Delayed: Friends and Spectres
16 June 2024
Updates can be found at the bottom of the post. When a new title arrives here at Æon House in Dublin from the printer, I’ve made a practice of immediately inspecting every copy. Yes, all of them. This is something I got into the habit of doing early on, one of many nuggets of publishing wisdom passed on to me by our sage friends at Tartarus Press. Inspecting each copy is one of a few processes I conduct here before they are posted on to those who have pre-ordered a book, and also one of the contributing reasons why it …
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Of Wraiths, Spooks, and Spectres
11 June 2024
Conducted by John Kenny, June 2024 Robert Lloyd Parry is a performance storyteller and writer. In 2005 he began what he now refers to as “The M. R. James Project”, with a solo performance of Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book and The Mezzotint in MRJ’s old office in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The Project has since encompassed seven one-man theatre shows, several films and audiobooks, three documentaries, a guided walk, and numerous magazine articles. For Swan River Press he has previously edited Ghosts of the Chit-Chat (2020) and Curfew and other Eerie Tales by Lucy M. Boston (2011). His audiobooks are available …
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Reading the Signs
10 May 2024
John Kenny in Conversation with Mark Valentine about Mark’s new collection Lost Estates. Mark Valentine is the author of several volumes of short stories including The Collected Connoisseur (Tartarus Press 2010) and Secret Europe (Ex Occidente Press 2012), both shared titles with John Howard. He has also written a biography of Arthur Machen (Seren 1990); and Time, a Falconer (Tartarus Press 2011), a study of the diplomat and fantasist “Sarban”. His books with Swan River Press include Selected Stories (2012) and Seventeen Stories (2013), both collections of his short fiction, and The Far Tower (2019), an original anthology of stories in celebration of W. B. Yeats. John Kenny: Your previous collections …
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The Green Book 23
15 April 2024
“Editor’s Note” As a whole, I like to think that The Green Book serves as a sort of portrait of Irish Gothic literature in its myriad guises, incomplete though it may be, but ever adding detail to the canvas. Looking over this issue, I feel that most of what has been assembled here are portraits of the proprietors of the darker fantastic—some of the pieces are direct reminiscences, others illustrate their subjects in more oblique ways. I like when this happens—when the themes of an issue, or even just an approach, emerge of their own accord. The opening triptych of …
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Remembering David J. Skal
12 January 2024
“I’ll show you what horror means!” – Frederic March as Mr. Hyde Suggested listening: “The Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett Although I was fortunate enough to meet and get to know David J. Skal many years later at a post-seminar reception at the Stag’s Head in central Dublin, my first introduction to him was through his seminal volume The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993), which at the time was on the New Books shelf in my high school library. I’d told David on the night that I first met him the impact his book had had on …
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Our Haunted Year 2023
11 December 2023
Art: John Coulthart Greetings, everyone. Thank you for joining me here at the end of another solar cycle, taking time out of your day to read this meditation on what we did here at Swan River Press these past twelve months. I confess, for much of it, my attention has been on settling myself in Æon House among other personal matters—trickier prospects than anticipated. In fact, it was only last week that I managed to get the heating installed. I had the pleasure of showing off the new digs to a few guests this past year too. Despite the bare-bones …
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Holiday Postage 2023
8 November 2023
It’s that time of year again when you might be looking for gifts to give for the forthcoming holiday season. We’ve published some great books this year, so do be sure to have a look! Now It’s Dark by Lynda E. Rucker Agents of Oblivion by Iain Sinclair Uncertainties 6 edited by Brian J. Showers Treatises on Dust by Timothy J. Jarvis Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn The Green Book 21 edited by Brian J. Showers The Green Book 22 edited by Brian J. Showers Postage takes time, but we’ll always do our best to get stuff out to you …
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Celebrating 20 Years
31 October 2023
Today is the 20th anniversary of Swan River Press. I started the press in 2003 almost as an afterthought. The first few publications were palm-sized, hand-sewn chapbooks, written by myself and illustrated by Duane Spurlock, Jeff Roche, and Meggan Kehrli (who still designs our hardbacks). The idea was pretty simple: I wanted to write a ghost story to send to friends and family at Halloween, a bit like a greeting card, but far more elaborate. The result was The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man, a tale that was published in Ash Tree Press’s award-winning anthology, Acquainted with the Night. …
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The Green Book 22
6 October 2023
“Editor’s Note” I thought this moment might never come. Perhaps on some levels I was even avoiding it due to an oversaturation of the blood-stained, opera-cloaked market. But at long last, we seem to have a Bram Stoker issue of The Green Book in our hands! Some of the keen-eyed might have realised this from the cover, which features as the background Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration for The Lair of the White Worm (1911), while the inset image is a detail from the printed boards of The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). (It dawns on me as I write this …
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In an Uncertain Mode
4 July 2023
Conducted by Brian J. Showers For most of our books we conduct short interviews just prior to the title’s release. In the case of an anthology, the interview is with the editor. However, for Uncertainties 6, I wanted to do something slightly different. Hoping for just a bit more insight into the genre we love, I posed a single question: What draws you to write tales in the weird/uncanny mode? Here are the responses . . . Ruth Barber (“Unfinished Business”) My stories are a form of therapy, a vehicle for processing negative emotions such as grief, sadness, disappointment, and …
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Conversations on Dust
25 June 2023
James Machin in Conversation with Timothy J. Jarvis Timothy J. Jarvis and I met for this conversation in Highbury, North London, a setting he has used frequently for his fiction, to discuss his forthcoming collection Treatises on Dust. We escaped the chaos of the Friday night revel into the sedate early-evening quiet of the Mildmay Club on Newington Green to have our conversation, which came to a timely end as the jazz band was setting up. James Machin: How was the collection put together? How did you organise the table of contents? Did you take the opportunity to rework any …
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Excavating Oblivion
2 June 2023
In Conversation with Iain Sinclair Matthew Stocker: I honestly didn’t know how to open this interview, then yesterday I was in a restaurant with my children and wife and I spotted beside many bits of Joyce paraphernalia a quote; “I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” In Agents of Oblivion, Dublin is mentioned once or twice in passing, but with regards London do you see yourself undertaking the same type of project as Joyce attempted for Dublin? Iain Sinclair: Dublin …
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