t until we had a place of our own again that I found myself wanting to answer the emptiness in our new home with a few of the things that had brought me joy.
Long story short, I asked ACES president Heather E. Saunders if I could buy a replacement, but unbeknownst to me, a whole team at ACES — including executive director Jehan “Gigi” Sutton, MBA and editor/membership coordinator Christine Steele — worked together to order the trophy and then hand-deliver it during an edibuddies get-together.
This was a long thank-you, but it didn’t feel right for me to post a photo of the replacement trophy without expressing how deeply I feel this kindness or how having this symbol of hope has calmed my sense of loss and of being lost. Thank you, ACES: The Society for Editing and my friends, for seeing me and being there for me then and now. I am proud to be part of the ACES community.
In losing everything, Yin discovered what can’t be burned or broken — the editing community. What began as loss became something else entirely — a reminder that even when everything familiar is gone, kindness and community have a way of leading us home again.
Group photo: L to R: Jamaal D. Pittman, Claire Marie-Peterson, Ari Bookman, Christine Steele, Karen Yin, Emerson Malone, and Amy Chen
Christine Steele is an ACES staff member and lifetime ACES member. She is a co-lead instructor of UC San Diego’s Extended Studies’ copyediting certificate program.
