LAIRD BARRON is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York.
DESIRINA BOSKOVICH’s (desirinaboskovich.com) short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle, Drabblecast, and anthologies such as The Way of the Wizard, Aliens: Recent Encounters, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Her nonfiction pieces on music, literature, and culture have appeared in Lightspeed, Weird Fiction Review, Huffington Post, Wonderbook, and The Steampunk Bible. She is also the editor of It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction (Cheeky Frawg, 2013), and, together with Jeff VanderMeer, coauthor of The Steampunk User’s Manual (Abrams Image, 2014).
ADAM-TROY CASTRO’s twenty-six books to date include, among others, four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of that very strange but very heroic young boy Gustav Gloom. The penultimate installment in the Gustav Gloom series, Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows (Grosset and Dunlap), saw print in August 2015. The finale, in which Gustav and company complete their quest for his father and their epic battle against the forces of the vile Lord Obsidian, will appear in August 2016. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands and Other Stories (Prime Books). Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). He lives in Florida with his wife Judi and either three or four cats, depending on what day you’re counting and whether Gilbert’s escaped this week.
AMANDA DOWNUM is an American fantasy author currently living in Austin, Texas. She is most known for her Necromancer Chronicles: The Drowning City, The Bone Palace, and Kingdoms of Dust. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and Realms of Fantasy. She has been nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award and the Spectrum Award.
GEMMA FILES, a former film critic and teacher–turned–horror author, is probably best known for her Weird Western Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns, and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also published two short fiction collections (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart), two chapbooks of speculative poetry, and a story cycle (We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven). In 1999, her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones” won the International Horror Guild’s Best Short Fiction Award. Her next novel, Experimental Film, is now available from CZP.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER is the bestselling author of more than a hundred and twenty novels, and is perhaps most famous for his Commonwealth series, which began in 1971 with the novel The Tar-Aiym Krang. His most recent series is the transhumanism trilogy the Tipping Point. Foster’s work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia in addition to the United States. He is also well known for his film novelizations, the most recent of which is Star Trek Into Darkness. He is currently at work on several new novels and film projects.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN (christophergolden.com) is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Snowblind, Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town, Strangewood, and the thriller Tin Men. He has cowritten three illustrated novels with Mike Mignola, the first of which, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, was the launching pad for the Eisner Award–nominated comic book series, Baltimore. His graphic novels include the Cemetery Girl trilogy, coauthored with Charlaine Harris. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead, The Monster’s Corner, and Dark Duets, among others. Golden has also written and cowritten comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world.
SIMON R. GREEN lives in a small town in the English countryside, and has written over fifty novels, including the Deathstalker books (space opera), the Secret Histories (featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent), the Nightside series (a private eye who operates in the Twilight Zone, solving cases of the weird and uncanny), the Ghost Finders series (traditional ghost stories in a modern setting), and the Ishmael Jones mysteries (Agatha Christie with a weird touch). His first film, Judas Ghost, has just appeared on DVD. He’s going to take a rest any time now.
MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY (mariadahvanaheadley.com) is the author of the young adult skyship novel Magonia from HarperCollins, the novel Queen of Kings, the memoir The Year of Yes, and coauthor with Kat Howard of the short horror novella The End of the Sentence. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times–bestselling coeditor of the monster anthology Unnatural Creatures, benefitting 826DC. Her Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards–nominated short fiction has recently appeared in Lightspeed (“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream,” “The Traditional”), on Tor.com, The Toast, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Apex Magazine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Subterranean Online, Uncanny, Glitter & Mayhem, and Jurassic London’s The Lowest Heaven and The Book of the Dead, as well as in a number of Year’s Bests, most recently Year’s Best Weird. She lives in Brooklyn with a collection of beasts, an anvil, and a speakeasy bar through the cellar doors. Find her on her website or on Twitter at @mariadahvana.
GRADY HENDRIX has written about the confederate flag for Playboy Magazine, terrible movie novelizations for Film Comment, and both Jean-Claude Van Damme AND ninja death swarms for Slate. He’s covered machine gun collector conventions, written award shows for Chinese television, and spent years answering the phone for a parapsychological research organization. His stories about UFO cults, killer Chinese parasites, Cthulhu dating your mom, and super-genius apes have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. He is the author of Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and in 2016 his second novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, will be available.
NANCY HOLDER (nancyholder.com) is a New York Times bestselling author (The Wicked Saga) of approximately eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. She has received five Bram Stoker Awards, a Scribe Award, and a Young Adult Pioneer Award. Recent works include The Rules (Delacorte, June 2015) and Demons of the Hellmouth, coauthored with Rupert Giles (Titan Books, September 2015). She is the vice president of the Horror Writers Association, and a member of the faculty for the MFA in Creative Writing program offered through the University of Southern Maine. A columnist for SFWA and the HWA, she also writes and edits comic books and graphic novels for Moonstone Books. She lives in San Diego. Tweet her at @nancyholder.
JOHN LANGAN is the author of three collections: Sefira and Other Betrayals (Hippocampus 2016), The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus 2013), and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime 2008). He has written a novel, House of Windows (Night Shade 2009), and, with Paul Tremblay, coedited an anthology, Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (Prime 2011). He lives with his wife and younger son in upstate New York.
JONATHAN MABERRY (jonathanmaberry.com) is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He’s the author of many novels, including Code Zero, Fire & Ash, The Nightsiders, Dead of Night, and Rot & Ruin; and the editor of the V-Wars shared-world anthologies. His nonfiction books are on topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop culture. Jonathan writes V-Wars and Rot & Ruin for IDW Comics, and Bad Blood for Dark Horse, as well as multiple projects for Marvel. Since 1978, he has sold more than 1,200 magazine feature articles, 3,000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, poetry, and textbooks. Jonathan continues to teach the celebrated Experimental Writing for Teens class, which he created. He founded the Writers Coffeehouse and cofounded The Liars Club; and is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries, as well as a keynote speaker and guest of honor at major writers’ and genre conferences. He lives in Del Mar, California.
SEANAN MCGUIRE (seananmcguire.com) is a Californian author of speculative fiction. She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, resulting in a fear of weather and a deep respect for the sea. Since 2009, she has released more than twenty books, under both her own name and the name “Mira Grant.” Most people believe that she doesn’t really sleep. Seanan was the 2010 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which came with a tiara. In her spare time, she enjoys Disney Parks, horror movies, and trying to summon her vegetable armada to subjugate humanity. We think she’s kidding about that last part. We hope. Keep up with Seanan on her website or on Twitter at @seananmcguire.
D. THOMAS MINTON (dthomasminton.com) recently traded a warm tropical island for the Pacific Northwest of the continental United States, where he now lives a short walk from vineyards and an alpaca farm. When not writing, he gets paid to “play” in the ocean, travel to remote places, and help communities conserve coral reefs. His fiction has been published in Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and Daily Science Fiction, and his idle ramblings hold court on his website.
AN (pronounce it “On”) OWOMOYELA (an.owomoyela.net) is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless-steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues, including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and a handful of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in between. An can be found online on her website and can be funded at patreon.com/an_owomoyela.
TIM PRATT is the author of over a dozen novels, most recently Heirs of Grace, and many short stories. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy, and other nice places. He’s won a Hugo Award for short fiction, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, Mythopoeic, and Nebula Awards, among others. He lives in Berkeley, California, and works as a senior editor at Locus, a trade magazine devoted to science fiction and fantasy publishing.
SCOTT SIGLER is the New York Times bestselling author of the Infected trilogy (Infected, Contagious, and Pandemic), Ancestor, and Nocturnal, hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing; and the cofounder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League series (The Rookie, The Starter, The All-Pro, and The MVP). Before he was published, Scott built a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audiobooks as free, serialized podcasts. His loyal fans, who named themselves “Junkies,” have downloaded over eight million individual episodes of his stories and interact daily with Scott and each other in the social media space.
RACHEL SWIRSKY holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Tor.com, Subterranean Online, and Clarkesworld magazine. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award, and won the Nebula Award twice. Her second short story collection, How the World Became Quiet, came out from Subterranean Press in 2013. She enjoys writing collaboratively, as she did in this collection, and would like to raise a fictive glass to her cowriter, An Owomoyela.
TERENCE TAYLOR (terencetaylor.com) is an award-winning children’s television writer whose work appeared on PBS, Nickelodeon, and Disney, among many others. As an author of fiction, his first published short story, “Plaything,” appeared in Dark Dreams, the first horror-suspense anthology of African American authors. He was one of a handful of authors to be included in the next two volumes, with “The Share” in Voices from the Other Side and “Wet Pain” in Whispers in the Night. Terence is also author of the first two books of his Vampire Testaments trilogy, Bite Marks, and Blood Pressure. After a two-year hiatus, he has returned to the conclusion of his trilogy, Past Life. Find him on Twitter at @vamptestaments.
ISABEL YAP (isalikeswords.wordpress.com) writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California, Tokyo (for ninety-six days!), and London. In 2013, she attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Tor.com, Shimmer, Interfictions Online, and Nightmare; they have also been included in The Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 2, Apex Book of World SF Volume 4, and The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2005–2010. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Stone Telling, Uncanny, Apex Magazine, and Goblin Fruit. You can find her on her website or on Twitter at @visyap.