M. T. Anderson’s science-fiction satire Feed was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His Gothic historical novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party won a 2006 National Book Award and a Michael L. Printz Honor, and the second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, also received a Printz Honor. He lives in New England.

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the young adult novels Ship Breaker (a Michael L. Printz Award winner, National Book Award Finalist, and Locus Award winner) and The Drowned Cities (Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year). His debut adult novel, The Windup Girl, was named a Time Magazine Top Ten Fiction Book of 2009 and won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. His short-story collection, Pump Six and Other Stories, won a 2008 Locus Award for Best Collection and was also named one of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. He currently lives in western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.

Nathan Ballingrud is the author of a collection of stories, North American Lake Monsters. Several of his stories have been reprinted in year’s best anthologies, and “The Monsters of Heaven” won a Shirley Jackson Award. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans, a cook on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and a waiter in a fancy restaurant. Currently he lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter, where he’s at work on his first novel.

Holly Black is the author of best-selling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her work includes the Spiderwick Chronicles, co-written by Tony DiTerlizzi; the Modern Faerie Tale series; the Good Neighbors graphic novel trilogy, illustrated by Ted Naifeh; the Curse Workers series; Doll Bones, a Newbery Honor book; and her new dark fantasy novel, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award. She currently lives in New England with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret door.

Sarah Rees Brennan is the author of the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, the first book of which was an American Library Association Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, and the co-author of Team Human with Justine Larbalestier. Her newest book, Unspoken, a romantic Gothic mystery about a girl who discovers that her imaginary friend is a real boy, is an American Library Association Fiction for Young Adults selection and is on the TAYSHAS Reading List. Sarah writes from her homeland of Ireland but likes to travel the world collecting monstrous inspirations.

Cassandra Clare is the author of the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly best-selling The Mortal Instruments series and The Infernal Devices trilogy. Her books have more than twenty million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts.

Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica and has lived in Canada for more than thirty-five years. She is the author of the novels Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms, The Chaos, and most recently, Sister Mine. She has also published Skin Folk, a short-story collection, and Report from Planet Midnight, a chapbook. She has stories in a number of young adult anthologies, including Welcome to Bordertown and After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia, and has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies. She is a recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the World Fantasy Award, and a two-time recipient of the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She is currently a professor of science fiction and fantasy in the Creative Writing Department of the University of California, Riverside.

Dylan Horrocks is a writer, artist, and cartoonist who lives in New Zealand. Comics he’s written and/or drawn include Pickle, Atlas, Batgirl, and Hunter: The Age of Magic. His graphic novel Hicksville has been published in several languages and won an Eisner Award. His story “Steam Girl” was published in Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories. His first published comic strip appeared in a New Zealand children’s magazine called Jabberwocky in his early teens. He sometimes teaches writing and drawing at various universities and art schools around New Zealand, and in 2006 he was awarded the Auckland University Literary Fellowship. For some years, he’s also bene running a steampunk fantasy role-playing game for a group of friends and is slowly writing a novel based on some of the characters and settings.

Nik Houser wrote the first draft of “Son of Abyss” over a five-day period at the 2012 Clarion West Writers’ Workshop for George R. R. Martin, aka the “GRRM Reader.” He would especially like to thank Kelly, Gavin, Les, Neile, George, and his brilliant classmates for their enthusiasm for this story, and more importantly, for being his compatriots. His short novel Red Rover is available as an e-book. In his spare time, Nik enjoys petting stray cats, performing stand-up comedy, and having to write novelettes in five days. He is currently at work expanding “Son of Abyss” into a novel. For free fiction, a list of published works, contact information, and some cartoons, please visit his website.

Kathleen Jennings is an illustrator and writer from Brisbane, Australia. Her comic “Finishing School” was published in Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories. Her art has won several Ditmar Awards, been nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and short-listed for the Aurealis Awards, and has appeared in many books. Her short stories have been selected to appear in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror.

Alice Sola Kim has always lived on a major fault line, nonmetaphorically speaking. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including Strange Horizons, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and was recently awarded a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She currently resides in San Francisco.

Joshua Lewis lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, Cassandra Clare, three cats, and several thousand books. He spends a lot of his time thinking about monsters. As much time as possible, really.

Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short stories: Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebula Awards, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (Her answer: “Because you can’t go through it.”) Link and her family live in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press and play Ping-Pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Patrick Ness is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy and A Monster Calls. He has won the Booktrust Teenage Prize, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Costa Children’s Book Award, and is a two-time recipient of the Carnegie Medal. He is also the author of two adult novels and a short-story collection. His latest young adult novel is More Than This. Born in Virginia, he now lives in London.

G. Carl Purcell’s writing has appeared in Open City, Fence, Stop Smiling, and The Agriculture Reader; has been anthologized in A Best of Fence: The First 9 Years and the McSweeney’s-edited Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans; and is forthcoming in New Genre.