Jude Fisher - A Life

Jude Fisher is the pseudonym for Jane Johnson, who is the Publisher of HarperCollins' science fiction and fantasy list, Voyager. She has also been involved in the publishing of JRR Tolkien's works for many years. As Gabriel King she has written four novels, with co-author M. John Harrison: THE WILD ROAD, THE GOLDEN CAT, THE KNOT GARDEN and NONESUCH. She is also the author of the official VISUAL COMPANIONS to Peter Jackson's movie trilogy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. SORCERY RISING is her first solo novel. It will be followed by WILD MAGIC and THE WARS OF SORCERY.

Born in Cornwall, Jane was educated at Liskeard Grammar School and then took an English degree at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, where -- inspired by Tolkien -- she specialised in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, after which she qualified as a lecturer in English and Drama and taught the latter at North London College for a year. She then decided to follow up her fascination with old Nordic language, history and literature by taking a Master's degree in Scandinavian Studies at University College, a course that specialised in the reading and translation of Old Icelandic sagas. Now entirely over-qualified and apparently unemployable, she was blessed by a remarkable working of fate: one day in the street she got talking to a neighbour who announced she was leaving her job. When asked where she worked, she replied, "George Allen & Unwin Publishers": magic words, since this was Tolkien's publisher. Advised to apply for the secretarial job the neighour was vacating (despite having no qualifications, or aptitude for secretarial work) Jane found herself, a week later, working on the Tolkien list and on Unwin's incipient fantasy list. Within six months she had been promoted to Editor.

During her time at Unwins, she was responsible for commissioning both John Howe and Alan Lee to illustrate Tolkien's works -- on book covers and in calendars, and also brought the work of Ted Nasmith to the public for the first time. She has edited and published in her time in the industry (among many others) such diverse authors as Clive Barker, Brian Patten, Geoff Ryman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen King and Peter Straub, M. John Harrison, Michael Marshall Smith, David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin, Stephen Baxter and Arthur C Clarke. She launched the Voyager list in 1995; it is now the market leader in the UK and in Australia and New Zealand.

Publishing and writing is sedentary work; publishers and writers are usually extremely unfit! Possessed of a 'terrifying energy' (as her colleagues and friends term it), Jane has never been satisfied with a life spent behind a desk: when not working she is often to be found on cliffs and rockfaces all over the world; failing that, in whatever rock-climbing gym may be at hand. Taught to climb by ex-partner, Mike Harrison and the lads in the Holmfirth climbing team, she continued her obsession with the sport even after the pair split up and has climbed in Norway, New Zealand, Spain, the Channel Islands, France and the USA. She professes herself to be never happier than when poised halfway up a granite seacliff in the sun, looking down on the backs of herring gulls and jackdaws as they slide through the air below her -- as long as she has a well-placed camming device not too far away.

Other enthusiasms include watching football; esoterica, world music, wild places, animals of all sorts, but especially cats; and going to the movies.

She also loves to travel. Favourite places include the Markar River, Bergþorshvoll and Þingvellir in Iceland; Joshua Tree, Tuolomne Meadows and the Yosemite Valley; Avebury, West Pembroke and the Peak District of England; South Island, New Zealand; and the limestone cliffs of southern Spain. But her homeland of Cornwall -- the beautiful Far West of Britain, last true land of the Celts, and the only part of the island to have defied the Roman invasion and maintain its own language, religion and culture -- will always hold the strongest spell over her.

June 2002