Rich Harvey has been named the winner of the 2021 Munsey Award. Nominated by the general pulp community, Harvey was selected by previous living winners of the Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Awards. The results were announced at Pulpfest on August 20.
Here is the citation that explain why he was up for this honor:
Although pulp reprints abound in our day and age, such was not always the case. Along with John Gunnison of Adventure House, RICH HARVEY was one of the first small publishers to get the pulp reprint movement off the ground. He started in the pages of his fanzine, PULP ADVENTURES — begun in 1992 — where he published stories from COMPLETE NORTHWEST NOVEL, DIME DETECTIVE, .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE, NEW DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, and other pulps. Two of the highlights were two short stories by Norvell Page, offering the first two adventures of the popular pulp hero The Spider. Rich — along with his onetime partner, Cat Jaster, would go on to reprint two dozen of The Spider’s adventures. As Bold Venture Press, he has published a six-volume series reprinting the complete run of Johnston McCulley’s Zorro tales, reprinted unique tales from one of the longest-lived pulp magazines, RAILROAD STORIES, “new pulp” adventures in AWESOME TALES, and pulp old and new in the continuing PULP ADVENTURES. In 2020, he was the publisher of ZORRO: THE DARING ESCAPADES, an anthology of sixteen all-new adventures from multiple authors, based on the legendary character created by Johnston McCulley. Along with his current partner, Audrey Parente, Rich manages the twice-a-year Pulp AdventureCon in two locations, New Jersey and Florida. These one-day events help to bring the world of pulp to a wider geographic range of fans. Rich is also great at personally communicating with fans one-on-one, whether by email or through social media.
Named for Frank A. Munsey, publisher of the first pulp magazine, the award recognizes someone who has contributed to the betterment of the pulp community through disseminating knowledge, publishing, or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest pulp magazines.
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Along with everything else, I think it’s great that he’s reprinting “Railroad Stories.” That’s a long-lived pulp that many people don’t know about. It even included detective stories with a railroad connection.
Unfortunately, my photos of PulpFest events tend to be blurry or badly composed.
I think Railroad Stories is one of the longest running pulps of all, though largely forgotten these days. Lasted from 1906 to 1979 in its original incarnation, then it was merged with another Railroad magazine into Railfan & Railroad, which still exists, though they no longer publish fiction.