STEVE BERMAN began writing and selling weird stories when he was seventeen. His novel Vintage: A Ghost Story was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and made the Rainbow List for recommended gay-themed books for young readers by the American Library Association’s GLBT Roundtable. His favorite vampire movie is Near Dark. And if you email him at sberman8@yahoo.com and ask for more vamp-slaying adventures for Saul, he just may write them.
HOLLY BLACK writes bestselling contemporary fantasy for readers of all ages. She is the author of the Modern Faerie Tale series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the graphic novel series The Good Neighbors. Currently she is hard at work on The Black Heart, the third book in the noirish caper series The Curse Workers.
EMMA BULL grew up in California, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Illinois. As soon as she finished school and headed out on her own, she started collecting more states and a Canadian province. She’s been writing since elementary school, when she discovered that turning in a short story when the teacher asked for an essay got her an automatic A.
She’s been in five bands, plays lame guitar, and likes to sing. She lives (for now, at least) in Arizona with her husband, Will Shetterly, and cats Toby (best cat) and Barnabas (worst cat).
CECIL CASTELLUCCI has published four novels for young adults: Rose Sees Red, Beige, The Queen of Cool, and Boy Proof, and a picture book, Grandma’s Gloves. She also wrote the graphic novels The PLAIN Janes and Janes in Love, illustrated by Jim Rugg, which were the launch titles for the DC Comics Minx line. She has had numerous short stories published in various places, including Strange Horizons, The Eternal Kiss, Geektastic (which she coedited), and Interfictions 2. Her books have been on the American Library Assocation’s Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, and Great Graphic Novels for Teens lists, as well as the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age and Amelia Bloomer lists. Upcoming books include a graphic novel for young readers, Odd Duck, illustrated by Sara Varon, and two new novels, First Day on Earth and The Year of the Beasts. In addition to writing books, she writes plays and opera libretti, makes movies, does performance pieces, and occasionally rocks out. For more information, go to www.misscecil.com.
SUZY MCKEE CHARNAS grew up on the West Side of Manhattan when pizza was fifteen cents a slice. She escaped into the wider world by joining the Peace Corps fresh out of college, and was sent to Nigeria to teach. Home again, she taught junior high until she was lured away to write curriculum for a drug abuse treatment program founded on two ideas: that teachers should stop telling lies about drugs to students, since the students knew more about drugs than they did, so lying just made the teachers look ridiculous; and that teachers and students have a common interest in making school less boring, since they are the ones stuck in classrooms together for years on end.
She married in 1969, and she and her husband went to live in New Mexico (for the big blue sky and high desert horizons), where she began writing science fiction and fantasy full-time. Her books and stories have won her various awards over the years, and a play made from her best-known novel (about a vampire who teaches college) has been staged on both coasts. She lectures and teaches about fantasy, SF, and fiction writing whenever she gets a chance to, and blogs about everything on Live Journal. Her website is www.suzymckeecharnas.com.
CASSANDRA CLARE is the internationally bestselling author of the Mortal Instruments and the Infernal Devices series of young adult urban fantasy novels. She lives with her husband and two cats in western Massachusetts, where she is currently writing Clockwork Prince, the last in the Infernal Devices trilogy. She has always liked vampires.
ELLEN DATLOW has been editing short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror fields for thirty years. She was fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of SCIFICTION, as well as editing anthologies throughout those years and continuing to do so today. Her most recent anthologies include Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe; Lovecraft Unbound; Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror; Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories; Haunted Legends (coedited with Nick Mamatas); The Beastly Bride; and Troll’s-Eye View (these last two with Terri Windling). Forthcoming in 2011 is Naked City: New Tales of Urban Fantasy. She coedited The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror for twenty-one years and has been editing The Best Horror of the Year for three years. Datlow has won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, and the Shirley Jackson Award for her editing. She was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award for “outstanding contribution to the genre.”
Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel curate the long-running New York monthly reading series Fantastic Fiction at KGB. She lives in New York City with two opinionated cats.
Her website is at www.datlow.com, and she blogs at http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com.
JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. His short fiction has been published in three collections: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, and The Drowned Life. His fiction has won the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons and teaches literature and writing at Brookdale Community College.
NEIL GAIMAN is the Newbery Medal—winning author of The Graveyard Book and a New York Times bestseller, whose books have been made into major motion pictures, including the recent Coraline. He is also famous for the Sandman graphic novel series and for numerous other books and comics for adult, young adult, and younger readers. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and other awards.
KATHE KOJA’s books for young adults include Buddha Boy, Talk, Kissing the Bee, and Headlong; her work has been honored by the International Reading Association, the American Library Association, and the Humane Society of the United States. She lives in the Detroit area with her husband, Rick Lieder, and three rescued cats. Visit kathekoja.com.
ELLEN KUSHNER grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, attended Bryn Mawr College, and graduated from Barnard College. She worked in publishing in New York City, then quit to write her first novel, Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners, which took a lot longer than she thought it would. When it was finished, she moved to Boston to be a music host for WGBH Radio and eventually got her own national public radio series, Sound & Spirit, which has been running ever since.
Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the Mythopoeic Award and the World Fantasy Award. She has returned to the world of Swordspoint in two more novels, The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman) and The Privilege of the Sword, plus a growing assortment of short stories. Her children’s book The Golden Dreydl was adapted by Vital Theatre as The Klezmer Nutcracker and has become a holiday favorite. Most recently, she and Holly Black coedited a new anthology of stories set in the world of Terri Windling’s Bordertown.