Jeff VanderMeer has just announced that, as of 1 January 2008, his “Ministry of Whimsy Press will come out of hibernation as an imprint of Neil Clarke’s Wyrm Publishing.” VanderMeer will work as a creative consultant and publicist for the Ministry’s books.
In its earlier life, the Ministry published the Philip K. Dick Award-winning The Troika by Stepan Chapman, as well as the Leviathan fiction anthologies. The Ministry was a World Fantasy Award finalist in 1998, and VanderMeer won a World Fantasy Award in 2003 for co-editing Leviathan Three, which was also a Philip K. Dick Award finalist.
Planned projects include Last Drink Bird Head, an anthology of flash fiction in support of literacy projects that features contributions from Stephen R. Donaldson, Rikki Ducornet, Caitlin Kiernan, Tanith Lee, Peter Straub, Michael Swanwick, and Gene Wolfe. The Ministry expects to release two or three books a year, with the Leviathan series scheduled to return in 2009. The Ministry is not currently soliciting book projects.