Spotlight

Your first novel Magic for Liars is forthcoming from Tor in June (exciting!) and combines detective story and magic school tropes. Tell us a bit about the book. What appeals to you about those particular tropes? Did working with both create extra challenges or just give you more elements to play with?

Magic for Liars follows Ivy Gamble, P.I., as she investigates the murder of a faculty member at a ...Read More

DAVID BALDACCI published his first novel, Absolute Power, in 1996. The feature film adaptation followed, with Clint Eastwood as its director and star. Baldacci has published 37 novels for adults; all have been national and international bestsellers, and several have been adapted for film and television. His novels are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with over 130 million worldwide sales. Baldacci has also ...Read More

Cynthia Sheppard has been creating artwork for books and games since the mid-2000s. Her illustrations are inspired by a late 19th-century realist painting and modern fantasy art, with a focus on emotional resonance and visual storytelling. She’s currently a senior art director at Wizards of the Coast, where she create worlds and has commissioned over 2,000 illustrations for the card game Magic: The Gathering.

She told us, “If I’ve ever ...Read More

Greg Ruth is a New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Boy and NDEH (with Ethan Hawke) and has worked making books and comics since 1993. He has published work through The New York Times, DC Com­ics, Fantagraphics Books, Mondo, Dark Horse, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hyperion, Simon and Schuster, the Criterion Collection, Slate, CNN, Penguin, Hachette, and Tor. He has created two music videos for Prince and Rob Thomas, and ...Read More

Having created illustrations for many publish­ers, including Simon & Schuster, Random House and Hyperion/Disney, Omar Rayyan’s primary market was geared towards children’s and young adult’s magazine and books, doing cover and interior illustrations. He also illustrated several children’s picture books.

Other genres he has worked in include the gam­ing market, most notably for Magic: The Gathering, where he has done card art and concept work. Omar was also among the ...Read More

Victo Ngai is a Los Angeles based illustrator from Hong Kong, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. “Victo” is not a boy nor a typo, but a nickname derived from Victoria – a leftover from the British colonization.

Ngai’s work appears in advertising, packaging, magazines, books, newspapers and animation, her clients include The New York Times, The New Yorker, Apple, Prophecy Wines, Johnnie Walker, American Express, Lufthansa Airline, General ...Read More

Israel, I am informed, seems to be having an SF moment. Or, from the unexpectedly enthusiastic early reviews of the anthology I co-edited with Emanuel Lottem, Zion’s Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature, SF may be having an Israel moment.

As well it should. After all, the Jewish State drew inspiration from a knock-off of Edward Bellamy’s late 19th-century utopian romance, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, notably, Zionist ideologue ...Read More

Jason Kirk is a senior editor for Amazon Publishing’s 47North and Skyscape imprints. Books edited by Kirk have won the Arthur C. Clarke, British Science Fiction Association, and UTOPiA Book of the Year Awards, and have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick and Bram Stoker Awards. Prior to joining Amazon Publishing in 2014, Kirk worked in magazine publishing and music journalism for 15 years. Aside from his interest in ...Read More

Sarah Pinsker’s first professional sale was “20 Ways the Desert Could Kill You” in 2012. She followed that with the Sturgeon Award-winning “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind”, also her first Nebula Award-nominated story. She has since won the Nebula Award for novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road.” Her 40+ stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies. Her first collection, ...Read More

Michelle Sagara was born in, and has spent all her life living in, what is now called Toronto. Her long-suffering husband and two children have learned that there’s nothing terribly mystical or magical about being a writer, although the experience of watching their mother has made imposter syn­drome and lack of critical objectivity about one’s work seem completely normal.

Reading is one of her life-long passions, and she is sometimes ...Read More

Tricia Reeks lives in the bear-infested mountains of Asheville, North Carolina with her mountaineer husband and her two ferocious French bulldogs. She is the founder of Meerkat Press, the co-editor of Behind the Mask: An Anthology of Heroic Proportions (a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2017) and Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology.

Tell us about how your press was founded. Why did you decide to get into ...Read More

Andy Weir was first hired as a program­mer for a national laboratory at age 15 and has been work­ing as a software en­gineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of sub­jects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. First novel The Martian was a bestseller and was adapted as a popular feature film. New novel Artemis is out this ...Read More

Janny Wurts has authored 19 novels, a short fiction collection, and 33 contributions to anthologies. Titles include the War of Light and Shadow series; standalones To Ride Hell’s Chasm, Master of White Storm, and Sorcerer’s Legacy; the Cycle of Fire trilogy; and the collaborative Empire trilogy with Raymond E. Feist.

Her paintings have been featured in NASA’s 25th Anniversary exhibit, Delaware Art Museum, Canton Art Museum, and ...Read More

Scott H. Andrews is a writer, editor, chemistry lecturer, musician, woodworker, and connoisseur of stouts. His literary short fiction has won a $1,000 prize from the Briar Cliff Review, and his genre short fiction has appeared in Ann VanderMeer’s Weird Tales and in On Spec. He is editor-in-chief and publisher of the four-time Hugo Award-finalist fantasy e-zine Beneath Ceaseless Skies and its five-time Parsec Award finalist podcast. Scott lives in ...Read More

Heather Shaw is an editor, writer, performer, mother, lindy hopper, and bookkeeper living in Berkeley CA with her husband and son. In addition to editing Persistent Visions, she has in the past edited poetry, erotica, catalog copy, and technical manuals. Her fiction has appeared in nice places like Strange Horizons and The Year’s Best Fantasy, and she’s performed everywhere from small stages in San Francisco to the Lollapalooza poetry ...Read More

Rovina Cai is a freelance illustrator from Melbourne, Australia. She creates intriguing images that make you linger, hungry to know the story behind them. Her work is often inspired by the past; from fairy tales to gothic novels, these stories resonate with her because they bring a little bit of magic and wonder to the present day. Rovina has worked with an eclectic range of clients, including The Folio Society, ...Read More

Jeffrey Alan Love is an award-winning artist and writer whose clients have included The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker, Tor, Gollancz, Scholastic, HarperCollins, and others. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Chesley Award, and the Spectrum Fantastic Art Award, he has won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators and two Academy of British Cover Design Awards. ...Read More

Paul Lewin was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973 and moved to the US in 1977. He spent most of his years growing up in Miami FL and now lives in Oakland CA. Initially, pencil and paper were his medium of choice, but he was also into graffiti, and soon moved into colorful pieces using markers and pens. In 1994 he picked up a paint brush for the first time ...Read More

Kelly Abbott is CEO and co-founder of Great Jones Street. He’s helped launch and grow social media, dating, and publishing products purchased by Match.com, Adobe, and Oprah. Now his mission is to meld his literary roots and tech chops to transform the world of short fiction for readers and authors alike. He plays soccer, roots for Cleveland, and lives in San Diego by the ocean with his wife, his son, ...Read More

Ellen Kushner lives in New York City with her wife, the writer and teacher Delia Sherman. They have no cats, just plane tickets and theater stubs. After college, Kushner lucked into jobs as a fantasy editor for Jim Baen at Ace Books, and then for David G. Hartwell at Pocket/Simon & Schuster. She quit to write her first novel, Swordspoint, which took longer than she thought it would, so ...Read More

Brooks Peck is an author, museum curator, and journalist. In 1996 he co-founded Science Fiction Weekly, the first professional website devoted to SF, and in time became editor-in-chief. He joined the Museum of Pop Culture (AKA MoPOP, formerly known as the EMP Museum) in 2004 when the museum established its first science fiction galleries. There he has curated exhibitions on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar ...Read More

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Apex, Strange Horizons, and The Minnesota Review, among others. His first book, a young adult science fiction novel called The Art of Starving, will be published by HarperCollins in 2017. His stories have been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, and he’s a winner of the Shirley ...Read More

Alyssa Wong is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in F&SF, Strange Horizons, Black Static, and Tor.com. You can find her on twitter as @crashwong and tumblr at www.crashwong.tumblr.com.

You’re a Nebula Award nominee for your story ‘‘The Fisher Queen’’. Tell us about the piece.

‘‘The Fisher Queen’’ is about the dark side of the mer­maid fishing industry on the Mekong River, and the ...Read More

You’re launching a new SF imprint, Saga Press. What’s your vision? Do you have a mission statement, or a particular niche you hope to fill?

I’m working with editor Navah Wolfe on the imprint, so while I do not want to speak for her, I can say that Saga Press is taking the best practices of SF/F imprints, along with select general fiction imprints and children’s/YA publishing, and incorporating them ...Read More

John DeNardo is the co-founder and managing editor of SF Signal. He has been known to do things for free bagels.JP Frantz is the co-founder and sometimes blogger/editor of SF Signal. Patrick Hester is an author, blogger, and 2013 Hugo Award Winner. He produces/hosts the

SF Signal and Functional Nerds podcasts and produces Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing Podcast. His fiction can be found via his Amazon author’s page. ...Read More

Galen Dara has created art for Fireside, Lightpseed, Goblin Fruit, Lovecraft eZine, Scapezine, Apex magazine, Dagan Books, and Edge Publishing. Recently she illustrated the cover of the War Stories anthology, edited by Jaym Gates & Andrew Liptak; the cover of The Future Embodied, edited by Mae Empson & Jason Andrews; and the cover of Glitter & Mayhem, edited by John Klima & Lynne M. Thomas. She is currently ...Read More

Annalee Newitz writes about science, pop culture, and the future. She’s the editor in chief of io9, a publication that covers science and science fiction, and has over 5 million readers every month. She’s the author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. She’s also published in Wired, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, 2600, New Scientist, Technology Review, Popular Science, Discover, and the  ...Read More