XIRAN JAY ZHAO is in their twenties, and was born in a small town in China, immigrating to British Columbia in Canada in their early teens.

Zhao attended Simon Fraser University, graduating in 2020 with a degree in biochemical disease research. They finished school at the height of the first COVID wave, and since they were unable to find a job due to the pandemic, they focused on writing and ...Read More

CHARLES DAVID GEORGE STROSS was born October 18, 1964 in Leeds, England. Stross began writing SF at age 12, and his earliest publica­tions were articles for roleplaying game magazines in the ’70s and ’80s. He earned a bachelor’s in pharmacy in 1986, qualified as a pharmacist in 1987, then enrolled at Bradford University (1989-90) for a post-graduate conversion degree in computer science. He worked as a technical writer and programmer ...Read More

PENG SHEPHERD was born April 12, 1986 and grew up in Phoenix AZ. She graduated college early and spent some time traveling, then earned her MFA at New York University. She has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York.

First novel The Book of M (2018) won the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction in the Debut category. Second novel The Cartog­raphers ...Read More

SARAH GAILEY was born February 2, 1990 and grew up in Fremont CA. They studied theater at the American Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles and managed a theater company in the East Bay for a few years.

Gailey began publishing work of genre interest with ‘‘Stars’’ in 2015, and made a big splash with alternate-history novella River of Teeth (2017), a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist, and ...Read More

GRADY HENDRIX was born 1972 in South Carolina. He worked in the library of the American Society for Psychical Research before becoming a professional writer, first as a journalist and critic and later as a screenwriter and novelist. He attended the Clarion Workshop in 2009.

Hendrix’s first work of genre interest was story “The Hairy Ghost” in Pseudo­pod (2008), and he’s published several stories in publications including Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, ...Read More

ZORAIDA CÓRDOVA was born June 26, 1987 in Ecuador, and moved to the US at age six, where she grew up in Hollis, Queens, New York. She is a prolific author of fiction for children, young adults, and adults.

Córdova attended National Book Foundation writ­ing camps in high school and began writing novels in college. After graduation she was an intern at a literary agency.

Her debut novel The Vicious ...Read More

Leslye Penelope James Reaves, who writes as L. Penelope and Leslye Penelope, was born April 18, 1978 in the Bronx in New York. Her family moved around when she was young, living in Washington DC and New Jersey before settling in Maryland when she was nine. She attended Howard University in Washington DC, where she studied film and computer science, and went to graduate school at Cal State Hayward ...Read More

Suzanne Palmer was born in 1968, just outside Boston MA. She studied at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, earning a Bach­elor of Fine Arts in studio art focused on sculpture. She began writing fiction seriously in 2001, and attended the Viable Paradise workshop in 2005.

She began publishing SF with “The Ins and Outs of Intergalactic Diplomacy” (2005). “The Secret Life of Bots” (2017) is a Hugo Award winner, ...Read More

Nadia Afifi was born May 13, 1984 in the US, but grew up in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain before returning to the States for college, where she studied journal­ism and business. She now works as a program manage­ment officer for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

After publishing a couple of stories in ‘zines, she began producing work of genre interest with “Exhibit K” (2019) in Abyss & Apex, and has ...Read More

Daniel James Abraham was born November 14, 1969 in Albuquerque NM and attended University of New Mexico, where he earned a degree in biology. After graduating in 1996, he spent a few months in New York working at a bookstore, then returned to New Mexico and spent ten years in tech support. He now writes full time.

He is probably best known as half of “James S.A. Corey,” the pseudonym ...Read More

Violet Castro was born July 14, 1979 and grew up in San Antonio TX. She moved to Philadelphia PA to attend Drexel University, where she earned a BS in political science and history. Fifteen years ago, she moved to the UK, and resides there with her family, though she returns to the US often to visit family.

Castro self-published debut vampire novel Maria the Wanted and the Legacy of the ...Read More

Nicola Jane Griffith was born September 30, 1960 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. She went to college to study science but dropped out after a few months and moved to Hull, where she played in a band. She has also worked as a women’s self-defense instructor, and teaches writing. She attended Clarion in 1988, where she met fellow writer Kelley Eskridge. They were mar­ried in 1993, though the marriage wasn’t legally ...Read More