Staff - Tachyon Publications

Jacob Weisman is the World Fantasy Award-winning editor and publisher at Tachyon Publications, which he founded in 1995. He edits many of Tachyon’s titles, and is the series editor of Tachyon’s Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Shirley Jackson Award-winning novella line. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Realms of Fantasy, the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Seattle Weekly, and The Cooper Point Journal. Jacob co-authored the novella Mingus Fingers (Fairwood Press), and is rumored to be hard at work on his own first novel.

Jill Roberts has been Tachyon’s erstwhile managing editor since 2002. Jill is the editor of award-winning Tachyon books, and a columnist for Books to Watch Out For and the Thirteenth Moon. She is a consultant at Streetside Stories, which teaches storytelling through writing, the arts, and technology. She has done panels at the Nebula Awards, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and Fan Nexus. Jill is actively not writing her first novel because she is too busy making her coworkers do planks. (Also, writers always look so dang tired.)

Elizabeth Story is Tachyon’s lead designer. She began as an intern for Tachyon in September of 2009. Since that time, Elizabeth has designed book covers and interiors, press kits, and Tachyon’s catalog, and she has staffed Tachyon’s book tables. She graduated with honors from the Creative Writing department at UC Santa Cruz and has completed her M.F.A. in art and design. Her past work experience includes creating motivational posters, newsletters, and comic strips for a children’s tutoring center; editing a campus literary magazine; and assisting in a perfumery. Elizabeth locked her first novel in a drawer because it tried to bite her.

Rick Klaw dons many caps when not serving as Tachyon’s resident Social Media Maven, including editor, pop culture historian, reviewer, and optimistic curmudgeon. He was the co-editor of the groundbreaking original anthology of short fiction in graphic form, Weird Business, co-founder of Mojo Press, and runs the award-winning blog, The Geek Curmudgeon. He has edited several successful Joe Lansdale books for Tachyon, and his recent anthologies include The Apes of Wrath and Rayguns Over Texas. Rick gave up on his first novel when he realized it had to be longer than 140 characters.

Jaymee Goh ran away from academia to fall into publishing as an editor at Tachyon. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature on science fiction studies and critical race theory, and became famous on the internet by yelling on Twitter. She co-edited a couple of steampunk-themed anthologies, and writes short fiction about disappointing children and misandrist mermaids. At Tachyon, Jaymee has spearheaded our Debut Authors series, and our partnership with Eight Light Minutes. She is judiciously ignoring her first novel in favour of her second, third, and nth novels.

James DeMaiolo has worked in the book business for the last thirty years. He brings his extensive experience in sales, marketing, and publicity to Tachyon. Jim has been a retail bookseller, a book buyer for Barnes and Noble, and an associate editor. He has worked with Simon and Schuster and Henry Holt and as a freelancer for such publishers as Berkeley, Tor, and Applause Books. Unlike the rest of us, Jim is a published playwright and has edited his first book, a collection of essays, The Thrill of Finding Money. After completing his MA in Drama, he has already finished and is revising his first seventeen novels.

Rina Weisman’s invaluable although often unsolicited help has helped Tachyon Publications to grow. Rina spends her spare time reading books borrowed from Jacob and has coined the verb “Brodarting.” She knows how to make a clamshell box, measure footcandles, prefers the original Star Trek, and has been known to hum “Thus Spake Zarathrustra” when she thinks no one is listening. She runs the popular SF in SF reading series and movie nights, and she is otherwise unsuited for a normal, 9–5 life. Rina is currently proofreading everyone’s first novel.

Rachel Fagundes was an intern, and then became Tachyon’s Associate Editor from 2011 to 2017. Rachel graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she designed and taught an undergraduate lit class at UCSC on ethics and social justice in the Harry Potter novels. She has also previously worked at the American embassy in Belgium, the Exploratorium, and Locus. Rachel is fond of comic books, moussaka, and the Italian Renaissance. She will start working on her first novel any day now. Really.

Zeppo is the newest member of the Tachyon team, joining us in 2019. He is obviously in charge of office morale, and is also our Chief Bubblewrap Inspector. Zeppo hasn’t written a novel yet, but he is working on his manifesto: Why You Should Let Me Go Outside

Like his predecessor Clyde, Quincey very occasionally deigns to visit the Tachyon Publications office. He is extremely dignified, and wholeheartedly heartily disapproves of the kitten Zeppo’s shenanigans. We can neither confirm nor deny that Quincey is the ghostwriter for a number of literary bestsellers, and that he may be a key member of the publishing Illuminati.

Clyde filled the most important role at Tachyon Publications: reminding us of the foolishness of our own vanity. He occasionally deigned to visit the Tachyon Publications office. We suspect but cannot confirm that he was working on his first novel. Occasionally we hear the faint tap-tapping of a typewriter upstairs, but when we rush to investigate, no one is there…

Koufax was the official Tachyon Publications security system. A tad overprotective, Koufax was known to accost the postman who brought by any unsolicited manuscripts. Koufax had completed working on his first novel and was weighing several offers from major publishing houses.