Russell B. Farr is the founding editor of Ticonderoga Publications and has published more than a dozen titles. His most recent anthology, Belong, explores the concepts of home and migration. In 1999 he established ticon4, now Australia’s longest running semi-professional science fiction webzine. Previous works as editor include the award-winning anthology Fantastic Wonder Stories, award-winning collection Magic Dirt: the Best of Sean Williams, and Australia’s first work-themed anthology The Workers’ Paradise.

As editor of Ticonderoga Publications, Russell has overseen the publication of landmark story collections by Simon Brown, Stephen Dedman, Terry Dowling, Angela Slatter, Stephen Utley, Lucy Sussex, Lisa L Hannett, Justina Robson, and Kaaron Warren.

Russell recently shaved all his hair off to raise over $2000 for the Eden Monaro Cancer Support Group. You can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh0w_9kxRME

Born in Sydney in 1947, Terry Dowling is one of Australia’s most awarded, versatile and internationally acclaimed writers of science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror. He is author of Rynosseros (1990), Blue Tyson (1992), Twilight Beach (1993) and Rynemonn (2007) (the Ditmar award-winning Tom Rynosseros saga, which, in his 2002 Fantastic Fictions Symposium keynote speech, US Professor Brian Attebery called “not only intricate and engaging, but important as well”), Wormwood (1991), The Man Who Lost Red (1994), An Intimate Knowledge of the Night (1995), Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling (1999), Blackwater Days (2000), Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (2006, Ticonderoga edition 2009) (which earned a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly in May 2006 and won the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection) and Make Believe. He is editor of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Essential Ellison (1987/ revised 2001), Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF (1993) and The Jack Vance Treasury (2007).

Dowling has outstanding publishing credentials. As well as appearances in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Year’s Best SF, The Mammoth Book of Best New SF, The Year’s Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (a record eight times; he is the only author to have had two stories in the 2001 volume, one chosen by each editor), his work has appeared in such major anthologies as Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction, The Dark, Dreaming Down Under, Gathering the Bones and The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories and in such diverse publications as SciFiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Oceans of the Mind, Ténèbres, Ikarie, Japan’s SF and Russia’s Game.Exe. His fiction has been translated into many languages and has been used in a course in forensic psychology in the US.

Terry has also written and co-designed three best-selling computer adventures: Schizm: Mysterious Journey (2001) (aka US Mysterious Journey: Schizm) (www.schizm.com/schizm1/), Schizm II: Chameleon (2003) (aka US Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon) (www.schizm2.info) and Sentinel: Descendants in Time (2004) (aka Realms of Illusion) (www.dormeuse.info) (based on his 1996 short story, “The Ichneumon and the Dormeuse”), which have been published in many foreign language editions. He has reviewed for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin, and was the science fiction, fantasy and horror reviewer for The Weekend Australian for nineteen years under four different literary editors: Barry Oakley, James Hall, Murray Waldren and Deborah Hope.

Terry holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia (the first such degree to be granted and completed at that university), an MA (Hons) in English Literature and a BA (Hons) in English Literature, Archaeology and Ancient History, both from the University of Sydney. He has won many Ditmar and Aurealis Awards for his fiction, as well as the William Atheling Jr Award for his critical work. His first computer adventure won the Grand Prix at Utopiales in France in 2001 and he has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award twice.

The multi award-winning US magazine Locus regarded Terry’s first book Rynosseros as placing him “among the masters of the field” (August 1990). In The Year’s Best Science Fiction 21 (reprinting Terry’s story “Flashmen”), twelve-time Hugo Award winning US editor Gardner Dozois called him: “One of the best-known and most celebrated of Australian writers in any genre”, while in the Year’s Best Fantasy 4 (reprinting “One Thing About the Night”), editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer described him as a “master craftsman” and “one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy.” Terry has also been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, and “Australia’s premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows (February 2004). The late leading Australian SF personality Peter McNamara (on his SF Review radio show on Adelaide’s 5EBI-FM, 23 June 2000) called him “Australia’s premier fantasist.”

Ticonderoga Publications is mind-bogglingly excited to announce a forthcoming collection of stories by Ditmar and Chronos Award-winner and new sensation Felicity Dowker.

The collection is titled Bread and Circuses and scheduled for publication in 2012.

Since her first publication in 2008, Felicity Dowker’s stories have appeared in numerous anthologies including titles by Morrigan Books, Fablecroft Press and Ticonderoga Publication’s groundbreaking paranormal romance anthology, Scary Kisses.

“Felicity Dowker has amazing talent and vision. She has one of those minds that plucks the most inspired stories from thin air,” Ticonderoga Editor Russell B. Farr said.

“By 2012 there is no predicting the astronomic heights her writing will be at,” he said.

While the contents are still being decided, the collection will feature at least one original story.

“Felicity tells such wonderful tales, I’m really excited to have the opportunity to work with her,” Russell added.

The collection is scheduled for publication in 2012, in limited edition hardcover and trade editions.

Australian writer Felicity Dowker was born in Tasmania in 1980 and now lives in Victoria with her husband, their two children, and a distinct lack of cats. In addition to her day-job in the finance sector, Felicity has also certified and worked as a Doula (professional non-medical birth attendant). Writing has always been her madness of choice, and since she began submitting her work in 2008, over 20 of Felicity's short stories have been published in Australian and international journals and anthologies, most recently in Aurealis, Morrigan Books' Scenes From the Second Storey, and Ticonderoga Publications' Scary Kisses. Felicity won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent in 2009, and her work has been Honourably Mentioned in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year (Volume 2), collected two Chronos Awards, and been shortlisted for both the Aurealis and Australian Shadows Awards.

Scary Minds on Felicity's story "Bread and Circuses" from Ticonderoga Publications' Scary Kisses: "Felicity Dowker presents a sensationally good story that I would compare to Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' - yes, it's that good. A piece of writing that highlights the talent Felicity Dowker brings to the table. Can someone please get a Felicity Dowker collection happening right here right now!"

HorrorScope on Felicity's story "After the Jump" from Aurealis #43: "Rising star Felicity Dowker delivers an absolute gem with 'After the Jump'. Dowker ensures you’ll never look at Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge the same again with her darkly poetic story about a diver, paid to retrieve the bodies of jumpers from the Yarra River, who is drawn to the eerie stillness of the river’s muddy depths. Her command of description and character – particularly in first person – is flourishing with every tale and she again shows why she is becoming a staple in Australian genre magazines."

Angela Slatter on Felicity's writing: "She is one of those rare and talented writers of horror who can creep you out while still making you admire the graceful construction of her prose."

Felicity is always working on several short stories at any given time, mostly to avoid completing her first novel, which she's currently about halfway through. Ticonderoga Publications will publish Felicity's debut short story collection, titled Bread and Circuses, in 2012. In the meantime, you may find Felicity online at her blog: http://felicitydowker.livejournal.com.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Stephen Dedman. I’m a writer.

At present, I’m also a bookseller, book reviewer, tutor, and student. I’ve previously been an actor, a manuscript assessor, an academic and legal WPO, an editorial assistant for Australian Physicist magazine, an experimental subject, and a used dinosaur parts salesman. I’m also fiction editor of Borderlands magazine, co-editor of the ConSensual anthologies, a former associate editor of Eidolon, and a member of the Horror Writers’ Association’s Bram Stoker Awards Oversight Committee and the Katharine Susannah Pritchard’s Board of Literary Advisors. And I’ve previously served on the committee of the Festival of Perth Writers’ Festival and innumerable science fiction conventions (well, six, I think, but it feels like a lot more).

Primarily, though, I’m a writer: author of four novels, a non-fiction book and more than 100 short stories, plus reviews, role-playing games, stageplays, essays and editorials. Most of the fiction I’ve written has been speculative, fantastic, or just plain weird, but I’ve also written thrillers, erotica, and westerns. Sometimes all at the same time.

Sara Douglass was born in Penola, a small farming settlement in the south of Australia, in 1957. She spent her early years chasing (and being chased by) sheep and collecting snakes before her parents transported her to the city of Adelaide and the more genteel surroundings of Methodist Ladies College. Having graduated, Sara then became a nurse on her parents' urging (it was both feminine and genteel) and spent seventeen years planning and then effecting her escape.

That escape came in the form of a Ph.D. in early modern English history. Sara and nursing finally parted company after a lengthy time of bare tolerance, and she took up a position as senior lecturer in medieval European history at the Bendigo campus of the Victorian University of La Trobe. Finding the departmental politics of academic life as intolerable as the emotional rigours of nursing, Sara needed to find another escape.

This took the form of one of Sara's childhood loves - books and writing. Spending some years practising writing novels, HarperCollins Australia picked up one of Sara's novels, BattleAxe (published in North America as The Wayfarer Redemption), the first in the Tencendor series, and chose it as the lead book in their new fantasy line with immediate success. Since 1995 Sara has become Australia's leading fantasy author and one of its top novelists. Her books are now sold around the world.

Sara was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. After bravely fighting for three years, she lost her battle against the disease on 27 September 2011.