Ticonderoga Publications is a small press based in Perth which specialises in science fiction short story collections. The founding editor is Russell B. Farr. He recently spoke to the Speakeasy weblog.
Speakeasy: Can you tell us a little about Ticonderoga Publications (TP) and its place in the Aussie speculative fiction (SF) community?
Russell Farr (RF): Ticonderoga Publications started in 1996 initially to produce a chapbook of the Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley story, Custer's Last Jump, as I was involved in a convention bringing Waldrop to Australia. It was a small print run, Shaun Tan provided the cover, and it sold for $7.95. At the time Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne were doing remarkable things with Eidolon - both the magazine and also books - and they put up with me hanging around asking dumb questions. At the time the main indie book publishers were Eidolon, Mirrordanse (Bill Congreve) and, standing head and shoulders above them, was Aphelion (the late, great Peter McNamara). I thought what they were all doing was pretty cool, so I was soon following along, publishing collections of stories by Steven Utley, Simon Brown, Stephen Dedman and Sean Williams.
Jump forward to 2012 and we're still going. We've expanded to include my wonderful fiancé, Liz Grzyb, as business and creative partner, and we've got between 25-30 titles in print. We've published collections by Angela Slatter, Lisa L. Hannett, Kaaron Warren, Felicity Dowker, Justina Robson, Lucy Sussex, Greg Mellor, the late Sara Douglass, and a number of others. We've been able to produce a number of anthologies, a Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror series, and next year will start publishing original novels.
We've never set out to have an agenda, or a place in the Australian SF community, we just happily hang out there and make what I hope are good books. We don't really see ourselves as catering to any niche, just publishing what appeals to us - we see so many fantastic writers and want to share them with the world.
