Latest / Mythmakers / A Publisher's Perspective: the Pushkin Press and Fantasy in Translation Part 1 of 2 - Guest Daniel Seton

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A Publisher's Perspective: the Pushkin Press and Fantasy in Translation Part 1 of 2 - Guest Daniel Seton · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author but I also run the centre. And today I'm joined by someone from the publishing
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  world. So please meet Daniel Seton who works for a very interesting publisher in the UK called
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  The Pushkin Press. So hello to Daniel. Hello, thanks very much for having me on. It's very
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  nice. So many people who are keen on fantasy could imagine themselves working in the world of
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  publishing fantasy books and other kinds of books. So how did you as a young man actually get
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  into publishing what was your route? Well I suspect it's quite a common route really.
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  University, I studied French and philosophy. So I came out of university without a, you know, an
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  obvious, there's no obvious career path for that degree necessarily. So I always had to think
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  about, you know, what do I really love and what I really loved was reading and books had done
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  for all my life really, all my life I can remember. And so I started working in publishing and
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  because of I've been studying a language university it seemed natural to go into the area
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  of publishing that focuses on translations which is what I did. And after a few years I ended up
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  at Pushkin Press. Almost that's coming up for 12 years now. 12 years ago that I came here and
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  now I'm an editor and in that time we've really gone from strength to strength. It's been a great
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  place to work. So what is the place of fantasy within the raft of things that you publish at Pushkin?
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  Well, it's not, we don't specialise in publishing fantasy and not that sort of publisher but I think
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  there are elements of fantasy and all of the different strands of what we publish.
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  So what we originally were founded to publish and what we were best known for is
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  translated classic literature from across the world. And that was what we were publishing when
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  we were first founded in 1997. But since then we've really broadened out and now we have a,
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  we've published a lot of them, contemporary literature as well as we have a children's list
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  and the crime and thrillers list as well. And I actually acquire and publish across all of those
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  lists. And I suppose there's there's fantastical elements in lots of those titles and lots of those
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  imprints but really it's the children's list which has the most the largest element of
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  the fantasy in it and the one that actually I, I think I enjoy appearing for the most,
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  it's something that I'm starting to film. Yeah, we publish a lot of wonderful fantasy
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  novels from all over the world on that list. So Pat, you could give the listeners an idea of what
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  what some of those titles might be that fall into that category? Well, for example, I think the most
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  the most successful title on our children's list since we founded it has been a Dutch classic
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  called The Letter for the King by an author called Tonke Druck. It's wonderful. I mean,
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  it's fantasy in the sense that it's set in not in our world. It's a fantasy perhaps a bit like,
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  a bit like Game of Thrones, purely in the sense that the fantastical magical elements are quite
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  downplayed. So it's quite a realistic fantasy which I think is quite, it's quite dark truly. It's
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  a very taught, fast paced adventure story about a young squire who wants to become a knight and
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  to do that, he has to deliver a letter to the King of a far off land and there are all these other
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  knights trying to stop him. It's really just a breathless story and it's a huge classic in the
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  Netherlands across the world and we published it with great success in the UK and it was recently
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  adapted by Netflix for a brilliant series as well. So that's one example. Another example
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  would be another book from the Netherlands actually. It's interesting because when I speak to people
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  from the Netherlands, they often say that fantasy is something that is quite lacking from
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  Dutch literature in general that's often very realistic. But I think perhaps
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  because of when a Dutch fantasy novel does emerge, it's often very special and that's the case
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  for a book called Lampy that we published a couple of years back by North Dakota and Ed Sharp.
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  It ended up being the first translated book to be shortlisted for the Carnegie
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  medal in the UK and that's a wonderful Gothic secret garden-esque fantasy novel about a
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  young girl with mermaids and pirates and it's very rich and astute on the level of characters
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  where I like light the sink that was a big influence for an adventure is writing it.
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  I really love that book and we've got our next book come out this also which is called The Girls
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  which is a collection of stories actually. I mean the reason we got to do each other is that you
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  may kindly were sending me some of these wonderful books to review and I remember that one very much
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  but the one that I remember of course is my favourite ape. Oh the murder was ape yeah I almost
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  didn't mention that because it's so I mean that is I think perhaps my favourite book on that we've
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  ever published across all of our all of our imprints it's so amazing it's the author is Swedish and it's
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  like a very rich old-fashioned kind of 1920s set adventure in a kind of tintinesque style and
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  the one fantastical element of it really is that the protagonist is a guerrilla called Sally Jones
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  who she can't speak but she can understand everything that humans say and she
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  alongside humans in no world and she actually works as a mechanic on board a boat
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  which enables us to sail around the world and have lots of adventures and it's really just
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  an amazing an amazing richly detailed adventure of the type that I think we don't see
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  enough of these days and it's beautifully illustrated as well as about a hundred gorgeous
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  detailed illustrations by the author in it and we're publishing the paperback edition of the
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  sequel Sally Jones and the false rose this autumn which is another just as good as the murder
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  is ape and which Sally Jones comes to Glasgow in fact it's UK based yeah the only reason I didn't
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  mention that right away is because you know the only fantastical element if you could call
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  about is that she's a guerrilla which is you know it doesn't extremely good job of persuading you
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  that it's a historical adventure yes and you have to actually take a step back and think hang on a
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  minute hang on a minute would would a guerrilla really be able to be a mechanic is this not actually
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  a full animal fable in a way and it is actually I put my hand up it's my when anyone says what's
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  your favorite children's book you've read in the last decade it's that one I say I absolutely
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  for it the other thing I I like about both that and the Lampey story and others is illustration
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  because it struck me that where it is in the UK you might get chapter vignettes or whatever it's
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  quite rare for a publisher unless you're doing an illustrated book of the sort of children you
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  know younger end of the market people don't spend on the illustrations whereas the European
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  editions that you're translating seem to have the most wonderful place for illustrations am I
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  writing thinking that is that something that you've noticed uh yes I mean um well in the case of
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  those two books the the authors did the illustrations as well so um and it's sharp for example and
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  I think both and it's sharp author of Lampey and the Jacob Wageliest author of the murder as eight
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  were they started out as illustrators before they um you know started writing these novels for
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  children so um yeah so the book the story the illustrations came with the came with the novels um
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  it was already a package um but it's true that I think there's um I think in the UK we have this
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  culture whereby we have picture books for younger children and then there's a cut off you have
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  novels for you know around about eight seven or eight where you start having novels with
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  with not so many pictures in them whereas in on the continent in Europe I see more of a continuum
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  with um perhaps they're just just text getting longer and longer and the picture taking
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  slightly more of a back that there's still that mix like all the way through um something
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  we could learn from definitely I mean it's not to say there isn't a place because obviously there's
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  a whole new range of graphic novels where you know the balance is obviously towards pictures and
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  what have you but it just seemed as though for sort of common or garden novelist like me that I'd
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  love to have more opportunities to work with illustrators in that middle group the middle grade book
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  because when you think of the fancy grates like um oh I don't know line in the which in the wardrobe
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  it's in my head I can't separate it from the Pauline Baines line drawings and of course talking
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  talking himself was his own best illustrator um and we all know if I said oh yes
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  smoug on the treasure he everybody knows what I'm talking about so I think that the example
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  coming in from Europe is one that I'd love to see more frequently used really give give illustrators
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  some jobs that's what I'm saying um so what do you think of the main shifts in publishing
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  particularly as regards fantasy I mean I'm talking across the broads we don't just do children's
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  fantasy we're we're looking through the whole range of ages on books where is it going at the
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  moment in 2022 well that's a big question and you know as an editor I'm not a specialist in
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  fantasy per se so it's not it's not my whole focus but it seems to me like one of the most
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  interesting developments in fantasy literature it's kind of linked to the one of the biggest
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  trends over the past few years in publishing which is just bringing in a more diverse range of voices
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  and I think that the effect that has in fantasy is that you're we're seeing all these um
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  fantasy fantasy worlds with just different kind of cultural flavors to them that is so exciting and
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  and so interesting I think um perhaps because of the great success of Tolkien and other authors
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  like that almost got to thinking that fantasy means this kind of medieval um magical world whereas in
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  fact what we're getting to experience now is it it was all these fantasy's worlds influenced by
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  um different cultures and different um mythologies and beliefs and histories um I think as
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  journey is really exciting um we published a um these fantasy novel on our list um a few years
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  back that was very successful called the beast player by the hook we're actually and I think
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  the people um really responded to and that is that the um the fantasy world is just so
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  richly imagined and detailed not in the way that um the you know western fantasy readers are
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  necessarily used to um it was really fantastic. I can remember I can remember the experience of
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  watching spirited away you know that wonderful um Japanese film from I think it's now from
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  the early 2000s or it's quite old now anyway on late 1990s I remember watching this thinking
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  I have not seen this before there was nothing here I've seen before the imagery the the pacing
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  everything was just delightfully different and appealing yeah so yeah I agree with you this
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  it's very good to have the formulas shaken up on the formulas exploded because new things are
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  coming in and when we're teaching um people on our fantasy course one of the very first things we
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  looking at is what's in your what's in your own background and the place you live the your own
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  stories that haven't been used before and it's really exciting if someone comes up with oh well you
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  know I'm from a Native American background or I'm from a Australia or whatever you get new ideas
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  coming through which is yeah no that's what we're about we're about new creativity yeah so
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  but you know what about the different flavors of fantasy from different countries that you see
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  because I mean I can say in crime like we all know about scandy noir and cozy crime from the UK
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  and so on so you can sort of say there are different flavors in the sort of crime and detective
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  wild um what would you you know you've mentioned Holland or the Netherlands a couple of times
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  do you feel there are sort of different flavors you're getting from different parts of the world
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  as they come across your desk in translation yes well I certainly it certainly seems that um
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  some countries have gone very rich traditions um what I enjoy you know delving into
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  I mean because I did French at university I suppose that it's a natural lie and I've reading
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  a quite a lot of French fantasy submissions and there's the the real the breadth of the imagination
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  is really impressive it's very um very creative
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  thank you for listening to part one of this week's podcast come back next week to hear part two
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