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JOHN CORCORAN WISWELL was born Sep­tember 4, 1981, and grew up around the Mount Kisco area of New York State. He attended Bennington Col­lege, graduating in 2005, and went to the Viable Paradise writing workshop in 2013. Wiswell has multiple disabilities, including a neuromuscular syndrome, and often ex­plores disability issues in his fiction.

His first SF story, “Alligators by Twitter”, appeared in 2010, and he has since published around 40 ...Read More

OLUWOLE TALABI was born February, 28, 1986 in a steel town on the out­skirts of Warri, a city in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, and grew up there and in Benin City before his family settled in Lagos. He currently lives in Malaysia, where he works as an engineer, but ex­pects to relocate to Australia in the future.

Talabi’s first SF story was “The Human Thing” (2011), and his ...Read More

ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE & ELLIOTT MCLEMORE are married co-authors of Venom & Vow (2023).

Anna-Marie is a queer, Latine, nonbinary author who grew up in Southern California. Their debut YA The Weight of Feathers appeared in 2015, and other books include Otherwise Award winner When the Moon Was Ours (2016), Wild Beauty (2017), Blanca & Roja (2018), Dark and Deepest Red (2020), Miss Meteor (2020, with Tehlor Kay Mejia), The Mirror ...Read More

KAREN LORD was born May 22, 1968 in Barbados. She attended secondary school at Queen’s College, and later attended the University of Toronto. She earned a master’s degree in science and technology policy at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, and got her doctorate in the sociology of religion at Bangor University in Wales. She has traveled widely, taught physics in school, trained soldiers, and worked in the foreign service. She lives ...Read More

KEMI ASHING-GIWA WAS BORN August 22, 2000 in Southern California. She attended Har­vard University, where she stud­ied integrative biology and as­trophysics, and is now a PhD student at Stanford University.

She began publishing short fiction with “Paper Suns” in Anathema in 2021, and in 2022 published two stories at Tor.com, “Fruiting Bodies” and “The Suf­ficient Loss Protocol,” followed by “The Puppetmaster” in 2023. SF horror novella This World Is Not ...Read More

ANN LECKIE was born March 2, 1966 in Toledo OH and grew up in St. Louis MO. She attended Washington University, graduating with a degree in music. She has worked as a wait­ress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer.

Leckie attended Clarion West in 2005, where she wrote her first pub­lished SF story “Hesperia and Glory” (2006). Over a dozen stories have appeared ...Read More

EMMA TÖRZS was born January 8, 1987 and grew up in Cambridge and Acton MA. After graduating college, she worked briefly in retail and restaurants before joining the MFA program at the University of Montana in Missoula, graduating in 2012. She attended the Clarion West writing workshop in 2017. In addition to writing fiction, she is also a translator, and teaches at Ma­calester College. She has lived in Minneapolis MN ...Read More

CONSTANCE ELAINE TRIMMER WILLIS was born December 31, 1945 in Denver CO and has lived in Colorado most of her life. She earned a BA in English and elementary education from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, in 1967, and taught el­ementary and junior high school from 1967-81. She made her first SF sale to Worlds of Fantasy with “The Secret of Santa Titicaca” (1971), and earned her first Hugo ...Read More

CHERAE LICHELLE CLARK was born August 10, 1990 in Oklaho­ma and grew up in Kansas City KS. She attended interna­tional school just outside London, England, then attended the University of Kansas as an undergrad. She earned her MFA at the University of Indiana, and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fel­low under Dorothy Allison. Clark has worked as an English teacher, editor, and personal trainer. She lives in the UK.

Clark ...Read More

MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL was born Mary Robinette Harrison on February 8, 1969 in Raleigh NC. She attended Eastern Carolina University, major­ing in Art Education, with a minor in Theater and Speech. In 1991 she left for an internship at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta GA and never went back. She has been a professional puppeteer ever since. Kowal spent a year and a half working in Iceland on ...Read More

RAY NAYLER was born on June 5, 1976 in Alma, Quebec. When he was three years old, his family moved to California. He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied modern literature and developed an interest in semiotics, graduating in 1999. He lived in the Bay Area and Toronto and worked various odd jobs before joining the Peace Corps and moving to Turkmenistan in 2003. He ...Read More

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS was born in Connecticut and grew up in the small town of Mansfield. She went to Cambridge University in England, studying English and Asian literature, and spent time studying abroad in China. She has lived in Hong Kong, Boston, and other places, and currently resides in San Francisco.

Anders began publishing SF with “Fertility” (1999) and has published well over 100 stories since then in various genres, ...Read More

AYIZE JAMA-EVERETT was born in 1974 in Harlem NY. He has trav­eled widely, including in Asia, Mexico, and North Africa. He has a master’s degree in divinity, another in clinical psychology, and recently finished his MFA in literature at UC Riverside. He currently lives in Oakland CA, where he works as a therapist.

Jama-Everett began publishing with SF novel The Liminal People (2011), launching a series that continued with The ...Read More

DENISE ANGELA SHAWL was born November 2, 1955 and grew up in Kalamazoo MI. (Their cousin Delores came up with the nickname “Nisi.”) At 17, Shawl moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. After leaving the university, Shawl worked as a bookseller, au pair, cook, janitor, and artist’s model. Shawl settled in Seattle in 1996, worked on publicity for Clarion West, and currently serves on the workshop’s ...Read More

OSASUYI OKUNGBOWA, who writes as Suyi Davies Okungbowa, was born August 27, 1989 and grew up in Benin City, Edo, Nigeria. He earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Benin. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona, and now teaches creative writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.

He began publishing SF with story “Breaking the Habit” (as Suyi ...Read More

ALEX JENNINGS was born November 30, 1979 in Germany, and lived in Botswana, the US, Suriname, and Tunisia. He settled in New Orleans 16 years ago.

Jennings studied at The Evergreen State College, where he met Octavia E. Butler, who encouraged him to apply to Clarion West. He attended the workshop in 2003, and began publishing short fiction of genre interest with “This is Mars” in 2005. His stories ...Read More

Annalee Newitz was born May 6, 1969 in Santa Monica CA, and grew up in Irvine. They attended UC Berkeley, where they completed a PhD in English and American Stud­ies in 1998; their dissertation was published as Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (2006). They began freelance writing in the mid-’90s, and have writ­ten full-time since 1999, mostly as a journalist focusing on technology and science. They ...Read More

SAAD Z. HOSSAIN was born April 22, 1979 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He studied English Lit and Commerce at the University of Virginia.

His debut novel was Baghdad Immortals (2013; as Escape from Baghdad!, 2015). Other novels include Djinn City (2017) and Cyber Mage (2021). Novella The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (2019) was an Ignyte Award finalist and has a sequel, Kundo Wakes Up, out this year. ...Read More

JULIE ELIZABETH STARINK was born April 11, 1955 in Exeter, Ontario, and lived with her family on the air force base in Centralia. She attended the University of Waterloo, where she studied biology and met future husband Roger Czerneda, married in 1976. She did her graduate studies at the University of Saskatchewan, researching fish and the evolution of reproductive communication systems, and also attended Queen’s University. After that, she ...Read More