Brian Herbert

Author Guest of Honor

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Brian Herbert Novels Site

Brian Herbert, the son of famed science fiction author Frank Herbert, is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers. He has won several literary honors and has been nominated for the highest awards in science fiction. In 2003, he published Dreamer of Dune, a moving biography of his father that was a Hugo Award finalist. His other acclaimed novels include Sidney’s Comet, Sudanna Sudanna, The Race for God, and Man of Two Worlds (written with Frank Herbert), in addition to the Hellhole trilogy and twelve Dune series novels coauthored with Kevin J. Anderson.

Kevin J. Anderson

Author Guest of Honor

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“Kevin J. Anderson: Master Of Universes” Site

Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 165 books, 56 of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press. His most recent novels are Stake, Kill Zone, and Spine of the Dragon.

Stephanie Law

Artist Guest of Honor

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Shadowscapes: The Art Of Stephanie Law

Stephanie Law is a multi-media artist and illustrator from California. Primarily working in watercolor, gold and silver leaf, and ink, she adds texture and dimension both within her pictures and in the frames of them. Stephanie has been a dancer for almost two decades, and she uses her experience of how the human body moves and emotes to create a bridge into her artwork, not only to depict humans, but also trees, other plants, insects, ephemeral guides and strange creatures. Early on, her career moved through the illustration and gaming world, but in recent decades she has focused more on her own body of work, gallery shows, and publications. She taught The Fantastic Workshop of Nashville, TN in 2016 and 2018, and won Best in Show at Dragoncon in 2015 for When Flowers Dream.

You can sign up for Stephanie’s 12:00 Noon Sunday Kaffeeklatsch by clicking here.

Christopher J. Garcia

Editor Guest of Honor

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Journey Planet - 2015 Hugo Winner!

Christopher J Garcia is a writer, filmmaker, festival programmer,curator, historian, podcaster, and painter from Boulder Creek, CA. He’s won a couple of Hugos, has a couple of kids, and is an all-around enthusiast.

NOTE: Due to fires in California threatening their home, Chris Garcia and family have been evacuated, and he will be unable to personally attend the rest of the convention. Luckily for all of YOU, Chris had already created a Rogue NASFiC Podcast on YouTube, with interviews and whatnot for you to enjoy at your leisure. To access that, go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7gMvgB8g8QbTBR-ypQ78Ug

Marc Millis

Science Guest of Honor

Mark Millis: Testing Possible Spacedrives

You can sign up for Marc’s 10:00 AM Saturday Kaffeeklatsch here

See his TEDx Brussels talk “Building ‘Icarus’”!

Sue and Steve Francis

Fan Guests of Honor

Sue and Steve Francis contributed greatly to the long-running success of RiverCon in Louisville, Kentucky. They are also recognized for their fan writing, and were the Down Under Fan Fund (DUFF) delegates from North America to Australia in 2008.

Tom Smith

Toastmaster

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Tom Smith Online

For 35 years, Tom Smith has been the morel conches of filk – that is, he’s in the dark a lot and makes weird noises when you hold him to your ear. However, he does have two dozen albums, fourteen Pegasus Awards for excellence in filk, a spot in the Filk Hall of Fame, and a decent collection of movies, games, comics, and Lego, so we took pity and let him in. He’ll have at least two concerts this weekend, filled with ludicrous whimsy, dark romance, and multilingual puns. You have been warned.

You can sign up for Tom’s 11:00 AM Sunday Kaffeeklatsch here.

Eric Flint

Ring of Fire (formerly 1632 Mini-con) Guest

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EricFlint.net

Eric Flint’s writing career began with the science fiction novel Mother of Demons. With David Drake, he has collaborated on the six-volume Belisarius series, as well as a novel entitled The Tyrant. His alternate history novel 1632 was published in 2000, and has led to a long-running series with many novels and anthologies in print. In addition, he’s written a number of science fiction and fantasy novels. He now has more than sixty novels in print as well as many pieces of short fiction and dozens of anthologies which he’s edited.

Sign up to attend Eric’s 1 PM Sunday Kaffeeklatsch here.

Juanita Coulson

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Juanita Coulson grew up listening to folk music, way back when the term “filk” had yet to be born. She found fandom during college, noting ads for sf clubs in the back of the pulp magazine “Other Worlds,” edited by Ray Palmer. She and her college BFF, Bev DeWeese (nee Amers) pubbed their ish via mimeograph, starting with the fanzine “EISFA,” which stood for “Eastern Indiana Science Fiction Association.” That ‘zine fizzled, but was reborn by Juanita as the fanzine “Yandro.” At around the same time, the exploration of space interested Juanita, and she wondered, “Why isn’t anyone writing songs about outer space?” Inspired by Randall Garrett’s takeoffs of Gilbert & Sullivan songs, Juanita began to try her hand at original compositions. “Chess” was an early creation, but she is most proud of “The Mummy Shuffle.”

Ace Tilton Ratcliff

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Stay Weird Be Kind

Ace Tilton Ratcliff lives and works in south Florida. They made the move to freelance writer, artist, and disability consultant at Stay Weird, Be Kind Studios in 2017. They have bylines at Huffington Post, io9, PopSci, Fireside Fiction, and more. Their meatcage struggles with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and other comorbidities. With their husband, they co-own Harper’s Promise, an in-home veterinary practice focusing on euthanasia. When not creating, they’re reading, and sometimes tweeting @mortuaryreport.

Ada Palmer

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adapalmer.com

Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions

Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series (Tor Books, starting with Too Like the Lightning) explores a future of borderless nations and globally commixing populations. She teaches history at the University of Chicago, studying the Renaissance, Enlightenment, heresy, atheism, radical thought, and censorship. She composes music including the Viking mythology cycle “Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok,” and performs with the group Sassafrass. She studies anime/manga, especially Osamu Tezuka, post-WWII manga and feminist manga, and consults for anime and manga publishers. She blogs at ExUrbe.com.

Alaya Dawn Johnson

Panelist

Alaya Dawn Johnson Website

Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of seven novels for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel for adults, Trouble the Saints, was released in July 2020 from Tor books. A short story collection, Reconstruction, is forthcoming in November 2020 from Small Beer Press. Her young adult novel The Summer Prince was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, while her novel Love Is the Drug won the Andre Norton/Nebula Award for Middle Grade/Young Adult fiction. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, A Phoenix First Must Burn, Feral Youth, and Zombies vs. Unicorns. She lives in Mexico where she received a master’s degree with honors in Mesoamerican Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for her thesis on pre-Columbian fermented food and its role in the religious-agricultural calendar.

Alec Nevala-Lee

www.NevalaLee.com

Alec Nevala-Lee was a 2019 Hugo and Locus Award finalist for Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (Dey Street Books / HarperCollins), which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Economist. Syndromes, an audio original collection of thirteen of his short stories from Analog, was released earlier this year by Recorded Books. He is currently at work on a biography of the architectural designer Buckminster Fuller, which is scheduled to be published by HarperCollins in 2021.

Alex Wittenberg

Alex Wittenberg has been attending cons for over two decades, serving on panels for almost as long, and been an active member of the filk community from the start. He most recently acted as con chair for NEWhere, the virtual version of the annual NEFilk convention. He is also a Trekkie, a long-suffering Mets fan, and an early bird in a community of night owls.

Aliette de Bodard

Aliette de Bodard website

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She has won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards, and was a double Hugo finalist for 2019 (Best Series and Best Novella). Her most recent book is Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court (upcoming July 7th from JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.). Her short story collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is out from Subterranean Press. She lives in Paris.

Alison Scott

Stow Shirts

Alison is a British fan of long standing who was this year’s Going-Under-Fan-Fund Delegate. GUFF exists to send fans from Europe to New Zealand and Australia (and vice versa). In the UK she has chaired the Eastercon twice and run several areas of UK Worldcons. She has twice won the Hugo for the co-edited fanzine Plokta. She’s a great fan of the social aspects of conventions and likes to stay up too late, hang out in the bar and make new friends. She runs a business selling nerdy and political shirts and badges.

Alma Alexander

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Alma Alexander, Duchess Of Fantasy

Alma Alexander is an internationally published novelist, short story writer and anthologist whose work spans more than two decades and stretches across all aspects of fantasy and science fiction. She lives in the cedar woods of the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two obligatory writer’s cats, and assorted visiting wildlife.

Amanda Makepeace

www.amandamakepeace.com

Amanda Makepeace is a Chesley Award winning illustrator, working in both digital and traditional mediums. Through her art, she explores mythology, magical beings, our connection to the planet, and even distant worlds. Amanda’s art has appeared in ENnie award-winning games, in short fiction magazines, like Amazing Stories and Fireside Fiction, and on the covers of independent novels and anthologies. She is a regular at Fantasy and SciFi conventions in the southeast. When she’s not in the studio, she can be found reconnecting with nature and the woods that inspired her as a child.

Andrea Hairston

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AndreaHairston.com

Andrea Hairston is author of Will Do Magic For Small Change, finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, Lambda Award, Tiptree Award, and a New York Times Editor’s pick. Other novels include: Redwood and Wildfire, a Tiptree and Carl Brandon Award winner, and Mindscape, winner of Carl Brandon Award. She has also published essays, plays, and short fiction and received grants from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, and Ford Foundation. In her spare time, Andrea is a Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. Master of Poisons will be out on Sept. 8, 2020 from Tor.com.

Anne Gray

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www.netmouse.com

On the good days, I dance. On the bad days, I do jigsaw puzzles. Sometimes I sing. Sometimes it’s the blues, sometimes it’s showtunes, folk rock, or children’s songs. Always, I read. For 10 years now, I’ve been reading up on the history of race issues in America. For 25 years I have run science fiction conventions. The latter lead to the former, after RaceFail ‘09 proved how much we smofs need to learn, and do better. I am a futurist, dedicated to positive, visionary change.

Batya "The Toon" Wittenberg

Batya “the Toon” Wittenberg is, in no particular order: a successfully transplanted New Yorker, a practicing Orthodox Jew, a happily married woman since 1999, a certified master of Pun Fu, an enthusiastic cook and foodie, a founding member of filk group Lady Mondegreen, a fanfic writer, a habitual online and tabletop roleplayer, and in no particular order.

Becca Mandel

Becca is a definitely human moss enthusiast who was lasso’d into the world of folk song about 6 years ago and hasn’t looked back since.

Ben Yalow

Ben Yalow has attended about 800 cons, and worked on about a third of them, at positions from gopher to regional convention chair, and Worldcon Division Head/Chair staff, on multiple continents. He co-founded SMOFcon, to help conrunners interchange information with each other, and was the Fan GoH at Discon3 and at the San Diego NASFiC in 1990. He has edited four books for NESFA Press, which regularly publishes books by the Guests of Honor of Boskone in addition to reprinting the works of deserving classic SF writers.

Beth Meacham

Beth Meacham has been a science fiction and fantasy editor for more than 35 years. She has worked for Ace Books, Berkeley, and Tor, where she was editor in chief from 1985 through 1989. She now works as an Executive Editor for Tor, from her home in Arizona. Among the authors Beth has worked with are Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Mary Robinette Kowal, Karl Schroeder, Spencer Ellsworth, Cecelia Holland, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Pat Murphy, Sarah Monette, Mike Resnick, Ken Scholes, Will Shetterly, John M. Ford, Michael Cassutt, Gordon R. Dickson, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tim Powers, Mike Brotherton, William Gibson, David Brin, Pat Cadigan, Storm Constantine, Lisa Goldstein, Steven Gould, Randy Henderson, Nancy Kress, Melanie Rawn, Charles Sheffield, Judith Tarr, Jack Vance, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Jane Yolen.

Bob Roehm

Bob Roehm attended his first worldcon in 1968 and more than 40 since then. He served on the RiverCon concom for all 25 years, as well as the 1979 NASFiC (only the second one). Retired from the University of Louisville Libraries, he still works (very) part time at the local indie bookstore. A fanatic book collector, Bob still reads the occasional sf book!

Bogi Takács

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www.bogireadstheworld.com

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) and an immigrant to the US. E is a winner of the Lambda award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer, and a finalist for other awards. Eir debut poetry collection Algorithmic Shapeshifting and eir debut short story collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation were both released last year. You can find Bogi talking about books at Bogi Reads the World and on various social media as bogiperson.

Brandon Wilson

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Brandon Wilson is a filmmaker and lecturer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he attended UCLA where he took a B.A. in African-American Studies and an M.F.A. from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. Wilson has directed two micro-budget features: 2005’s The Man Who Couldn’t… which is on YouTube, and Sepulveda from 2016, which is streaming for free on Vimeo.

Wilson teaches Film Analysis for Filmmakers and Introduction to Editing courses at UCLA. He also teaches at Columbia College Hollywood and Long Beach Community College. He blogs and has been a guest on several film oriented podcasts.

Caitlin Starling

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www.CaitlinStarling.com

Caitlin Starling is an award-winning writer of horror-tinged speculative fiction. Her novel The Luminous Dead won the LOHF Best Debut award, and was nominated for both a Locus and a Bram Stoker award. She has two gothic tales forthcoming - Yellow Jessamine (Neon Hemlock 2020) and The Death of Jane Lawrence (St Martin’s Press 2021) - and has a novella in Vampire: The Masquerade: Walk Among Us. Her nonfiction has appeared in Nightmare and Uncanny. Caitlin also works in narrative design, and has been paid to invent body parts.

Cat Rambo

The World Remains Mysterious: The Writing Of Cat Rambo

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Their 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Their most recent works are Nebula Award winner Carpe Glitter (Meerkat Press) and on-going serial novella Baby Driver. Forthcoming are fantasy novel Exiles of Tabat (Wordfire Press, fall 2020), space opera You Sexy Thing (Tor Macmillan, 2021) and the conclusion to the Tabat Quartet, Gods of Tabat (Wordfire Press, 2021).

Charles Payseur

Quick Sip Reviews

Charles Payseur is a reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His work has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many more. A four time Hugo Award finalist, he spends his days in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, shoveling snow and being tolerated by his cats and husband.

Cheryl Morgan

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Cheryl’s Mewsings

Wizard’s Tower Press

Salon Futura

Cheryl Morgan is a writer, editor and owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. She has won four Hugo Awards. You can find her reviews in Salon Futura. Cheryl has been a Guest of Honour at conventions and conferences in Finland, Croatia and Austria.

Chris Conway

www.chrisconway.org

2020 marks “Christo” ‘s 20th year in filk. He’s been Guest of Honour at UK Con, FKO, DFDF, Consonance, Confluence, and Marcon and has won 5 UK Sam Awards and received 10 Pegasus Award nominations. A multi-genre, multi-instrumentalist, he has worked with the late Peter Tork of The Monkees, and members of Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention, and released 2 filk albums – Alien Salad Abduction & Deep Space Love - and 147 others in other genres. Michigan born, he moved to the UK as a child and spends most of his time in his studio loft in Leicester.

Chris M. Barkley

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Chris Barkley’s first sf convention was Midwestcon 27 in June 1976. Since then he as gone to nearly 200 cons, including 29 World Science Fiction Conventions. In his 44 years in fandom, he has been a convention worker/volunteer, a convention chair, (Cinclave in 1986), a professional bookseller, book collector, genre radio talk show host, a fan activist involved with the Worldcon Business Meeting, a tv and movie reviewer and currently, a columnist at large for the Hugo Award winning fanzine, File 770 dot com. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Chris "Silver Spook" Miller

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Chris is a Native Hawaiian activist and game developer. He’s best known for Neofeud, a cyberpunk game about his experiences growing up in Hawaii’s ghetto, being a social worker & STEM teacher for poor, homeless, refugees, POC kids in the slums of Hawaii that the tour buses avoid.

Christine Taylor-Butler

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ChristineTaylorButler.com

Move Books

Christine Taylor-Butler is the author of more than 80 books for children. A graduate of MIT, she holds degrees in both Civil Engineering and Art & Design. Her current passion project is The Lost Tribes series, illustrated by Patrick Arrasmith. Christine lives in Kansas City, MO with her husband, Ken.

C.L. Polk

clpolk.com

C. L. Polk (she/her/they/them) is the author of the World Fantasy Award winning debut novel Witchmark, the first novel of the Kingston Cycle. Her newest novel, The Midnight Bargain, is upcoming in 2020 from Erehwon Books.

Cynthia Diamond

www.cynthiadiamondauthor.com

Cynthia is an award-winning paranormal romance author that writes for sassy nerds with a sharp sense of humor. She writes magical worlds with snarky heroines and sexy heroes with a dash of “cinnamon roll”. When not telling tales, Cynthia is a geek, a costumer, and an amateur artist. She resides in sunny San Diego, California with her husband Max, two cats of varying intelligence, and a ton of goldfish.

Dan Tres Omi

Soundcloud

Dan Tres Omi is an educator, Hip Hop diplomat, Capoeira instructor, and pod-caster out of Dayton, Ohio.

Danian Darrell Jerry

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Danian Darrell Jerry is a writer, teacher, and emcee and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. His stories engage the culture and music nourished by the Bluff City and the Mississippi Delta. He teaches literature and composition at the University of Memphis. He is fiction editor for Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Outside of class, he works on his first novel, Son of the Iron Mic. Danian has work forthcoming in the fall edition of Fireside Quarterly.

Daniel M. Kimmel

Daniel M Kimmel at Goodreads.com

Veteran film critic and author of humorous SF. Daniel was a Hugo Finalist for Jar Jar Binks Must Die and a Compton Crook finalist for Shh! It’s a Secret. He was the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award, given by the New England Science fiction Association. His most recent novel is Father of the Bride of Frankenstein. Film columnist for Space and Time magazine.

dave ring

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www.dave-ring.com

dave ring is the chair of the OutWrite LGBTQ Book Festival in Washington, DC. He has stories featured or forthcoming in a number of publications, including Fireside Fiction, GlitterShip, and A Punk Rock Future. He is the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, as well as the editor of Broken Metropolis: Queer Tales of a City That Never Was from Mason Jar Press.

Day Al-Mohamed

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www.DayAlMohamed.com

www.InvalidCorpsFilm.com

Day Al-Mohamed is author of YA novels, The Labyrinth’s Archivist and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, and is a host on Idobi Radio’s “Geek Girl Riot”. In addition to fiction, she works in comics and film. She is a founding member of FWD-Doc (Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities), a Docs in Progress Fellowship alumna and a graduate of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. Her award-winning film, The Invalid Corps, will screen on Maryland Public television this fall. When not creating, Al-Mohamed works as a policy advisor with the federal government. She lives in Washington DC with her wife and guide dog.

Deirdre M. Murphy

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Deirdre M. Murphy is a fan, writer, artist, and filker. She has a cozy mystery with sea monsters coming out soon, and would be delighted to talk about it or any of her other work. You can find her as @Wyld_Dandelyon on Twitter and Dreamwidth.

Dominik Parisien

dominikparisien.ca

Dominik Parisien’s editorial projects have won the Hugo, Shirley Jackson, British Fantasy, and Aurora Awards. His writing has appeared in various literary journals and genre magazines and his debut poetry collection Side Effects May Include Strangers is forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press in fall 2020. Dominik is a disabled, bisexual French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

Doug Piero Carey

Harry SF & Fantasy Club

Doug Piero Carey started reading SF in 1970. His first convention was Discon 2 in 1974. He joined Harry, the Canton, Ohio SF book club around 1981 and married another fan, Mary Piero, in 1983. Doug lives in Ohio and has continued to read SF, to go to cons and to Harry, and to remain happily married.

Eboni Dunbar

Eboni J Dunbar (She/her) is a queer, black woman who writes queer and black speculative fiction. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner. She received her BA from Macalester College in English and her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is a VONA and Voodoonauts Alum, a managing editor for FIYAH Literary Magazine and a freelance reviewer. Her work can be found in FIYAH Literary Magazine, Drabblecast, Anathema: Spec from the margins and Nightlight Podcast. She also has a forthcoming novella from Neon Hemlock, coming Fall 2020.

Eddie Louise

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Eddie Louise is a novelist and audio-drama/podcast creator who builds speculative fiction worlds on the page and for the ears. She writes the hit audio-drama, THE TALES OF SAGE & SAVANT and the novels of the TRANSMIGRATIONS Series.

Eileen Gunn

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EileenGunn.com

Eileen Gunn writes short stories. Her fiction has received the Nebula Award in the US and the Sense of Gender Award in Japan, and been nominated for the Hugo, Philip K. Dick, and World Fantasy awards and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. award (now the Otherwise Award). Gunn was editor/publisher of the influential Infinite Matrix webzine. She serves on the board of directors of the Locus Foundation, and served for 22 years on the board of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She is the author of two story collections.

Elsa R. Sjunneson

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Hugo, Aurora and BFA winning editor and author Elsa Sjunneson is a Deafblind hurricane in a vintage dress. She’s written Jessica Jones for Serial Box, fiction and non-fiction for Uncanny and opinions for CNN. She lives in the Pacific Northwest behind a fairy hedge.

Erin Underwood

Erin Underwood is the chair of Boskone 58, which take place in February 2021. She is the editor for Underwords Press, a small press that specializes in young adult science fiction anthologies. Erin is also a science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer with her fiction appearing in various anthologies. Her non-fiction has appeared in the SFWA Bulletin and Amazing Stories Magazine. She is also the editor of several science fiction anthologies.

Errick Nunnally

www.erricknunnally.us

Errick Nunnally​ was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, ​and ​served one tour in the Marine Corps before deciding art school was a safer pursuit. He enjoys art, comics, and genre novels. A graphic designer, he has trained in Krav Maga and Muay Thai kickboxing. He has appeared in several anthologies and is best described as “dark pulp.” His work can be found in FIYAH MAGAZINE, LAMPLIGHT, THE FINAL SUMMONS, PROTECTORS 2, NIGHTLIGHT PODCAST, and the novels, LIGHTNING WEARS A RED CAPE, BLOOD FOR THE SUN, and ALL THE DEAD MEN.

Farah Mendlesohn

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Farah Mendlesohn won a Hugo with Edward James in 2005 for The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. She is also the author of Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature, Rhetorics of Fantasy, with Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy, The Inter-galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, with Michael M. Levy Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, which won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopeic Award in 2017. In 2019 year she published, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and sometime at the end of 2020 her book on children’s literature, memory and the English Civil Wars will come out from Palgrave. She is now the only three time winner of the BSFA award for non-fiction and is now neck and neck with John Clute for Hugo nominations.

F. Paul Wilson

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Repairman Jack website

F. Paul Wilson, a New Jersey resident, Grand Master Horror award-winner and Prometheus Award Lifetime Achievement winner, has written over 60 books spanning science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, young-adult, etc. – including the Prometheus Award (www.lfs.org) winners Wheels within Wheels, an sf murder mystery; Sims; Healer; and An Enemy of the State. Wilson, who sold his first story to Analog in 1970 and has 8 million books in U.S. print, is best known as creator of the urban mercenary Repairman Jack (featured in his latest novel The Last Christmas). Among his New York Times bestsellers: The Keep (also a 1983 Paramount film), The Tomb, Harbingers, By the Sword, The Dark at the End, and Nightworld.

Foz Meadows

Fozmeadows.wordpress.com

Foz Meadows is a queer Australian SFF author and critic based in California. She has won a Ditmar Award for Best FanWriter (2017), the Norma K. Hemming Award for her novella Coral Bones (2018),and a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer (2019), and has also made the Hugo FanWriter shortlist a further three times. Her most recent novels, An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens, are a feminist portal fantasy duology published by Angry Robot.

Freya Marske

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freyamarske.com

Freya Marske lives in Australia, where she is yet to be killed by any form of wildlife. She writes stories full of magic, blood, and as much kissing as she can get away with, and she co-hosts the Hugo Award nominated podcast Be the Serpent. Her hobbies include figure skating and discovering new art galleries, and she is on a quest to try all the gin in the world. Her debut novel, the queer historical fantasy A MARVELLOUS LIGHT, is forthcoming from Tor.Com Publishing in 2021.

Gadi Evron

Essence of Wonder

Gadi is former CEO and founder of Cymmetria [acquired], coordinates global response to cyber threats, chair of the World Economic Forum’s Cyber Risk Insight Council, and led the post-mortem for The First Internet War. In fandom, Gadi is the host of web show Essence of Wonder, and is Division Head of Events for Discon III. In his free time, he writes science fiction and fantasy, and teaches dance.

Gillian Polack

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gillianpolack.com

Dr Gillian Polack is a Jewish-Australian science fiction and fantasy writer, researcher and editor. She wrote the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel (The Wizardry of Jewish Women). Her writing was short listed for many awards, and won one, once: this was probably a mistake. Gillian is a Medievalist/ethnohistorian, currently working on how novels transmit culture. Her work on how writers use history in their fiction (History and Fiction) was a runner-up for an award but will be out in paperback soon anyway. Her hobbies include researching historical foodways and reading. She has a collection of select and very attractive fans.

Isabel Schechter

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Isabel has been a SF/F fan since childhood and active in fandom for 20 years, 10 of those as a conrunner, and is a frequent panelist at conventions. Isabel is Puerto-Rican, and her essays on race and representation in SF/F have been published in Invisible 2: Essays on Race and Representation in SF/F; Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy; and WisCon Chronicles, and is Co-Editor of The WisCon Chronicles Volume 12: Boundaries and Bridges.

Isabel has a master’s degree in Divinity from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has taught Hebrew and Bible classes for adults and bat mitzvah students and has managed a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Solomon Schechter award-winning adult education program and created Jews By Choice conversion and adult bar/mitzvah programs.

Isabel is also an active library supporter and has served on the boards of several library-related organizations.

Jamar Nicholas

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Jamar Nicholas is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based artist and educator, dedicating his career to helping young people realize the power of cartooning. He is widely-known for adapting and illustrating Geoffrey Canada’s Fist Stick Knife Gun and creating Leon: Protector of the Playground, which won the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in 2018. He is also a writer and columnist for DRAW! Magazine, the How-To source for comic and animation professionals, as well as co-host of the Pencil To Pencil Podcast with comics legends Mike Manley and Bret Blevins.

J. Holtham

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J. HOLTHAM is a screenwriter, semi-retired playwright and blogger. TV credits: PITCH (Fox), MARVEL’S CLOAK & DAGGER (Freeform), MARVEL’S JESSICA JONES (Netflix), SUPERGIRL (CW). He was a 2016 Humanitas New Voices Fellow. His screenplay Killers Anonymous was a finalist for the 2014 PAGE Screenwriting Award and the 2014 Final Draft Big Break Contest, as well as a finalist for the Writers Store’s Industry Insider Contest. His screenplay Hunter Lake was featured on The Black List website and was a semi-finalist for the 2015 Blue Cat Screenplay Contest. He is a proud product of public education.

Jason Sanford

www.jasonsanford.com

Jason Sanford is a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award and has published more than a dozen stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which also devoted a special issue to his fiction. In addition he has published numerous stories in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other places along with appearances in multiple “year’s best” anthologies and other books including The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman. His fiction has been translated into nearly a dozen languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, and Czech. Born and raised in the American South, Jason currently works in the media industry in the Midwestern United States. His previous experience includes work as an archaeologist and as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Jeannette Ng

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Blog - Nettlefish

Jeannette Ng is originally from Hong Kong but now lives in Durham, UK. Her MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies fed into an interest in medieval and missionary theology, which in turn spawned her love for writing gothic fantasy with a theological twist. She runs live roleplay games and is active within the costuming community, running a popular blog. She has also won the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer at the British Fantasy Awards.

Jennifer Blackstream

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JenniferBlackstream.com

Jennifer Blackstream is a USA Today bestselling author of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. She is amazed and grateful to have made a writing career out of a Master’s degree in Psychology, hours of couch-detecting watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and endless research into mythology and fairy tales.

Jeremy Holcomb

Jeremy Holcomb is a game system designer focusing on board, card and collectable card games. He has designed and published over 20 board games, including The Duke (Catalyst Games), Timestreams (Bucephalus Games), and Anachronism (TriKing Games). Holcomb’s The White Box (Atlas Games) provides a tool kit for new designers looking into making board games, and he has been teaching game design for over a decade via the ASUW experimental college and DigiPen Institute of Technology, where he now serves as the program director for the Bachelor of Arts in Game Design program. His personal quest is to play every game that exists at least once.

Jim Beall

Jim Beall (BS-Math, MBA, PE) has been a nuclear engineer for over 40 years, a war gamer for over 50, and an avid reader of science fiction for even longer. He began as a nuclear engineering officer aboard USS Long Beach (CGN-9). Civilian experience includes design, construction, inspection, enforcement, and assessment with a nuclear utility, an architect engineering firm, and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Coauthor of Journal of the British Interplanetary Society paper, “Ecological Engineering Considerations for ISU’s Worldship Project.” Baen Books published eight of his non-fiction articles, including “Our Worldship Broke!” anthologized in Stellaris: People of the Stars.

Jim C. Hines

Jim C. Hines website

Jim C. Hines is the author of the Magic ex Libris series, the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, the humorous Goblin Quest trilogy, and the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. His latest novel is Terminal Uprising, book two in the humorous science fiction Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse trilogy. He’s an active blogger, and won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family.

Joe Siclari

Fanac.org

Fancyclopedia.org

YouTube: Fan History

A fan since 1965, Joe Siclari started reading S-F earlier. Joe is active in almost every aspect of fandom: he published 100+ fanzines plus many convention publications, started S-F clubs and conventions (Tropicon, SMOFcon, FanHistoricon and the Travelling Fete), chaired MagiCon, the 50th Worldcon, and many conventions. Joe was 2005 DUFF delegate, 2016 Big Heart recipient with his wife, Edie Stern, and will be the 2022 Fan GoH at Chicon 7. Joe chairs The Fan History Project which sponsors Fancyclopedia 3 and the Fan History YouTube channel. He’s written for reference books, co-edited Hugo nominated Worldcon GoH Speeches, has a large collection of fan publications and memorabilia used for exhibits at many conventions. Joe and Edie also collect S-F art and curated over 15 historical exhibits.

Joel Zakem

Joel Zakem attended his first SF con in 1968 and has been attending (and occasionally working on cons) ever since.

John Medaille

Triple Plus Ungood Podcast

John is a science fiction and horror author with over thirty publishing credits in small print journals and podcasts, including Pseudopod, EscapePod, The Three-Lobed Burning Eye and The Red Penny Papers. John has a short fiction podcast called Tripleplus Ungood, available on iTunes and Spotify.

John Wiswell

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John Wiswell blog

John (@Wiswell) is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He has been published in Uncanny Magazine, Nature Magazine, and Fireside Magazine, among others.

Jordan Kurella

Jordan Kurella is a queer and disabled author who has lived all over the world (including Moscow and Manhattan). In their past lives, they were a barista, radio DJ, and social worker. Their work has been featured in Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Strange Horizons Magazines.

Jude-Marie Green

Judemarie.wordpress.com

Broaduniverse.org

Jude-Marie Green writes short fiction and was published in Daily Science Fiction, The Colored Lens, and Toasted Cake this past year. She attended Clarion West in 2010 and won the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Older Writer’s Grant. She lives in Southern California.

Julia Rios

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Julia Rios is a queer, Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose writing has appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed, and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Their editing work has won multiple awards including the Hugo Award. Julia is a co-host of This is Why We’re Like This, a podcast about how the movies we watch in childhood shape our lives, for better or for worse. They’ve narrated stories for Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders.

Julie Washington

Julie is the former editor and founder of the newszine Cleveland Ansible, and a Clarion graduate. She has written numerous interviews and reviews of SF authors and movies for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. She helped organize the Masquerade Contest at Marcon for two years. She is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Currently Julie lives in Cleveland with her husband, two cats, dragons, piles of fabric and many books.

Juliet McKenna

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www.julietemckenna.com

Juliet E McKenna is a British fantasy author living in the Cotswolds, UK. Loving history, myth and other worlds since she first learned to read, she has written fifteen epic fantasy novels so far. Her debut, The Thief’s Gamble, began The Tales of Einarinn in 1999, followed by The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. The Green Man’s Heir was her first modern fantasy rooted in British folklore, followed by The Green Man’s Foe and The Green Man’s Silence. She writes diverse shorter stories enjoying forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and SF.

Kathryn Sullivan

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kathrynsullivan.com

Kathryn Sullivan writes young adult science fiction and fantasy, including fantasy novel The Crystal Throne and short story collection Agents, Adepts, & Apprentices. She has essays in the Hugo Award winning Chicks Dig Time Lords and in Children Of Time: Companions Of Doctor Who and Outside In. She is owned by a large cockatoo, who graciously allows her to write about other animals, as well as birdlike aliens. Kathryn lives in Winona, MN, where the river bluffs along the Mississippi River double as cliffs on alien planets or the deep mysterious forests in a magical world.

L.D. Lewis

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L.D. Lewis Writes

L.D. Lewis is an award-winning SF/F writer and editor, and serves as a founding creator, Art Director, and Project Manager for the World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated FIYAH Literary Magazine. She also serves as Grant Administrator for the Speculative Literature Foundation and as a researcher for the LeVar Burton Reads podcast, and Director of FIYAHCON. She is the author of A Ruin of Shadows (Dancing Star Press, 2018) and her published short fiction includes appearances in FIYAH, PodCastle, Strange Horizons, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, and Fireside Magazine, among others. She lives in Georgia with her coffee habit and an impressive Funko Pop! collection.

Laurence Raphael Brothers

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Laurence Raphael Brothers - Author

Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist with 5 patents and a background in AI and Internet R&D. More than 30 of his short stories have appeared in magazines such as Nature, PodCastle, the New Haven Review, and Galaxy’s Edge. His WWI-era fantasy novel Twilight Patrol and his romantic noir urban fantasy novella The Demons of Wall Street were both just recently published. Follow him on twitter: @lbrothers or visit his bibliography for more stories that can be read or listened to online. Pronouns: he/him.

Leigh Harlen

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leighharlen.com

Leigh Harlen is a queer, non-binary writer of dark leaning speculative fiction. They live and work in Seattle. Their non-writing hobbies include petting strangers’ dogs and enthusing about how awesome bats are.

Leonard Richardson

Leonard Richardson is a software developer for the New York Public Library, and the author of two novels, Constellation Games and Situation Normal (forthcoming).

Lizabee Gibson

A British folksinger, costumer, and student of history.

Lucy A. Snyder

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www.lucysnyder.com

Lucy A. Snyder is the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated and five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 14 books and over 100 published short stories. Her most recent books are the collection Halloween Season and the forthcoming novel The Girl With the Star-Stained Soul. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, and Best Horror of the Year. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Malka Older

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Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters came out in November 2019. She is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and her opinions can be found in The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and NBC THINK, among other places.

Mari Ness

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Mari Ness has published poetry and fiction in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Uncanny, Nightmare, Fireside, Strange Horizons, Diabolical Plots, Apex and Fantasy. For more, see her infrequently updated website at marikness.wordpress.com or follow her on Twitter @mari_ness

Marieke Nijkamp

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mariekenijkamp.com

Marieke Nijkamp is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of YA novels, graphic novels, and comics, including This Is Where It Ends, Even If We Break, and The Oracle Code. Their short stories can be found in several anthologies. Marieke is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek.

Marilisa Valtazanou

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Marilisa is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has been part of the UK filk community for nearly 20 years. She is usually found performing as half of award-winning duo Playing Rapunzel. She owns and attempts to play far more instruments than is good for her or anyone else; dabbles in opera, operetta, choral music, early music, and anything else that comes her way; and writes whimsical songs about literary protagonists, cautionary tales about the Internet, and the odd musical. She has won several Sam awards, and was Guest of Honour at the 23rd UK filk convention.

Mary Anne Mohanraj

maryannmohanraj.com

speculativeliterature.org

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib, Bodies in Motion, The Stars Change, and twelve other titles. Other recent publications include stories for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, Perennial: A Garden Romance (Tincture), stories at Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed, and an essay in Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies. Mohanraj founded Hugo-nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning speculative literature magazine Strange Horizons, and serves as Executive Director of both DesiLit (desilit.org) and the Speculative Literature Foundation (speclit.org). She is Clinical Associate Professor of fiction and literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Michael Grossberg

Michael Grossberg co-founded the Libertarian Futurist Society (lfs.org), established in 1981 to sustain the Prometheus Awards, and chairs the Prometheus Awards Best Novel Finalist Judging Committee, which selects annual slates of finalists. A theater critic and arts reporter since the early 1980s, Michael has contributed to six books, including critical essays for the annual Best Plays Theatre Yearbook, and an essay/afterword for the first paperback edition of J. Neil Schulman’s Prometheus-winning novel The Rainbow Cadenza; written reviews for Reason magazine; wrote a regional column for years with Backstage, the national performing-arts weekly; and helped lead for two decades the American Theatre Critics Association and administer its national new-play and regional-Tony awards. Michael won the 2019 Society of Professional Journalists awards for Best Critic in Ohio (also won in 2015) and Best Arts Reporting (won seven times).

Michael R. Underwood

www.michaelrunderwood.com

Michael R. Underwood is an author, podcaster, and publishing professional. His series include the Ree Reyes Geekomancy books, the Stabby Award finalist Genrenauts series, Born to the Blade, and Annihilation Aria. He’s been a bookseller, sales representative, and was the North American Sales & Marketing Manager for Angry Robot Books. He is also a co-host of Speculate! and a guest host on the Hugo Award-finalist The Skiffy and Fanty Show.

Mike Chen

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Mike Chen is the author of Here And Now And Then (a finalist for Goodreads Choice - Best Sci-Fi, CALIBA Golden Poppy, and the Compton Crook Award) and A Beginning At The End (“a brilliant, fragile path through the darkness” – Library Journal). His short fiction is featured in Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View – The Empire Strikes Back, and he has covered geek culture for sites such as Tor.com, The Mary Sue, and StarTrek.com. In a previous life, he covered the NHL for Fox Sports, SB Nation, and other outlets. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals.

Mike Gibson

A British chanteyman, session leader, SF fan, and raconteur.

Misha Stone

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Misha Stone (she/her) is a Reader Services Librarian in Seattle. She serves on the Clarion West Writers Workshop board. Misha reads science fiction, fantasy, lit fic, and romance, and is a karaoke enthusiast.

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

www.aurumahmad.com

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Washington and a Research Scientist at KenSci. Muhammad Aurangzeb has published over 50 research papers in machine learning and artificial intelligence. His current research is on Fairness and Bias in Healthcare AI. He has a PhD in Computer Science at University of Minnesota where he worked on modeling human behavior is online games. He is also the founder and editor of the Islam and Science Fiction project, which is the most comprehensive resource on the subject.

Dr. Nakeema Stefflbauer

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nakeema.net

Dr. Nakeema Stefflbauer is founder and CEO of the Berlin, Germany NGO FrauenLoop.org. A lifelong sci-fi and speculative fiction fan, she has been heavily influenced by the work of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin, among others. Dr. Stefflbauer holds MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Her background in research, digital transformation and entrepreneurship have made her a sought-after international speaker on tech access and the impact of artificial intelligence on marginalised communities.

Neil Clarke

Neil-Clarke.com

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com) and several anthologies, including the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. He has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor (Short Form) eight times, won the Chesley Award for Best Art Director three times, and received the Solstice Award from SFWA in 2019. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

Nicholas Whyte

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nhwyte.livejournal.com

By day, Nicholas Whyte is a public affairs consultant in Brussels, who advised the last three countries to become independent. A huge Doctor Who fan, he has been bookblogging since 2003.

Nino Cipri

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ninocipri.com

Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator. Nino’s story collection HOMESICK won the Dzanc Short Fiction Collection Prize, and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards. Their novella FINNA — about queer heartbreak, working retail, and wormholes — was published by Tor.com in 2020, with a sequel slated for publication in 2021. A multidisciplinary artist, Nino has also written plays, screenplays, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer. One time, an angry person on the internet called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty funny.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

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Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki website

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a Nigerian writer and editor. He has been awarded an honourable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, twice. His short story “The Witching Hour,” made the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List and won the Nommo award for best short story by an African. He has been published in Selene Quarterly, Strange Horizons, Tor, and other venues, and has works forthcoming in several journals, magazines and anthologies. He has guest edited and co-edited several publications, including The Selene Quarterly, Invictus Quarterly and Dominion: an Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. He is a member of the African Speculative Fiction Society, Codex, the HWA, the BSFA, and the SFWA.

Pablo Defendini

firesidefiction.com

Pablo Defendini is the Publisher and Art Director of Fireside Magazine. He is also a designer and developer for hire, with a focus on editorial design for digital media. He helped launch Tor.com, before moving on to work for companies that sit in the overlap between publishing and technology, like Open Road Media and O’Reilly. Pablo was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, lives in New York City, and works with people all over the world.

Phoebe Barton

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PhoebeBartonSF.com

Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, On Spec, and Kaleidotrope, anthologies from Bundoran Press and Alliteration Ink, and she is writing the interactive fiction game The Luminous Underground for Choice of Games. She serves as an Associate Editor at Escape Pod, and she is a 2019 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and lives with a robot in the sky above Toronto.

Phoebe North

[email protected]

Phoebe North, a graduate of the University of Florida’s MFA program in poetry, is the critically acclaimed author of Starglass and Starbreak. A new novel will be forthcoming from HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray in 2021. North was a finalist in 2018 with the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Other short fiction, critical work, and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming with Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, the YA Review Network, Umbrella Journal, District Lit, 2river View and Strange Horizons (among others), and in anthologies such as the 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, Among the Shadows and Speculative Fiction 2015. North was named a 2013 Flying Start from Publisher’s Weekly. Writing from a home in the Hudson Valley, they also enjoy gardening, spending time with family, listening to obscure music on outdated formats, and fighting off the fear of death by curating an astonishingly comprehensive social media presence.

Premee Mohamed

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Premee Mohamed, Writer & Eldritch Monster

Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues, including Analog, Escape Pod, Augur, and Nightmare Magazine. Her debut novel, ‘Beneath the Rising,’ is out now from Solaris Books, with the sequel due out in 2021.

Raven Oak

www.ravenoak.net

Award-winning speculative fiction author Raven Oak is best known for Amaskan’s Blood, Class-M Exile, and a dozen or so short stories. She’s even published on the moon! Raven spent most of her K-12 education doodling 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet. She’s a geeky, disabled ENBY who enjoys getting her game on or staring at the ocean. She lives in Seattle with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach. Her hair color changes as often as this bio.

Raymond VanTilburg

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Ray on Reddit

Ray on Etsy

Being a self-taught artist who started creating fantastical images when I was old enough to pick up a crayon. I began selling paintings and drawings in the science fiction market at my first convention in 1983. The next year I began selling my art on t-shirts, at Marcon in Columbus, OH. Occasionally showing originals at Art Shows. Over the last several years I’ve showing and selling originals in Science Fiction convention art shows at any that I attend.

R.B. Lemberg

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rblemberg.net

R.B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant and the Nebula and Crawford-nominated author of Birdverse stories and other works. Their Birdverse novella The Four Profound Weaves is forthcoming from Tachyon Press in early Sep. 2020.

Roberta Rogow

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Roberta Rogow is a long-time Fan, Filker and Author. Her Filk career began in the med-1970’s, and continues to this day. She was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2013. She has had 15 novels published, as well as short stories. Roberta lives in New Jersey.

Sally Headford

Sally Headford has been a long term member of her local Toronto area filk community for over 25 years. She helps moderate FilkBites, a regular online house filk and, prior to COVID, has worked on the Con-Com of over twenty FilKONtario.

Sarah Loch

Sarah Loch (she/her) has been making up stories since childhood, first for her own amusement and then to entertain her younger siblings and cousins. She is a young adult librarian and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Sarah has pseudonymously authored and self-published several queer contemporary and paranormal romances while working to write and revise her first YA novel.

Sheree Renée Thomas

Nine Bar Blues

Sheree Renée Thomas is the author of NINE BAR BLUES: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, 2020), Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press, 2016), and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories and Poems (Aqueduct, 2011). Her widely anthologized work appears in THE BIG BOOK OF MODERN FANTASY edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage). Her essays appear in The New York Times and other publications. Her DARK MATTER anthologies were honored with two World Fantasy Awards and Sheree’s writing has been supported by fellowships from the Millay Colony of the Arts, Bread Loaf Environmental, NYFA, VCCA, and Cave Canem. She lives in Memphis, near a mighty river and a pyramid.

Sherwood Smith

www.sherwoodsmith.net

Sherwood Smith writes fantasy, science fiction, and historical novels for young and old.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

www.silviamoreno-garcia.com

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the best-selling author of the novels Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow, Certain Dark Things, Untamed Shore, and a bunch of other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu’s Daughters).

Stephen Leigh

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www.stephenleigh.com

Steve has published thirty-one novels and over sixty short stories, both under his own name and the pen name S.L. Farrell. His most recent novel is A RISING MOON, a sequel to A FADING SUN (DAW Books/Penguin, November 2018.) He has a new science fiction novel, AMID THE CROWDED STARS, to be published by DAW Books in February 2021. Steve’s work has been nominated for and won awards within the sf/fantasy genre. He’s also a frequent contributor to George RR Martin’s WILD CARDS series.

Steven Gould

Steven Gould is the author of over ten novels from Tor Books. JUMPER, his first novel, was made into the 2008 motion picture starring Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Samuel R. Jackson, and Jamie Bell. IMPULSE, the third novel in the JUMPER series, is the source material for the YouTube Originals television series of the same name starring Maddie Hasson, Sarah Desjardins, Enuka Okuma, and Missy Pyle. Season One and Two are is availble now. Steven was President of SFWA from 2013-2015.

Steven H Silver

www.sfsite.com/~silverag/afterhastings.html

Steven H Silver is a seventeen-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for 8 years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB Books. He began publishing short fiction in 2008, his most recently published story is “A Letter Home,” his most recent book is After Hastings. In 1995, he created the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

Sumana (brainwane) Harihareswara

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www.harihareswara.net

@Brainwane at Mastadon

Sumana Harihareswara is a NYC-based programmer, manager, and mentor who coedited, with Leonard Richardson, the free, Creative Commons-licensed anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments in 2009. She’s written a weekly newspaper column, taught and performed stand-up comedy, blogged at GeekFeminism.org, made fanvids, and worked on open source software projects, including the software behind Wikipedia. Currently she’s focusing on her new company Changeset Consulting (short-term, targeted project management for open source and the companies that depend on it). Since mid-2017 she has served on the Otherwise Award’s board.

Tessa McFionn

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www.tessamcfionn.com

Tessa McFionn has always had a love of all things unreal. Growing up reading Tolkien, Heinlein, and comic books, playing D&D, and watching Thundarr the Barbarian on Saturday mornings, she was immersed in worlds of magic. When her mother introduced her to Dune and An Interview with a Vampire, she was hooked on romance in speculative fiction, and after discovering Sherrilyn Kenyon, she realized love can share center stage in the story. With an award-winning paranormal romance and a new sci-fi romance series out in the world, she continues to encourage all to believe in magic.

Tobias S. Buckell

tobiasbuckell.com

Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling and World Fantasy Award winning author. His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.

Tom Jackson

Moderator

Tom Jackson, an Ohio resident, is a newspaper reporter for The Sandusky Register who has also worked as a reporter in Cleveland, Ohio, and in Oklahoma. He writes a blog, RAWIllumination.net, devoted to writers Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (Prometheus Hall of Fame winners for _The Illuminatus_trilogy). He has been active in fandom for years, contributing to fanzines, attending conventions and participating in the apas APA-50 and FAPA. He is a member of the board of the Libertarian Futurist Society (lfs.org), which presents the Prometheus Award, and serves as a judge on the Prometheus Award nominating committee.

Valerie Estelle Frankel

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www.vefrankel.com

Valerie Estelle Frankel is the author of 80 pop culture books, including Hunting for Meaning in The Mandalorian; Inside the Captain Marvel Film; Star Wars Meets the Eras of Feminism; and Who Tells Your Story? History, Pop Culture, and Hidden Meanings in Hamilton. Others focus on women’s roles in fiction, from her heroine’s journey guides From Girl to Goddess and Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey to books like Superheroines and the Epic Journey and The Many Faces of Katniss Everdeen. Once a lecturer at San Jose State University, she now teaches at Mission College and San Jose City College.

Valerie Valdes

A Candle in Sunshine

Valerie Valdes’s work has been featured in Uncanny Magazine and Nightmare Magazine. Her debut novel Chilling Effect was published by Harper Voyager in September 2019 and Orbit UK in February 2020, with starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. It was also named one of Library Journal’s best SF/fantasy novels of 2019. The sequel, Prime Deceptions, is forthcoming in September 2020.

Valjeanne Jeffers

www.vjeffersandqveal.com

The Immortal III Audio Book

Scierogenous

Valjeanne Jeffers is a speculative fiction writer, a Spelman College graduate, and a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Carolina African America Writers’ Collective. She is the author of nine books, including her Immortal and her Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective series. Valjeanne has been published in numerous anthologies including: Steamfunk!; The Ringing Ear; Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler; Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures; Sycorax’s Daughters; Black Magic Women, The Bright Empire, and, most recently, All the Songs We Sing, and Bledrotica Volume I.

Victor Raymond

The Carl Brandon Society

Victor Raymond is a writer, game designer, and activist, and has a PhD in Sociology with a graduate concentration in Women’s Studies. He is bisexual and has been recognized for his LGBTQ+ activism as an invited guest to the White House in 2014, 2015, and 2016. He is also biracial, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society. He has helped organize conventions including Minicon, WisCon, MBLGTACC, and the SFRA Annual Conference. He resides in Wisconsin with his partner, adopted kid, and two cats.

Vikram Paralkar

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www.vikramparalkar.com

Vikram Paralkar was born and raised in Mumbai. Author of two works of fiction, The Afflictions and Night Theater, he is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he treats patients with leukemia and researches the disease. His works have been translated into several foreign languages.

Virginia DeMarce

Virginia DeMarce, a retired historian, has been writing in Eric Flint’s 1632 universe since 2004. She has co-authored three books with Eric and one solo title from Baen, two from Ring of Fire Press, and had stories in anthologies and the Grantville Gazette. Two more books are forthcoming from Ring of Fire Press.

W.A. (Bill) Thomasson

Bill Thomasson, a retired biochemist/medical writer now working on a sword-and-sorcery novel, has a broad interest in all aspects of science and the future. This includes both social and technological aspects, which are strongly interdependent. Bill, who has been legally blind for the past 20 years, is also active in the disability community and has worked Access at a number of Worldcons.

Wendy S. Delmater

Abyss & Apex

Wendy S. Delmater is editor and publisher of Abyss & Apex Magazine. As an editor of SF, she tries to keep up with scientific breakthroughs.

Wendy Van Camp

Etsy Print Shop

Wendy Van Camp is an author, poet, and illustrator. Her writing blog “No Wasted Ink” features essays about the craft of writing, poetry, and author interviews. Wendy’s short stories and poems have appeared in science fiction magazines such as “Quantum Visions”, “Scifaikuest”, and “Far Horizons”. She is the poet and illustrator of The Planets: a scifaiku poetry collection which is nominated for a 2020 Elgin Award. Her books can be found on Amazon. Her illustrated poetry art prints can be found on etsy.

Whitney "Strix" Beltrán

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Strix is an award winning narrative designer, myth scholar with a Masters, diversity and inclusion advocate, freediver, ukulele player, adventure beast, and fearless leader. Co-author of Bluebeard’s Bride with many other credits in tabletop RPGs, writer on State of Decay 2 and Raccoon Lagoon, Narrative Lead on Beyond Blue and HoloVista. Currently she is Project Narrative Director on an unannounced AAA title at Hidden Path Entertainment.

William S. Higgins

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William S. Higgins works as a radiation safety physicist at Fermilab, where he is involved in the transport of high-energy particle beams. As a volunteer in NASA’s Solar System Ambassador program, he speaks and writes about spaceflight, astronomy, and other topics in science and technology. He plays baritone ukulele, if not skillfully, then with enthusiasm. Long active in Chicago’s fandom, he researches the intertwined history of SF and science. He’s a member of General Technics, a fan group devoted to do-it-yourself technology.