Shiv Ramdas is a multi-award nominated author of speculative fiction short stories and novels. He lives and writes in Seattle, Washington with his wife and three cats. In 2020 he became one of only two Indian writers to ever be nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula and an Ignyte Award in the same year. He also gained Twitter fame in 2020 for live-tweeting the saga of his brother-in-law’s rice mishap. His first novel, Domechild, was India’s first mainstream cyberpunk novel. His short fiction has appeared in Slate, Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Podcastle and other publications. 

He is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. He was previously a radio host, and worked in journalism, advertising, and event management. In addition to his speculative fiction work he has also penned numerous advertisements, radio segments, audio plays and resignation letters.

Melissa Scott was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College, where she was involved with the now-defunct college-sanctioned SF ‘zine that spawned the Harvard/Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. She earned her PhD from Brandeis University in the comparative history program with a dissertation titled “The Victory of the Ancients:  Tactics, Technology, and the Use of Classical Precedent.” She also sold her first novel, The Game Beyond, and quickly became a part-time graduate student and an—almost—full-time writer.

Over the next forty years, she published more than thirty original novels and a handful of short stories, most with queer themes and characters, as well as authorized tie-in work for Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Star Wars Rebels. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986, and won Lambda Literary Awards for Trouble and Her Friends, Shadow Man, Point of Dreams, (with long-time partner and collaborator, the late Lisa A. Barnett), and Death By Silver, written with Amy Griswold. She has also been shortlisted for the Otherwise (Tiptree) Award. She won Spectrum Awards for Death By Silver, Fairs’ Point, Shadow Man and for the short story “The Rocky Side of the Sky.”

Her most recent solo novels were published in 2023, with The Master of Samar in the spring and Fallen at the end of the year. 2024 saw the reissue of the five books in the Points series (Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams, Fairs’ Point, and Point of Sighs) by Queen of Swords Press, with a new novella, Point of Hearts, scheduled for the spring of 2025.

She is also the new owner/publisher of Candlemark & Gleam, the well-respected small SF/F founded by Kate Sullivan and most recently run by Athena Andreadis. Candlemark & Gleam specializes in complex, layered stories, often with a mythic dimension—fiction that shapes the dark.

Arley Sorg is an associate agent at kt literary. He is a three-time World Fantasy Award Finalist and a three-time Locus Award Finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards. Arley is senior editor at Locus, a reviewer for Lightspeed, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He has been a guest critiquer for the Odyssey Workshop, was the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West workshop, and was the Guest of Honour for the 2024 in-person Can*Con, among other teaching and speaking engagements. Find him at arleysorg.com, his Twitter, Facebook, or Bluesky. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Fonda Lee is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Green Bone Saga, consisting of the novels Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, along with a prequel novella The Jade Setter of Janloon and a short story collection, Jade Shards. She is also the author of the fantasy novella, Untethered Sky and several young adult novels: Zeroboxer, the Exo duology, and the Breathmarked duology, co-written with Shannon Lee. Her newest book is the science fiction novel, The Last Contract of Isako.

Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a six-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), as well as a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated into fifteen languages, named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time, and optioned for television development.

She has also written acclaimed short fiction and been an instructor at writing workshops including Clarion West, Viable Paradise, and Aspen Words. Fonda is a former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist who loves action movies and Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Canada, she resides in the Boston area.