Small Press Saturday: Fairwood Press
Covers for Pandora’s Gun by James Van Pelt and Red Dust and Dancing Horses and Other Stories by Beth Cato.
Happy Saturday!
We are travelling south of the Canadian border this week for Small Press Saturday with a look at Fairwood Press. Most of the presses we look at every Saturday will be Canadian, but Patrick Swenson, publisher at Fairwood, is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, and definitely qualifies as an honourary Canadian. And I know this because I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Patrick at When Words Collide: A Festival of Reader and Writers and even had the pleasure of going book shopping at Magus Books with him in Seattle in November 2019.
Magus Books in Seattle.
Plus Fairwood publishes truly awesome stuff!
Fairwood Press was established in 2000 and has since published over 100 titles in science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, some sci-fi mysteries, and a few writing reference books. Which is phenomenal because Fairwood is pretty much a one-man operation. And he even writes some of his own stuff. I’ve read The Ultra Thin Man and The Ultra Big Sleep and look forward to the conclusion of the trilogy very much!
Cover for The Ultra Big Sleep by Patrick Swenson.
The bulk of Fairwood books lean toward anthologies or collections, and the quality of the writing leans literary in the genre fiction spectrum. Beautiful writing and challenging ideas abound! And this isn’t a surprise for me knowing that Patrick reads broadly in both literary and speculative fiction for recreation and places high value on the craft of writing. So much that Patrick is also the director of the Rainforest Writers Village retreat, happening virtually this year due to the pandemic.
Usually, I enjoy perusing his table at When Words Collide on an annual basis, but since WWC is virtual again this year, I will have to content myself with visits to the Fairwood website. And two titles have caught my eye that I am going to have to order! The first is McDowell’s Ghost by Jack Cady which is a novel of transcendental horror and vengeance about a man being pursued by the chilling apparition of his great-grandfather set in the heart of the deep south, where memories of a war long over still simmer. Transcendental horror has been my jam lately and the sound of this one checks my boxes!
Cover for McDowell’s Ghost by Jack Cady.
Cover for Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas by Emily C. Skaftun.
And the other one that caught my eye is Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas by Emily C. Skaftun. With a title like that just shut up and take my money!! It is a collection of 18 stories, spanning a decade, that balance on the knife-edge between whimsical and poignant and explore fates far weirder than death. And that cover - seriously, take my money!!
So if you love quality genre fiction, please give Fairwood a look – you might find your next great read and perhaps an unexpected surprise or two.
Happy Reading!
– Stacey