COVER STORY
There’s more to Lu
than meets the eye
Book editor shares her talent and humanity with others
THIS attractive journo with
talent and energy to burn
turns heads in the street.
Filipino-born Lu Sierra, 53,
is not your average book
editor who has worked and
trained with some of the
world’s largest international
publishers.
Now a senior editor of HarperCollins
Publishers at its Sydney office, Ms Sierra
juggles editing books with teaching
masterclasses in self-editing at high schools
in western Sydney, volunteering as a
telephone crisis supporter of Lifeline, playing
keyboards and guitar with a local band ~ and
motherhood.
until she turned four.
Ms Sierra returned to Reader’s Digest in
2005, and left in 2016 as managing editor
of select editions, which produced the
company’s famed Condensed Books.
Reader’s Digest had sent her to its
headquarters in New York where Ms Sierra
acquired the qualification to ‘cut’ books. On
returning, she trained and mentored Reader’s
Digest editors, proofreaders and reviewers.
Although she now lives on Sydney’s
North Shore, success hasn’t taken the West
out of the girl who grew up in Mount Druitt
and completed her primary and high school
education there.
Ms Sierra returns to her childhood
homeground regularly as a masterclass
"A highlight of her journey
was 'cutting' famed
author’s three volumes into
one package"
One among many highlights of her
journey was to “repackage” or condense
Australian author Thomas Keneally’s
landmark three-volume history of Australia
for publishing house Allen & Unwin.
“The resultant book is rather ironically
named Australians: A Short History, as it’s still
about a thousand pages long,” Ms Sierra says.
“It was intense but wonderful for me to
immerse myself in Keneally’s fine