Claire Bartlett
Claire Bartlett is an author of YA and adult speculative fiction. Her critically acclaimed debut, We Rule the Night, was called one of the best books of 2019 by Publishers Weekly, and her novel The Winter Duke features more sapphic romance between soft scientists and cheerful warrior women. She grew up in Colorado, but studied history and archaeology around Europe before settling in Denmark for good. You can find her full bibliography at www.authorclaire.com.
Elizabeth Davis
Elizabeth Davis is a second-generation writer living in Dayton, Ohio. She lives there with her spouse and two cats—neither of which has been lost to ravenous corn mazes or sleeping serpent gods. She can be found at deadfishbooks.com when she isn’t busy creating beautiful nightmares and bizarre adventures. Her work can be found in Eerie River Publishing: Patreon July 2020; Eternal Haunted Summer: Summer Solstice 2020; and No Safe Distance: Stories from Quarantine.
Aliette de Bodard
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. She 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 (released by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.). Her space opera books include The Tea Master and the Detective (2018 Nebula Award winner, 2018 British Fantasy Award winner, 2019 Hugo Award finalist), and the upcoming Seven of Infinities, in which a poor principled scholar and a disillusioned sentient spaceship must solve a murder, but find themselves falling for each other. Her short-story collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is out from Subterranean Press.
K.A. Doore
K.A. Doore is a writer and shouter of queer sci-fi and fantasy who lives in mid-Michigan with her coffee, cats, children, and wife. The Chronicles of Ghadid is her debut fantasy trilogy, starting with The Perfect Assassin. While she enjoys writing about stabbing and stabbing implements, she’s actually terrified of blood, but she’ll be fine as long as no one learns about that. Find her at kadoore.com or follow her @KA_Doore.
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series begins with the cult classic Swordspoint, followed by The Privilege of the Sword, The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman); and, most recently, the collaborative prequel Tremontaine for SerialBox.com and Saga Press. The author herself recorded all three novels in audiobook form for Neil Gaiman Presents/Audible.com, winning an Audie Award for Swordspoint. Her mythic fantasy novel Thomas the Rhymer won the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards, and is a Gollancz “Fantasy Masterwork.” She has taught writing at the Clarion Workshop, the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and Hollins University. She lives in New York City with her wife, author and educator Delia Sherman, and a great many theater and airplane ticket stubs they just don’t have the heart to throw away, especially not now. “The Sweet Tooth of Angwar Bec,” while written as a standalone story for this volume, does happen to take place about five years after the events of The Privilege of the Sword. She currently is finishing a fourth novel in the series. She’s on Twitter as @EllenKushner. Her website is www.EllenKushner.com, where you can also sign up for her SubStack newsletter.
Ann LeBlanc
Ann LeBlanc lives in Massachusetts with her wife, where she writes about queer yearning, culinary adventures, and death. Her fiction can be read in sub-Q Magazine, If There’s Anyone Left, and the Spring 2021 issue of Fireside Magazine. She edits for The Spectacles Blog and can be found on Twitter at @RobotLeBlanc.
Yoon Ha Lee
Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the Locus Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His middle-grade space opera, Dragon Pearl, was a New York Times bestseller and won the Locus Award for best YA novel. His next novel, the standalone fantasy Phoenix Extravagant, will be out from Solaris Books in October 2020. Lee’s fiction has appeared in venues such as Tor.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld Magazine, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Lee is a lapsed épée fencer. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators. You can find him online at yoonhalee.com and patreon.com/yhlee.
Jennifer Mace
Jennifer Mace is a queer Brit who roams the Pacific Northwest in search of tea and interesting plant life. A two-time Hugo finalist podcaster for her work with Be The Serpent, she writes about strange magic and the cracks that form in society. Her short fiction may be found in Cast of Wonders, Syntax & Salt, and GlitterShip, and her poetry has appeared in Uncanny Magazine. While Silk & Steel is far from the first anthology she has pitched to the internet, this is the first time the internet has called her bluff. If you want to keep track of her future hijinks, you can find her online at www.englishmace.com.
Freya Marske
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. Find her on Twitter at @freyamarske, or at freyamarske.com.
Elaine McIonyn
Elaine McIonyn spent her wayward youth jaunting around Europe, teaching English, and translating. She lived in Austria, Germany, and the UK before returning to her native Ireland just in time to join the staff of Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, class of 2018. She is also, perhaps unwisely, licensed to sail dinghies and small catamarans. She co-runs a sci-fi and fantasy writing group in Dublin and lives with her partner (and a selection of loose-leaf teas).
Cara Patterson
Cara Patterson is a Scottish writer who dabbles in any genre that takes her fancy, sprinkling in generous helpings of diversity, puns, and sarcasm. Between the Out of Time time-travel series, published under the pen name C.B. Lewis, and a range of short stories in award-winning anthologies, she’s starting to get a handle on this writing lark.
Alison Tam
Alison Tam is a queer Taiwanese-American writer and occasional game developer. Her short story “Beauty, Glory, Thrift” was part of the Book Smugglers’ Gods and Monsters series, and her personal essay “The Drag Kings of Taipei” was featured in Autostraddle. To her knowledge, she has never fought a duel. Alison likes writing about complicated diaspora emotions, women who love and appreciate each other, and non-Western worlds. She’s lived in Taipei, Shanghai, and California, but her home will always be online. You can find her on her website at alisontam.github.io or on Twitter @TheTamSlam.
S.K. Terentiev
S.K. Terentiev lives in the wilds of North Texas, where she’s on the hunt for the perfect latte or tacos al pastor. A member of the DFW Writers’ Workshop, she writes speculative short stories and is currently working on her first fantasy novel. She’s never seen a chupacabra or a werewolf, as far as she knows. She can be found on Twitter at @SKTerentiev or her website SKTerentiev.com.
Django Wexler
Django Wexler is the author of flintlock fantasy series The Shadow Campaigns, middle-grade fantasy The Forbidden Library, and YA fantasy The Wells of Sorcery. His latest is the epic fantasy Ashes of the Sun. In his former life as a software engineer, he worked on AI research and programming languages. He currently lives near Seattle with his wife, two cats, and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts.
Chris Wolfgang
Chris Wolfgang writes and edits sci-fi and fantasy fiction in Omaha, Nebraska. She changes her hair color frequently, attempts to study foreign languages outside of a classroom, and occasionally reads tarot. Follow her on Twitter at @chriswolfgang for queer feminist yelling, often about things she finds exciting, but sometimes not. She’s a delight.
Neon Yang
Neon Yang (they/them) is queer, non-binary, and the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tor.Com Publishing (The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, The Ascent to Godhood). Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Lambda awards. A Clarion West alum, they graduated from the University of East Anglia with an MA in Creative Writing and currently live in Singapore.
Kaitlyn Zivanovich
Kaitlyn Zivanovich is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and current speculative fiction writer who pens short stories to avoid editing her novels. She’s lived a good chunk of her adult life in the Middle East, and speaks enough Arabic to get around Egypt but not enough to impress anyone in Morocco. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise Workshop and an associate editor at PodCastle. Kaitlyn grew up as a Third Culture Kid, and she and her husband are inflicting the same lifestyle on their four loud children. Currently they all live in a small farming village in Okinawa, Japan. Pre-coronavirus she spent her free time hiking, traveling, and learning new languages. Now she stress-bakes and binge-watches Turkish TV shows.