Lisa L. Hannett has had over seventy short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, The Dark, and “year’s best” anthologies in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, won the Australian National Science Fiction (“Ditmar”) Award for Best Novel. A new collection of short stories, Little Digs, is coming out in 2019.
Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels Aerie, Magonia (one of PW’s Best Books of 2015), Queen of Kings, and the memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard she is the author of The End of the Sentence, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2014, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been included in many “year’s best anthologies” and have been finalists for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards. Her highly acclaimed novel The Mere Wife, which adapts Beowulf to modern-day New York, was published earlier this year.
Carole Johnstone is a British Fantasy Award-winning Scottish writer, currently living in Essex, England. Her fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Black Static, New Fears, Horror Library, Interzone, Terror Tales of the Scottish Highlands, Dark Minds, and Sherlock Holmes and the School of Detection. Her work has been reprinted in “best of” anthologies in the U.S. and UK. Her novella, Cold Turkey, and debut short story collection, The Bright Day is Done were both shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award.
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen novels, six story collections, more than two hundred and fifty stories, and has some comic books in the works. His latest novel is Mongrels. He’s been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, the Bram Stoker Award, and three This Is Horror Awards. Jones teaches in the MFA programs at University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California Riverside-Palm Desert. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Hailed by the New York Times as “One of our essential writers of dark fiction,” Caitlín R. Kiernan has published twelve novels, including The Red Tree and The Drowning. She is the recipient of the Barnes and Noble Maiden Voyage, Bram Stoker, IHG, James Tiptree, Jr., Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Kiernan studied geology and paleontology at the University of Alabama and the University of Colorado and has published in several scientific journals, including the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. A prolific short fiction writer, her most recent collection is Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales. Two more, one from Subterranean Press and The Very Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan from Tachyon Publications, are forthcoming.
After receiving a PhD from Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Helen Marshall completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. She was recently appointed Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England and is the general director of the Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her first collection of fiction, Hair Side, Flesh Side, won the Sydney J Bounds Award. Her second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, and the Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.
Kate Marshall is the author of the Young Adult novel I Am Still Alive. Her science fiction and fantasy fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, and elsewhere. She writes historical romance as Kathleen Kimmel and works in the video game industry as a writer and occasional designer. Her love of books runs through every aspect of her career; she serves as both a developmental editor and a cover designer for fellow authors. She lives outside of Seattle with her husband, a dog, a cat, and a baby.
Ian Muneshwar is a writer and teacher currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina. His short fiction appears in venues such as Clarkesworld, Gamut, Liminal Stories, and The Dark. In both his writing and course design, he is concerned with queer subjectivities, cultural memory, and the ways in which queerbrown identities are shaped by diaspora. Muneshwar holds a BA from Vassar College and is a graduate of both the Clarion West and Odyssey workshops. He is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at North Carolina State University.
Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, M. Rickert worked as kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, balloon vendor at Disneyland, and in the personnel department of Sequoia National Park where she spent her time off hiking the wilderness. She now lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a small city of candy shops and beautiful gardens. She has published numerous short stories and two collections: Map of Dreams and Holiday. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, was published in 2014, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her first collection, Map of Dreams, was honored with both the World Fantasy and Crawford Awards. Her latest collection, You Have Never Been Here, was published in 2015.
Rebecca Roanhorse is an Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo/African-American writer and a VONA workshop alum. She is also a lawyer and Yale grad. She lives in northern New Mexico with her daughter, husband, and pug. Her debut novel, Trail of Lightning, was published earlier this year. Her children’s book Race to the Sun is coming in 2019 from Rick Riordan Presents. Her recent nonfiction can be found in Invisible 3: Essays and Poems on Representation in SF/F, Strange Horizons, Uncanny, and How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation.
Eden Royce describes herself as “Freshwater Geechee. Charleston girl living in the Garden of England” who grew up around rootworkers and hoodoo practitioners. A Speculative Literature Foundation’s Diverse Worlds grant recipient, her short stories appear in over a dozen anthologies and magazines. She’s voiced podcasts, been a reptile handler, bridal consultant, and stockbroker, but is now a full-time writer. She enjoys roller-skating, reading, cooking, traveling, and listening to thunderstorms.
Mark Samuels is a British writer of weird and fantastic fiction in the tradition of Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft (although his story here was published with a nod to Reggie Oliver). Born in deepest Clapham, South London, his short stories often focus on detailing a shadowy world in which his protagonists gradually discover terrifying and rapturous vistas lurking behind modernity. Samuels work has been highly praised by the likes of Thomas Ligotti and Ramsey Campbell and has appeared in prestigious anthologies of horror and weird fiction on both sides of the Atlantic.