Saladin Ahmed is the Eisner Award–winning writer of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and The Magnificent Ms. Marvel. His novel Throne of the Crescent Moon was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He lives with his children near Detroit.
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the Unstoppable trilogy, beginning with Victories Greater Than Death. She’s also the author of the short-story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She’s won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford, and Locus awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she’s currently the science-fiction and fantasy book reviewer for The Washington Post. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got seven hundred thousand views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Tom Angleberger is the author of the New York Times bestselling Origami Yoda series. His other Star Wars books are The Mighty Chewbacca in the Forest of Fear! and a novelization of Return of the Jedi subtitled Beware the Power of the Dark Side! (Yes, the exclamation points are part of the titles.) He lives in Virginia with his wife, author and illustrator Cece Bell.
K Arsenault Rivera is the author of the Ascendant trilogy and various Magic: The Gathering stories, including Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow. She still has her childhood copy of The Empire Strikes Back for the SNES, a game she never actually beat. She lives in Brooklyn with her two partners. Her upcoming fantasy romance novel, Oath of Flame, will release in 2024.
Kristin Baver covers Star Wars news as the associate editor of StarWars.com and the host of This Week! in Star Wars. The author of Star Wars: Skywalker—A Family at War, The Art of Star Wars: The High Republic, and Star Wars 100 Objects, Kristin is also a contributor to Star Wars Timelines and Star Wars Year by Year. She previously worked as an award-winning journalist covering crime and social issues in central Pennsylvania, but now lives with her family in San Francisco, California.
Olivie Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of the Atlas series and Alone with You in the Ether. As Alexene Farol Follmuth, she is also the author of the young adult romcom My Mechanical Romance. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, goblin prince/toddler, and rescue pit bull.
Akemi Dawn Bowman is a critically acclaimed author who writes across genres. Her novels include William C. Morris Award finalist Starfish, Locus Award finalist The Infinity Courts, Summer Bird Blue, Harley in the Sky, Generation Misfits, and Where the Lost Ones Go. She has a BA in social sciences from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and currently lives in Scotland with her family.
Emma Mieko Candon is the bestselling author of Star Wars: Ronin, an expansion of the Star Wars Visions short “The Duel” that revisits the Star Wars mythos through the lens of Japanese history and folklore. The first book in their original debut series, The Archive Undying, pits queer rebellion against brutal police states who forge mecha from the bones of dead AI gods. Star Wars consumed Emma at a young age, and given their childhood fixation on Rogue and Wraith squadrons, they’re thrilled to finally make their way into the canon proper via Wedge Antilles. You can find Emma airing unimpeachable anime opinions on Twitter at @emmacandon, on Tumblr at @emcandon, at emcandon.com, or wailing about videogames under the bushes of the nearest boba tea joint.
Olivia Chadha writes novels and comic books for MG, YA, and adult audiences. She has a PhD in literature and creative writing and her research centers on the history of exile, precarious borders and boundaries, global folklore, and the relationships among humans, machines, and the environment. Balance of Fragile Things is her debut adult literary novel. Rise of the Red Hand, her YA debut, was awarded the Colorado Book Award for Young Adult Literature. It’s followed by book two of The Mechanists Series, Fall of the Iron Gods. She is a contributor to the YA folk horror anthology The Gathering Dark (Page Street) and the desi anthology Magic Has No Borders (HarperTeen). When not writing she’s searching for butterflies on a hike in Colorado. She can be found at oliviachadha.com.
Gloria Chao is a screenwriter and the critically acclaimed author of When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. Her award-winning books have received starred trade reviews and were Indie Next List, Junior Library Guild, YALSA Teens’ Top 10, Amelia Bloomer List, Epic Reads Recommends for Target, and Common Sense Media selections. After a brief detour as a dentist, she is now grateful to spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles. Visit her tea-and-book-filled world at GloriaChao.wordpress.com and find her on Instagram and Twitter: @GloriaCChao.
Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, Light Years from Home, and other novels. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, Tor.com, and StarTrek.com, and in a different life, covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mikechenwriter.
Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and has contributed to the first two Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anthologies and IDW’s Star Wars Adventures comic. Christopher has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary, the award-winning Dishonored videogame franchise, and the Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things. His debut novel Empire State was SciFiNow’s Book of the Year and a Financial Times Book of the Year, and his other novels include Made to Kill, Seven Wonders, and many more. Born in New Zealand, Christopher now lives in Great Britain. Find out more at adamchristopher.me.
Paul Crilley is an award-winning author and screenwriter. His book Poison City is in development with Jerry Bruckheimer Television, and his novel Department Zero, about a group of detectives demoted to cleaning up supernatural crime scenes, has been optioned by Boat Rocker Productions. His latest novel, Breakout (witten as Paul Herron), a thriller about inmates abandoned in a flooding prison during a Category 5 hurricane, is out now. Paul was also a writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Other projects include Star Wars comics, Doctor Who, X-Files, Hardy Boys, and Daredevil. He has also written over 480 episodes of continuing drama and edited 1,220 hours of scripted television.
Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning author of fiction, poetry, and criticism. She is a columnist for The New York Times Book Review and the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of This Is How You Lose the Time War, which has been translated into over ten languages and received several honors including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. She lives in Ottawa. You can find more of her work at amalelmohtar.com.
M. K. England grew up on the Space Coast of Florida watching shuttle launches from the backyard. These days, they call rural Virginia home, where there are many excellent sheep but a tragic lack of rockets. Between marathon writing sessions, MK can be found rolling critical hits at the gaming table, digging in the garden, or feeding their videogame addiction. MK is the author of seven novels for kids, teens, and adults, including the most recent The One True Me and You, Player vs. Player, and Firefly: What Makes Us Mighty. Follow them at mkengland.com.
Jason Fry is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult space-fantasy series The Jupiter Pirates, as well as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas, and many other books and short stories set in a galaxy far, far away. He is a gigantic dork about Star Wars geography, the New York Mets, genealogy, custom baseball cards, and pursuits even more niche than those just mentioned. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, kid, and an excessive number of ill-advised collections.
Adam Lance Garcia is an award-winning writer featured in the Eisner-winning Puerto Rico Strong, the New York Times Editor’s Choice The Faking of the President, and the bestselling The Obama Inheritance. He is currently completing his Green Lama Legacy series and is a writer/producer for the audio drama podcast Radio Room. Adam worked as a television producer for over a decade and is currently a creative producer at Condé Nast. Adam has collected Star Wars books his entire life and is excited to add this anthology to his collection.
Lamar Giles writes for children and adults across multiple genres. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Fake ID, Spin, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, and The Getaway. He lives in Virginia with his family.
Hugo-, Nebula-, and Locus-winning author Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Dead Country, Last Exit, Empress of Forever, and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the internationally bestselling This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Thea Guanzon was born and raised in the Philippines as the eldest of three siblings. One of her earliest memories involves watching the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS over and over again, and she has been a Star Wars fan ever since. Aside from being a writer, she is an avid traveler, a Dungeon Master, an iced coffee junkie, and a horror podcast aficionado. She currently resides in Metro Manila with two turtles named Dumpling and Potato Chip, an evil cat named Darth Pancakes, and an alarming number of houseplants. Her debut novel, The Hurricane Wars, the first book in a fantasy romance trilogy set in a world inspired by Southeast Asia, will be released this October 2023 under the Voyager imprint of HarperCollins.
Ali Hazelwood is the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis, Love on the Brain, and Loathe to Love You. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. In December 2017, Ali was dragged by her husband to a crowded movie theater to watch The Last Jedi (directed by Rian Johnson). She began writing Reylo fanfiction that very night.
Patricia A. Jackson is a high school teacher in Pennsylvania. Her debut novel is Forging a Nightmare, a delightfully heretical tale of fallen angels, infernal warhorses, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She is no stranger to writing in the Star Wars universe. Her best-known works are Black Sands of Socorro, a smugglers’ sourcebook, and “The Final Exit,” a short story about a Dark Jedi’s redemption. When not writing, she’s gaming or watching her favorite Japanese anime. In her spare time, she rides horses, the ever-patient Jedi Master Maya and the Sith Lord Indy.
Alex Jennings is a lifelong fan and creator of SFF who lives in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Africa Risen, and New Suns 2. He is a graduate of the University of New Orleans. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Paramaribo (Surinam), and Tunis (Tunisia) as well as Columbia, Maryland. He is also an instructor of popular fiction at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. He has been short-listed for numerous awards, and his debut novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, is available wherever books are sold.
Mary Kenney writes critically acclaimed videogames, books, and comics. She works at Insomniac Games, where she was on the writing team for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and she was a lead writer on Telltale’s The Walking Dead series. Her first book, Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry, was released in July 2022 to glowing reviews from Kirkus and Booklist. Before making games, she studied in the game design master’s program at New York University, and she teaches narrative design at Indiana University. She was an award-winning journalist with bylines in The New York Times, Salon, and Kotaku. When not writing or gaming, she can be found buried in a book, running a tabletop RPG, or trying to keep her forest of indoor plants alive.
Jarrett J. Krosoczka, known since boyhood as JJK, is the New York Times bestselling author/illustrator behind forty-five books for young readers, including his wildly popular Lunch Lady graphic novels, select volumes of the Star Wars Jedi Academy series, and Hey, Kiddo, which was a National Book Award finalist. Krosoczka creates books with humor, heart, and deep respect for his young readers—qualities that have made his titles perennial favorites on the bookshelves of homes, libraries, and bookstores over the past twenty-two years.
Sarah Kuhn is the author of the popular Heroine Complex novels—a series starring Asian American superheroines. She also penned the beloved YA romcoms I Love You So Mochi and From Little Tokyo, With Love, and a variety of short fiction and comics, including the DC Comics graphic novels Shadow of the Batgirl and Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story and the Star Wars audiobook original Doctor Aphra. Additionally, she was a finalist for both the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) New Writers Award and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. A third-generation Japanese American, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and an overflowing closet of vintage treasures.
Danny Lore (they/them) is a queer black writer/editor raised in Harlem and currently based in the Bronx. They’ve worked in comic and gaming shops since the beginning of time. Most of their writing is contemporary speculative fiction, with the occasional foray into science fiction. Their comic work includes Queen of Bad Dreams, Bloodline Daughter of Blade, Champions, Multiversity: Teen Justice, Quarter Killer, and more. Their prose fiction has been included in A Phoenix First Must Burn, Janelle Monae’s Memory Librarian, Fiyah Lit Mag, and Unfettered Hexes, to name a few. They’re trying to make “swaggerpunk” a thing, and Lando seems like a prime example of the term.
Sarah Glenn Marsh is the author of several books for kids and teens including the Reign of the Fallen series and The Girls Are Never Gone. When she’s not writing fantastical and horrific things, she’s usually making art in the pottery studio. She lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and a small zoo of creatures from some galaxy or another.
Kwame Mbalia is a husband, father, writer, New York Times bestselling author, former pharmaceutical metrologist, and publisher with Freedom Fire Books, an imprint of Disney-Hyperion. His debut middle-grade novel, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it—along with the sequels, Tristan Strong Destroys the World and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching—is published by Rick Riordan Presents/Disney-Hyperion. He is the co-author of Last Gate of the Emperor with Prince Joel Makonnen, from Scholastic Books, and the editor of the #1 New York Times bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy, published by Delacorte Press. A Howard University graduate and a Midwesterner now in North Carolina, he survives on Dad jokes and Cheez-Its.
Marieke Nijkamp is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of novels, graphic novels, and comics, including This Is Where It Ends, Even If We Break, Critical Role: Vox Machina—Kith & Kin, Hawkeye: Kate Bishop, and Ink Girls. Before pursuing her lifelong passion for writing, Marieke majored in philosophy and medieval history. She loves to go on adventures, grow strange fruits and vegetables in her garden, roll dice, and daydream.
Danielle Paige is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dorothy Must Die series, the Stealing Snow series, and the Wish of the Wicked series. She has also written for DC Comics and Archie Comics. In addition to writing young adult books, she works in the television industry, where she’s received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She is a graduate of Columbia University and currently lives in New York City. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Laura Pohl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Grimrose Girls and The Wicked Remain. Her debut novel, The Last 8, won an International Latino Book Award. She likes writing messages in all caps, never using autocorrect, and obsessing (and now writing!) about Star Wars. A Brazilian at heart and soul, she lives in São Paulo—where she graduated in literature from the University of São Paulo and now works as a freelance translator—with a copious amount of Kylo Ren merch and a dog that looks like Baby Yoda.
Dana Schwartz is a television writer and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Anatomy: A Love Story, and its sequel Immortality: A Love Story. She is the host and creator of the history podcast Noble Blood. Dana lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two cats.
Tara Sim is the author of The City of Dusk, the Scavenge the Stars duology, and the Timekeeper trilogy and can typically be found wandering the wilds of the Bay Area, California. When she’s not chasing cats or lurking in bookstores, she writes books about magic, murder, and mayhem.
Creative art manager within the Lucasfilm Story Group, Phil Szostak has worked in conjunction with Star Wars art departments since 2008. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Szostak ran the JAK Films Art Department on Skywalker Ranch for more than three years before joining the narrative design team on LucasArts’s Star Wars 1313. He is also the author of The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015), The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Abrams, 2017), The Art of Solo: A Star Wars Story (Abrams, 2018), The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2020), The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 1) (Abrams, 2020), and The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 2) (Abrams, 2022). He lives in Marin County, California.
Suzanne Walker is a Chicago-based writer and editor. She is co-creator of the critically acclaimed and award-nominated graphic novel Mooncakes, and her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Uncanny Magazine. Her nonfiction works have appeared in a diverse array of publications including StarTrek.com and academic anthologies. She is a scholar of medieval Italian longsword; enjoys aerial silks, figure skating, and baseball; and aspires to be a real-life Jedi.
Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen and, sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. Her first novel, For the Wolf, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and her subsequent books have gone on to top bestseller lists worldwide. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, making music, or attempting to bake. She lives in an old farmhouse in Tennessee with her husband, children, two cats, a dog, and probably some ghosts.
Fran Wilde won a 2015 Nebula Award for her first novel, Updraft; she completed the trilogy with Cloudbound and Horizon in 2017. Her debut middle-grade novel Riverland won a 2019 Nebula Award and was named an NPR Best Book of 2019. The middle-grade novel The Ship of Stolen Words appeared in 2021 and books in her Gemworld series with tordotcom have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. Wilde’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple year’s best collections. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Tor.com, and elsewhere. The managing editor of The Sunday Morning Transport, Wilde holds an MFA in poetry and an MA in information architecture and interaction design. She teaches for Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been waiting her whole life to write a Mon Mothma story.
Sean Williams is a multi-award-winning author of over sixty books and one hundred and twenty shorter publications for readers of all ages. His original works include series, novels, stories, and poems, which have been translated into multiple languages for readers around the world. He has collaborated with other authors, including Garth Nix, makes music as a side hustle, and is Discipline Lead of Creative Writing at Flinders University, South Australia. His novelization of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was the first computer game tie-in in history to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Alyssa Wong writes award-winning fiction, comics, and games. Their stories have won the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus awards and were shortlisted for the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson awards. Alyssa also writes comics for Star Wars (Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, War of the Bounty Hunters: Boushh #1, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi—Ewoks #1), Marvel (Deadpool, Alligator Loki, Iron Fist, Extreme Carnage), and DC (Spirit World, Batman: Urban Legends). They have received multiple GLAAD and Eisner award nominations. Previously, Alyssa worked at Blizzard Entertainment on Overwatch and Overwatch 2. They live in North Carolina.