Indexing

Presented by: Daniel Heila
Host: Dawn Schuldenfrei

Get out of your comfort zone a bit and join us this month for a presentation about indexing by member Daniel Heila!

Daniel Heila is an editor/indexer at Best-Ever Edit in Eugene, OR. He completed the UC Berkeley Extension Professional Editing Sequence in 2014 and the UC Berkeley Extension Introduction to Indexing course in 2019. In addition to his editing work he writes fiction and occasional arts criticism and is a chamber music composer.

Most of his recent work has involved line editing and/or book doctoring with a NYC developmental editor. His focus is on YA speculative novels, although he has edited memoirs and LGBTQ+ fiction. Mr. Heila was also the editor of Key Words the quarterly journal of the American Society for Indexing from 2022-2024.

In indexing, his specialty subject areas are arts/performing arts and humanities, music classical/pop, gardening/agriculture, and home food preserving. Recent projects have included a biography of an African mbira player, a music theory/theology text on twentieth-century modern music and literature, and an activist memoir. He has worked with University of Chicago Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Julliard School of Music press, and multiple independent publishers both traditional and hybrid.

If you're interested in learning more about the subject of indexing, Daniel suggests reading Index, A History of the, by Dennis Duncan. In Daniel's words, "It is a surprising, informative, and entertaining window into the world of indexing and indexers."