Ray Nayler (www.raynayler.net) has lived and worked in Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans for nearly two decades. He is a Foreign Service Officer and previously worked in international educational development, as well as serving in the Peace Corps in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. A Russian speaker, he has also learned Turkmen, Albanian, Azerbaijani Turkish, and Vietnamese. Ray began publishing speculative fiction in 2015 in Asimov’s Science Fiction with “Mutability.” Since then, his critically acclaimed stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Nightmare, and in several “Best of the Year” anthologies.