Rick Klaw

Richard Ira "Rick" Klaw (born December 22, 1967, Brooklyn, New York), is an American editor, essayist, and bookseller.

Biography

Rick Klaw is the paternal grandson of Irving Klaw, the photographer and film maker most noted for his bondage photos of Bettie Page. In 1979, the family relocated to Houston, Texas. Klaw moved to Austin, Texas in 1987 and participated in the Austin cadre of comics and science fiction writers and artists in the early 1990s, a group which included Shannon Wheeler, Chris Ware, Martin Wagner, Lea Hernandez, Roy Tompkins, John Lucas, and Mark Finn.

Klaw has worked at several bookstores, primarily in Austin, Texas. Notably, he worked at a particular Bookstop branch (later taken over by Barnes & Noble), about which he recalls fondly:

"..this particular store had the greatest collection of bookselling talent I have ever worked with... Most of my fellow booksellers became bookstore managers either Bookstop/B&N or with other companies, and many of them became published critics."[1]

From 1990 to 1994, Klaw was also managing editor for the independent comics publisher Blackbird Press, which produced the first collection from cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, an anthology entitled Omnibus: Modern Perversity, and other projects.

In October 1994, Klaw began managing Adventures in Crime & Space, a science fiction/mystery bookstore in Austin (along with three Bookstop employees), where the stores' promotions gained recognition from The Austin Chronicle, which named the store the "coolest bookstore in the city".[1] One such quirky promotion which ultimately fell through was a scheduled "signing" by Philip K. Dick, despite the author having died some years previously. Ultimately abandoned due to a difference of opinion with the owner, this factored into Klaw's decision to leave in February 1996, to focus more on his duties as managing editor of Mojo Press.[1][2]

Mojo Press

Main article: Mojo Press

After leaving Blackbird Press in 1994, Klaw co-founded (with Ben Ostrander) the small publishing company Mojo Press, where he served as the Managing Editor from 1994-98. At Mojo, Klaw was responsible for editing between fifteen and sixteen publications - most notably Weird Business (below), a hardcover comics anthology co-edited with Joe R. Lansdale, and a reprint of Michael Moorcock's novella Behold the Man.[2] Weird Business was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Anthology in 1996.[3]

Geeks With Books

Art by John Picacio

Since leaving Mojo Press, Klaw has pursued a number of ventures, including (in 1998) editing the letters pages for DC Comics' Michael Moorcock's Multiverse (#4-11), but perhaps his most noteworthy post-Mojo venture was his monthly column, "Geeks with Books", written from 2000 to 2004 for SF Site. Most of these columns were included in the 2003 collection from MonkeyBrain Press Geek Confidential: Echoes From the 21st Century (left). The SF Site column came to an end in August, 2004, but Klaw has continued a sporadically-produced e-mail list, "All the Geek That is Fit to Print," and is a regular contributor to The Dark Forces Book Group Blog.

Non-Geeks work

Klaw was the founding fiction editor of RevolutionSF in 2001, and continuing in that role until the end of 2002. He still serves as a Contributing Editor on the site, but it was as fiction editor that he published both experimental and post-modern fiction by new and established authors such as Moorcock, Don Webb, Joe R. Lansdale, Jeff VanderMeer, Bruce Sterling, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Neal Barrett, Jr., Scott Cupp, Vera Searles, and others.[2]

Since 2002, Klaw has written book and film reviews for The Austin Chronicle; film reviews for Moving Pictures magazine, and essays for a number of other venues.

Partial bibliography

Art by Dave Dorman

References

  1. 1 2 3 Geeks With Books Column 168 by Rick Klaw. Accessed January 26th, 2008
  2. 1 2 3 Rick Klaw at LinkedIn. Accessed on the 26th January, 2008
  3. ↑ 1996 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees and Winners. Accessed on the 26th January, 2008
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