Samit Basu is an Indian novelist. His previous novel, The City Inside, was named one of the best sci-fi/fantasy novels of 2022 by the Washington Post and Book Riot and was short-listed for the JCB Prize. He’s published several novels in a range of speculative genres, all critically acclaimed and bestsellers in India, beginning with The Simoqin Prophecies (2003). He also works as a director-screenwriter, a comics writer, and a columnist. He lives in Delhi, Kolkata, and on the internet.
Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: she has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award, and five British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is the author of A Fire Born of Exile, a sapphic Count of Monte Cristo in space (Gollancz/JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., 2023), and of Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc), a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate nineteenth-century Vietnamese court. She lives in Paris. Visit https://
Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is online at vajra.me. His debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, and his short fiction, anthologized in The Apex Book of World SF, The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year among others, has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the multi-award-winning editor of Clarkesworld and over a dozen anthologies, including the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. An eleven-time finalist and the 2022 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form, he is also the three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director. In 2019, Clarke received the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.
Ganzeer has been described as a “chameleon” by Carlo McCormick in the New York Times. He operates seamlessly between art, design, and storytelling, creating what he has coined concept pop. His medium of choice, according to Artforum, is “a little bit of everything: stencils, murals, paintings, pamphlets, comics, installations, and graphic design.” With over forty exhibitions to his name, Ganzeer’s work has been seen in a wide variety of art galleries, impromptu spaces, alleyways, and major museums around the world, such as the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Palace of the Arts in Cairo, Greek State Museum in Thessaloniki, the V&A in London, and the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg. Ganzeer’s current projects include a short story collection titled Times New Human, and a sci-fi graphic novel titled The Solar Grid, an epic work in progress that won the MoCCA Award of Excellence in 2023 and awarded Ganzeer the Global Thinker Award from Foreign Policy in 2016.
Cassandra Khaw is the USA Today best-selling author of Nothing but Blackened Teeth, and the Bram Stoker Award winner Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are The Salt Grows Heavy, and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Khaw is also the coauthor of The Dead Take the A Train, cowritten with best-selling author Richard Kadrey.
Lavanya Lakshminarayan is the author of The Ten Percent Thief (Solaris, 2023), which was first published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual. She’s a Locus Award finalist, and is the winner of the Times of India AutHer Award and the Valley of Words Award. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The Best of World SF: Volume 2 and Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance. Her work has also been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and German. Lavanya is occasionally a game designer. She’s built worlds for Zynga’s FarmVille and Mafia Wars, tinkered with augmented reality experiences, and custom-built battle robots in her living room, among many other game projects. She lives in India, and is currently working on her next novel.
Sloane Leong is a writer, cartoonist, and editor of mixed indigenous ancestry. Through her work, she engages with visceral futurities and fantasies through a radical, kaleidoscopic lens. Her work includes several graphic novels, like From under Mountains, Prism Stalker, A Map to the Sun, and Graveneye. Her fiction has appeared in many publications, including Dark Matter Magazine, Apex Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Analog, Realm Media, and many more. As an editor, she has funded and overseen editing the illustrated horror anthology, Death in the Mouth: Original Horror by People of Color. She is also the cofounder of the Cartoonist Cooperative, an organization dedicated to helping cartoonists develop a generative and sustainable creative practice. She is currently living on Chinook land near what is known as Portland, Oregon, with her family and three dogs. Visit https://
Archita Mittra is a writer, editor, and artist from Kolkata, India. Her work is published or forthcoming in Tor.com, Lightspeed, Locus Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Portalist, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes.
Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer from Austin, Texas, who is the art director for Share Festival in Turin, Italy. The former “cyberpunk guru” enjoys avoiding public attention in rural Serbia and on small Spanish islands.
Wole Talabi is an engineer, writer, and editor from Nigeria. He is the author of Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (DAW/Gollancz, 2023). His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF, Lightspeed, Africa Risen, and several other places, including the collections Incomplete Solutions (Luna Press, 2019) and Convergence Problems (DAW, 2024). His work has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Nommo Awards and the Caine Prize for African Writing, and has been translated into seven languages. He has also edited five anthologies, including Africanfuturism (2020) and Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology (2023). He likes scuba diving, elegant equations, and oddly shaped things. He currently lives and works in Malaysia. Find him at wtalabi.wordpress.com and @wtalabi on twitter.
Lavie Tidhar is the author of Osama, The Violent Century, A Man Lies Dreaming, Central Station, Unholy Land, By Force Alone, The Hood, The Escapement, Neom, and Maror. His latest novels are Adama and The Circumference of the World. His awards include the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards, the John W. Campbell Award, the Neukom Prize, and the Jerwood Prize, and he has been shortlisted for the Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award.
Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award winner for his debut novel The Devourers (Penguin India / Del Rey, 2017) and a Shirley Jackson Award winner for his short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of anthologies and publications including Tor.com, Slate, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. He is a former consulting editor for Indian publisher Juggernaut Books. He is an Octavia E. Butler Scholar and a grateful member of the Clarion West class of 2012. He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he received his MFA from the University of British Columbia, and currently resides in his hometown. His latest book is the novella The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar (Subterranean Press, 2023).