Merc Rustad is a queer non-binary writer and filmmaker who lives in the Midwest United States. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea. Their stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, Inscription Magazine, Scigentasy, and Vitality Magazine. When not buried in homework, Merc likes to play video games, read comics, and wear awesome hats. Website: amercrustad.com

Adam R. Shannon is a career firefighter/paramedic, as well as a fiction writer, hiker, and cook. His work has been shortlisted for an Aeon award and appeared in Morpheus Tales and the SFFWorld anthology You Are Here: Tales of Cryptographic Wonders. He and his wife live in Virginia, where they care for an affable German Shepherd, occasional foster dogs, a free-range toad, and a colony of snails who live in an old apothecary jar. His website and blog are at AdamRShannon.com.

Aimee Ogden is a former biologist, science teacher, and software tester. Now she writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Baen.com, Persistent Visions, and the Sockdolager.

ALEX DREPPEC, born in 1968 close to Frankfurt as “Alexander Deppert,” studied psychology and linguistics and went to Boulder/Colorado for his Ph.D. (finished 2001). German author of four poetry books, hundreds of publications (both poetry and science) in German journals and anthologies, both the most renowned (“Der große Conrady”—since 2008) and the best sold among them, numerous publications in English. Wilhelm Busch Prize 2004.

Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. In between programming and mothering, she writes speculative fiction--her stories have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Award. Her newest novel, House of Shattered Wings, is set in a devastated Paris where rival Houses fight for influence--and features fallen angels, Vietnamese dragons and entirely too many dead bodies. It is forthcoming in August from Gollancz in the UK/Commonwealth and Roc in the US. Website: aliettedebodard.com

BRETT FOSTER is the author of two poetry collections, The Garbage Eater (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011) and Fall Run Road, which was awarded Finishing Line Press’s 2012 Open Chapbook Prize. A third collection, Extravagant Rescues, is forthcoming. His writing has appeared in Books and Culture, Boston Review, Hudson Review, IMAGE, Kenyon Review, Poetry Daily, Raritan, Southwest Review, and Yale Review. He teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature at Wheaton College. The poem featured here is from a new poetry project in which the author attempts to navigate his own season of sickness.

Carla Dash resides with her husband and two cats in Quincy, MA where she video games, teaches English Language Learners, and occasionally squeezes in some writing.

Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, who hosts a talk radio show for the supernaturally disadvantaged, the fourteenth installment of which is Kitty Saves the World. She's written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of 80 short stories. She's a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com

Nebula, World Fantasy, and Endeavour award nominee Cat Rambo's published work includes 200+ stories, two novels, five collections, a cookbook, a travel guide, and two books for writers, Moving from Idea to Draft and Creating an Online Presence for Writers. She runs The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and on-demand online writing classes aimed at speculative fiction writers. She is a two-term President of the The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Find links and more information at www.kittyrumpus.net author photo copyright OnFocus Photography

Cat Sparks is a multi-award-winning Australian author, editor and artist. Career highlights include a PhD in science fiction and climate fiction, five years as Fiction Editor of Cosmos Magazine, running Agog! Press, working as an archaeological dig photographer in Jordan, studying with Margaret Atwood, 78 published short stories, two collections – The Bride Price (2013) and Dark Harvest (2020) and a far future novel, Lotus Blue. She directed two speculative fiction festivals for Writing NSW and is a regular panelist & speaker at speculative fiction and other literary events.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky, a novel coming in early 2016 from Tor Books. She is the editor in chief of io9.com and the organizer of the Writers with Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, and several anthologies. Her novelette "Six Months, Three Days" won a Hugo award. Website: CharlieJane.com

Chris Large writes regularly for Aurealis Magazine and has had fiction published in Australian speculative fiction magazines and anthologies. He’s a single parent who enjoys writing stories for middle-graders and young adults, and about family life in all its forms. He lives in Tasmania, a small island at the bottom of Australia, where everyone rides Kangaroos and says “G’day mate!” to utter strangers.

CLARE LOUISE HARMON lives and works in New Orleans, LA. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Feminist Wire, PANK, Loose Change, and Tammy, among others. Her debut collection, The Thingbody, was published by Instar Books in 2015 and her chapbook, If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Would Ride, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Dan Micklethwaite does most of his writing in a small, wet town in the north of England. He escapes vicariously via his short fiction, which has traveled extensively and internationally, to such wonderful, exotic locales as Timeless Tales, Birdville, AE SciFi, BULL, 3:AM, Litro, and the Missing Slate, in whose New Voices competition he was runner-up last year. His debut novel, a contemporary riff on Don Quixote set in aforementioned small, wet town, is due for release in 2016. Website: smalltimebooks.blogspot.co.uk

DANIEL HALES is the author of Tempo Maps, a poetry chapbook with the companion CD: Miner Street Symphony (ixnay press). His work has appeared in many journals, including Verse Daily, Conduit, H_NGM_N, Sentence, Quarter After Eight, and Booth. He’s released three EPs with the Ambiguities and three albums with the Frost Heaves, most recently Contrariwise: Songs From Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. www.danielhales.com

DAVID MOOK began writing poetry after the sudden death of his eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, who began writing her poems while in kindergarten. Inspired by Sarah’s poems, David earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. His first book of poems, Each Leaf, includes poems written by Sarah, as well as an essay, “Fishing,” recognized as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2000. Poems have appeared in numerous publications including Bereavement magazine, Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont, Dogwood, Ellipsis, Friends Journal, Passager, Paterson Literary Review, and several anthologies. David sponsors the Sarah Mook Poetry Contest open to students in grades K-12 www.sarahmookpoetrycontest.com

David Stevens lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and four children, where he teaches law. His stories have appeared in Crossed Genres, Aurealis, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Pseudopod, Cafe Irreal, and elsewhere. Website: http://davidstevens.info

Dominique Hecq grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. She now lives in Melbourne. Her works include a novel, three collections of stories and ten books of poetry. Hecq’s poems and stories have been widely published in anthologies and journals. Often experimental, her work explores love, loss, exile and the possibilities of language. Kaosmos and Tracks (2020) are her latest books. Among other awards such as the Melbourne Fringe Festival Award, the Woorilla Prize for fiction, the Martha Richardson Medal for Poetry, and the New England Poetry Prize, Hecq is a recipient of the 2018 International Best Poets Prize.

DONALD ILLICH has published poetry in the Iowa Review, Nimrod, LIT, Sixth Finch, Cream City Review, and many other journals. He lives in Rockville, MD.

Dorene O'Brien is an award-winning fiction writer from Detroit. She has won the Red Rock Review Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the New Millennium Fiction Award and the Wind Fiction Prize. She also won the international Bridport Prize and is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories have appeared in the Connecticut Review, Madison Review, the Chicago Tribune, the Montreal Review, Cimarron Review, Detroit Noir and others. Voices of the Lost and Found, her first full-length short fiction collection, won the USA Best Books Award in Fiction. She is currently writing a novel featuring fossil hunters in Ethiopia. Website: www.DoreneObrien.com

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of several novels and collections. She’s a British Fantasy Award winner, a Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in other awards. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.’ Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work,’ and was a 2024 Philip K Dick Award nominee . Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

F.J. BERGMANN writes poetry and speculative fiction, often simultaneously, functioning, so to speak, as editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.

FJP LANGHEIM has taught English and German in Italy, conducted neuroimaging research on schizophrenia, and lectured on the poetry of science. He is currently assistant professor of psychiatry at UW Madison, and a psychiatrist at Dean and St. Mary’s Hospital. His poetry has appeared in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, Academic Psychiatry, Nature’s Echoes and the NIH Catalyst.

G.D. Penman is the author of the Strata Online and Witch of Empire series, the ghostwriter of more than 50 books, and a freelance game designer. A firm believer in the axiom that any story is made better with the addition of dragons, he is fulfilling his destiny as an overweight bearded white man by pursuing a career as a fantasy author. In “real life” he lives in Scotland with his partner, children, dog and cats. Just . . . so many cats.

G. Scott Huggins makes his money by teaching history at a private school, proving that he knows more about history than making money. He loves writing fiction both serious and humorous. When he is not teaching or writing, he devotes himself to his wife, their three children, and two cats. He loves good bourbon, bacon, and pie. If you have any recipes featuring one or more of these things, Mr. Huggins will be pleased to review them if accompanied by a sample.

Gerry Huntman is a writer and publisher based in Melbourne Australia, living with his wife and young daughter. He has sold over 50 short fiction pieces, most of which are dark and for mature audiences, but he also has a love for middle grade fiction. He loves travel and gets many of his story ideas from distant lands and culture, but is equally happy with the cafe set in his hometown.

GWEN HART teaches writing at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, IA. Her poems and stories have appeared in literary journals such as Measure, Prism International, Calliope, and the Quotable. Her poetry collection, Lost and Found, is available from David Robert Books.

H.M. JONES is the B.R.A.G Medallion author of Monochrome, picked up by Gravity, an imprint of Booktrope. She is also responsible for the Attempting to Define poetry quartet and has contributed a short story to Masters of Time: A Sci-Fi and Fantasy Time Travel Anthology. A bestseller only in her mind, Jones pays the electric bill by teaching English and research courses at Northwest Indian College. Jones is also the moderator for Elite Indie Reads, a review website for indie and self- published books. Besides buying enough second-hand books to fill a library, Jones loves to spend time helping her preschoolers grow into thinking, feeling citizens of this world, run, weave, pull with the Port Gamble S’Klallam Canoe Family and attempt to deserve her handsome husband, who is helping pay the other bills until his wife becomes the next big thing.

HOLLY KARAPETKOVA’S poetry, prose, and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared widely. Her first book, Words We Might One Day Say, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize for Poetry.

Holly is Canadian. Some people think that's all you need to know about someone, and in her case this may be true: she is frequently polite, often drinks beer, and will wear a toque if it's cold enough. She's also an omnivorous reader, a hard-core sleeper, and a yoga-mat owner. She hunts lattes with her partner Steven through the mean streets of Vancouver, BC.

Hugh Howey is the author of the acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel Wool, which became a sudden success in 2011. Originally self-published as a series of novelettes, the Wool omnibus has been a #1 bestselling book on Amazon.com and is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. The book was also optioned for film by Ridley Scott, and is now available in print from major publishers all over the world. Hugh’s other books include Shift, Dust, Sand, The Shell Collector, the Molly Fyde series, The Hurricane, Half Way Home, The Plagiarist, and I, Zombie. Hugh lives on a boat that he hopes to sail around the world. Website: www.HughHowey.com

J. Ashley Smith is a British–Australian author of dark fiction and co-host of the Let The Cat In podcast. His first book, The Attic Tragedy, won the Shirley Jackson Award. Other stories have won the Ditmar Award, Australian Shadows Award and Aurealis Award. He lives with his wife and two sons beneath an ominous mountain in the suburbs of North Canberra, gathering moth dust, tormented by the desolation of telegraph wires. You can find him at spooktapes.net, performing amazing experiments in electronic communication with the dead.

If taking a college fencing class, eating from the trash can, and smelling like an animal were qualifications for becoming a sword-swinging barbarian, J. D. Brink might have been Conan’s protégé. Instead he’s been a sailor, spy, nurse, and officer in the U.S. Navy, as well as a gravedigger, insurance adjuster, and school teacher in civilian life. His work has appeared in Pseudopod.org, Tales of the Talisman, Ascent Aspirations, and Cemetery Moon, and he has published novels with Fugitive Fiction. Website: brinkschaostheory.blogspot.com

J.G. MCCLURE holds an MFA from the University of California - Irvine. His poems appear in Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, the Pinch, and the Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. He is the Craft Essay Editor and Assistant Poetry Editor of Cleaver, and is at work on his first collection, Better. See more at jgmcclure.weebly.com

J.S. Breukelaar is the author of Collision: Stories, a 2019 Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and winner of the 2019 Aurealis and Ditmar Awards. Previous novels include Aletheia and American Monster. Her short fiction has appeared in the Dark Magazine, Tiny Nightmares, Black Static, Gamut, Unnerving, Lightspeed, Lamplight, Juked, in Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy 2019 and elsewhere. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia, where she teaches writing and literature, and is at work on a new collection of short stories and a novella. You can find her at thelivingsuitcase.com and on Twitter and elsewhere @jsbreukelaar.

JANET MCNALLY’S collection Some Girls won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and will be published in the fall of 2015. She has an MFA from Notre Dame and is a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. Her young adult novel Girls in the Moon is forthcoming from HarperCollins in early 2017, and her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2012, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, Poetry Daily, and others. She teaches creative writing at Canisius College.

JEAN BONIN: Although she has always enjoyed reading poetry, she always kept writing poetry as her secret addiction. Only now that she is ‘older’ has she become brave enough to share her poetry. She has even been fortunate enough to have had several of her poems published.

Jeff VanderMeer's most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), all released in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The series has been acquired by publishers in 23 other countries. Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions have acquired the movie rights. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, and the Los Angeles Times. A three-time World Fantasy Award winner and 14-time nominee, VanderMeer has edited or coedited many iconic fiction anthologies, taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, the Miami International Book Fair, lectured at MIT and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen SF/fantasy writing camp located at Wofford College. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer.Website: www.JeffVanderMeer.com

Jennifer Pullen received her doctorate from Ohio University and her MFA from Eastern Washington University. She originally hails from Washington State. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are upcoming in journals including: Going Down Swinging (AU), Cleaver, Off the Coast, Phantom Drift Limited, and Clockhouse.

Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Atrocities, Bedfellow, and Cursed. Their shorter tales have appeared in over 60 publications, including Cemetery Dance, Dark Moon Digest and Apex Magazine. Jeremy lives in Southern California in a moderately haunted Farmhouse. Their twitter handle is @JeremyCShipp.

JERRY BRADLEY is University Professor of English at Lamar University. Winner of the 2015 Boswell Poetry Prize, he is the author of six books including three books of poetry—Simple Versions of Disaster, The Importance of Elsewhere, and most recently Crownfeathers and Effigies—and one book of poetry criticism—The Movement: British Poets of the 1950s. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Bradley was selected as a 2014 Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation. He was also named Outstanding Alumnus from Midwestern State University’s College of Liberal Arts in 2002. His poetry has appeared in many literary magazines including New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Poetry Magazine, and Southern Humanities Review. He is poetry editor of Concho River Review and co-editor of the upcoming The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology. He is a past president of the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers. More information is available on his Wikipedia site and at www.jerrybradley.net

JESSECA CORNELSON is an associate professor of English at Alabama State University where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as the Plot, Parody, Botticelli Magazine, and Platte Valley Review. She has twice been a writer-in-residence at the Platte Clove Preserve sponsored by the Catskill Center and is a 2015-16 recipient of a Fellowship in Literary Arts from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Jessica Goodfellow's books are Mendeleev's Mandala (Mayapple Press, 2015), The Insomniac's Weather Report (Three Candles Press First Book Prize winner, reissued by Isobar Press, 2014), and the chapbook A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland (Concrete Wolf, 2006). Her work has been featured in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac, and is forthcoming at Motionpoems. She has received the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Japan. Website: www.jessicagoodfellow.com

JO ANGELA EDWINS teaches creative writing, American literature, and composition at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC. A native of North Augusta, SC, she has published poems in a variety of venues including Calyx, Sojourn, New South, and Mixitini Matrix. She is the 2014 recipient of the Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship Poetry Prize from the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

Jody Sollazzo grew up in the suburbs of New York. She now lives in Northern California with her partner, their dragon-loving daughter, and food-loving dog. She works in mental health, disability rights, and anti-bullying. Always a fan of bad timing, she is also achieving her life long dream of being a writer. Her short stories appear in several anthologies. She is working on a novel that is a role reversal of Beauty & The Beast that takes place in a prep school with time-traveling fairies with disabilities.

Joel Allegretti is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Body in Equipoise (Full Court Press, 2015), a chapbook on the theme of architecture and design. His second collection, Father Silicon (The Poet’s Press, 2006), was selected by The Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015), the first anthology of poetry about the mass medium. Website: www.joelallegretti.com

JULIE E. BLOEMEKE’S poetry manuscript recently placed as a semifinalist in three book prizes: the 2015 Hudson Prize through Black Lawrence Press, the 2015 Washington Prize through the Word Works, and the 2014 Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and a 2014 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including Gulf Coast, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and The Great Gatsby Anthology. In 2015 her ekphrastic work on Philip C. Curtis was selected for a limited edition chapbook anthology collaboration between the Phoenix Museum of Art and Four Chambers Press. In May she won the 2015 ekphrastic poetry competition at the Toledo Museum of Art where her work will be on view with the Claude Monet collection until September 2015.

Kaaron Warren has been publishing ground-breaking fiction for over twenty years. Her novels and short stories have won over 20 awards, from local literary to international genre.She writes horror steeped in awful reality, with ghosts, hauntings, guilt, loss, love, crime, punishment and a lack of hope.

KAREN BOVENMYER trains future professors for Iowa State University and occasionally teaches novel writing and speculative fiction honors seminars. Her dark fantasy and scifi horror stories have appeared in Erin Underwood’s Pop Fic Review, Paul Genesse’s The Crimson Pact (volumes 3 & 5), Bonnie Stufflebeam’s Art and Words Show (2012, 2013 & 2015), Red Rose Review, Devilfish Review, Zingara Poet, Festival Writer, Crossed Genres, the Were-Traveler, Queer Science Fiction’s Discovery anthology, and Abyss & Apex magazine. She feels honored to have graduated from the Stonecoast MFA Popular Fiction program in July 2013. karenbovenmyer.com

KAREN SKOLFIELD’S book Frost in the Low Areas won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press. She has received fellowships and awards in 2014/2015 from the Poetry Society of America, New England Public Radio, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Ucross Foundation, Split This Rock, Hedgebrook, and more. New poems appear in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, and Pleiades; she teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. www.karenskolfield.com

Karin Tidbeck is the award-winning author of Jagannath: Stories and the novel Amatka. She lives and works in Malmö, Sweden, where she makes a living as a freelance writer. She writes in Swedish and English, and has published work in Weird Tales, Tor.com, Words Without Borders anthologies like Fearsome Magics and The Time-Traveler's Almanac. Website: www.KarinTidbeck.com

Originally from Virginia, Kat Hausler is a graduate of New York University and holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was the recipient of a Baumeister Fellowship. She is the author of Retrograde and What I Know About July, as well as many shorter pieces. Her work has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, 34th Parallel, Inkspill Magazine, The Sunlight Press, The Dalloway, Rozlyn Press, Porridge Magazine, LitReactor, BlazeVOX, failbetter and The Airgonaut, among others. She lives in Berlin and is also a translator.

Kate Marshall lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and several small agents of chaos disguised as a dog, cat, and child. She works as a cover designer and video game writer. Her fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, and other venues, and her YA survival thriller I Am Still Alive is forthcoming from Viking. You can find her online at katemarshallwrites.com.

Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive fiction performances, both solo and with a rotating ensemble of artists. Her work crosses and combines genres, and her books have won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film and performance. She is based in Detroit and thinks globally. She can be found at kathekoja.com.

KATHRYN RICKEL is a lover of all things literature—especially poetry. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State University at the age of 19 with her Bachelors in Spanish Literature. Apart from Spanish, she has studied French, German, Portuguese, Latin, as well as American Sign Language. She enjoys traveling and has visited/lived in six countries outside of the U.S.—so far.

Keith Frady is a short story writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been published in Eunoia Review, Gravel: A Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, and Bewildering Stories. He hopes to write a Batman comic one day, and to publish a collection of his short stories in the near future.Twitter: @Keith_Frady

Keith Rosson is the author of the novels The Mercy of the Tide (2017, Meerkat Press) and Smoke City (2018, Meerkat Press). His short fiction has appeared in Cream City Review, PANK, Redivider, December, and more. An advocate of both public libraries and non-ironic adulation of the cassette tape, he can be found at keithrosson.com.

KEITH STEVENSON is a high school science teacher who loves reading and talking about science fiction. He teaches in Missouri and spends summers in Michigan.

KELLY CHERRY is the author of twenty-four books, nine chapbooks, and two translations of classical drama. A tenth chapbook is forthcoming any day now. Former Poet Laureate of Virginia. Member, Poets Corner, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, NYC. NEA, USIA, Rockefeller, Bradley Lifetime Award, Weinstein Award, others. Publication in prize fiction anthologies. Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin Madison. Eminent Scholar, UAH, 2001-2005. More info and details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Cherry

Kelly Link is the author of four short story collections: Get in Trouble, a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners, and Stranger Things Happen. She lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, most recently Fortune's Favor: Scott in the Antarctic, a series of blank verse sonnets based on the journals of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott (Poetry Mutual, 2015). She is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC_ (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of the web exhibit DC Writers' Homes. Website: Kim Roberts

Kirsten Imani Kasai is the author of three novels: Ice Song, Tattoo, and Private Pleasures; a short fiction/poetry collection Rhapsody in Snakeskin and a poetry chapbook The Atmospheric Mysteries of a Steaming Corpse. Kirsten is the co-founder and editor of Body Parts Magazine, a journal of provocative horror, spec fiction and erotica. She earned her MFA from Antioch University and lives in California with her family.Website: www.IceSong.com

KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM is the author of We Bury the Landscape (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2012), Grim Series (Popcorn Press, 2012), and A Roomful of Machines (ELJ Publications, 2015), as well as three forthcoming books—the short story collection Age of Blight (Unnamed Press, 2016) and poetry collections Lifeboat (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2015) and Black Arcadia (University of the Philippines Press, 2016). Her poems and short stories have appeared in Confrontation, Contrary, New Welsh Review, and elsewhere. She lives in southern Philippines and serves as poetry editor of LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, a literary journal published by Epigram Books in Singapore. kristinemuslim.weebly.com

Kyle lives in the suburban wilds of Canada with his adorable wife, their rambunctious son, and their adventurous daughter. He writes about shapeshifters, superheroes, and the occasional clockwork beast, moonlights as an editor at Meerkat Press, and has a terrible habit of saying the wrong thing at the most inopportune moments. His short fiction has appeared in places such as Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology and Daily Science Fiction.

Laura Shovan is poetry editor for Little Patuxent Review and editor of two poetry anthologies. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. A Rita Dove Poetry Award finalist, Laura conducts school poetry residencies for the Maryland State Arts Council. Her children’s novel-in-verse will be published 2016 (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House).

Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning and Premio Roma nominee A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), the World Fantasy Award winning Osama (2011) and of the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century (2013). His latest novel is Central Station (2016). He is the author of many other novels, novellas and short stories.

Leah Brown is a biomechanical engineering student and a fiction writer living in Golden, Colorado.

An avid musician, Leander Watts has played and sung for decades in a wide variety of bands. His interests range from garage rock to skronky jazz, from baroque organ to Appalachian gospel. The first rock concert he attended was David Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. He teaches writing and literature at the State University of New York at Geneseo (his alma mater). Leander Watts is the author of Stonecutter, Wild Ride to Heaven, Ten Thousand Charms, and Beautiful City of the Dead.

MAGUS MAGNUS’S works investigate the “poetic” at the extremes both of inwardness (thought, philosophy) and exteriority (performance, deed). Books include The Re-echoes (Furniture Press Books), Idylls for a Bare Stage (twentythreebooks), Heraclitean Pride (Furniture Press Books), and Verb Sap (Narrow House, now an imprint of Publishing Genius Press). Three poems and an idyll appear in the latest two editions of Pearson Longman’s English anthology textbook, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing.

MALKA OLDER is a writer, humanitarian aid worker, and PhD candidate. Her novel Infomocracy will be published by Tor.com in 2016 and her writing can also be found at Leveler, Bengal Lights, and in the anthology Chasing Misery. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali.

Marcela Sulak is the author of Decency (2015), Immigrant (2010), both with Black Lawrence Press, and a chapbook. She’s translated four collections of poetry from the Czech, French and Hebrew, and she’s co-editing Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of Eight Literary Highbred Genres, forthcoming from Rose Metal Press. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

MARJORIE MADDOX, Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University, has published nine collections of poetry—including Local News from Someplace Else, Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award), and Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize)—as well as over 450 stories, poems, and essays in journals and anthologies. She is co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and has two children’s books: A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry and Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems. Her numerous honors include Cornell’s Chasen Award and Sage Graduate Fellowship for an MFA, the 2000 Paumanok Poetry Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Seattle Review’s Bentley Prize for Poetry, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, and Pushcart Prize nominations in both poetry and fiction. She is the great-grandniece of baseball legend Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. For more information, see www.marjoriemaddox.com

When he isn't writing, Matt Leivers runs a small record label. When he isn't doing that, he plays in psych-folk oddbods United Bible Studies. When he isn't doing that, he's an archaeologist. He lives in England with his girlfriend and cats.

Matt Mikalatos is the author of four novels, the most recent of which is Capeville: Death of the Black Vulture, a YA superhero novel. You can connect with him online at Capeville.net or Facebook.com/mikalatosbooks.

Mel Paisley is an illustrator, activist, and peddler of strange stories working out of Savannah, GA. Their work centers around using fairytales to open up a dialogue on mental illness that surmounts stereotype while expanding imagination. When not writing or painting, they work as the head publicist for Douleur Magazine, scour Wikipedia, and get overly excited about pilfered color swatches and cracks in the sidewalk. They have been published previously in The Port City Review and Psyched Magazine, and featured in nine gallery exhibitions. Currently, they are working on a novel length illustrated storybook about a boy who’s mind takes a walk out of his body and gets pulled through the water of a Holocaust survivor’s painting in 1950s New York City. Visit their website at http://melpaisley.tumblr.com

MIA LEONIN is the author of two poetry collections, Braid and Unraveling the Bed (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). In 2016, Chance Born, a book of poems, will be published by Anhinga Press. BkMk Press will publish a book-length poem, The Fable of the Paddle Sack Child.

Michael Milne is a writer and teacher who lives in Suzhou, China. He teaches little kids all about using periods and capitals and juicy words, so he does that really well. He roams the world looking for the best bowl of noodles.

Michal Wojcik was born in Poland, raised in the Yukon Territory, and educated in Edmonton and Montreal. He has a Master’s degree in history from McGill University, where he studied witchcraft trials and medieval necromancers. His short fiction has appeared in On Spec, The Book Smugglers and Daily Science Fiction.Blog: onelastsketch.wordpress.com

Michelle Ann King writes science fiction, fantasy and horror from her kitchen table in Essex, England. Her work has appeared in various venues and anthologies, including Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Unidentified Funny Objects 2. She loves Las Vegas, zombie films and good Scotch whisky, not necessarily in that order. Her short stories are being collected in the Transient Tales series, and she is currently at work on a paranormal crime novel. Website: www.transientcactus.co.uk

Morgen Knight is an award-winning horror/thriller author living in Kansas City. She is currently working with her agent on the release of her debut novel. You can read many of her previously published stories at morgenknight.wordpress.com.

Nathan Crowder is a Seattle-based fan of little known musicians, unpopular candy, and just happens to write fantasy, horror, and superheroes. His other works include the fantasy novel Ink Calls to Ink, short fiction in anthologies such as Selfies from the End of the World, and Cthulhurotica, and his numerous Cobalt City superhero stories and novels. He is still processing the death of David Bowie.

NOLAN LIEBERT hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he lives with his wife and children in a house, not a covered wagon. His literary experiments appear or are forthcoming in an Alphabet of Embers, freeze frame fiction, Synaesthesia, and other publications. Nolan is the founding editor of Pidgeonholes, a webzine showcasing poetry, short fiction, and oddities from the international community. He can be found on Twitter @nliebert or on his website at nolanliebert.wordpress.com

NORBERT GORA is a 25-year-old poet and writer from Poland. Many of his horror and science fiction short stories have been previously published. He is also the author of the poem “The feathery immensity of blue”, which was a part of the English-language anthology of poems and short stories, Contemporary Writers of Poland. In the future his poems will be published in two American poetry anthologies and in an Irish poetry anthology.

For security reasons, Patrick Flanagan writes from one of several undisclosed locations; either—1) A Top Secret-classified government laboratory which studies genetic aberrations and unexplained phenomena; 2) A sophisticated compound hidden in plain sight behind an electromagnetic cloaking shield; 3) A decaying Victorian mansion, long plagued by reports of terrifying paranormal activity; or 4) The subterranean ruins of a once-proud empire which ruled the Earth before recorded history, and whose inbred descendants linger on in clans of cannibalistic rabble—all of which are conveniently accessible from exits 106 or 108 of the Garden State Parkway. Our intelligence reports that his paranoid ravings have been previously documented by Grand Mal Press, Evil Jester Press, and Sam’s Dot Publishing. In our assessment he should be taken seriously, but not literally. (Note: Do NOT make any sudden movements within a 50’ radius.)

Rebecca Gomez Farrell refuses to say "Bloody Mary" three times into a mirror, though she'll write stories about the people who do. She lives in California’s East Bay with her tech wizard husband and two feline co-workers. Her epic fantasy duology, which includes Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, is published by Meerkat Press. Becca’s shorter works have appeared over thirty times in magazines, websites, and anthologies including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, It Calls From the Sky, PULP Literature, and A Quiet Afternoon 1 & 2.Becca is the communications director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). She helms a local chapter of the national Women Who Submit Lit organization, which encourages all writers who identify as women and/or nonbinary to submit their work out for publication. She also co-organizes the East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup Group and administers several discussion groups for women, nonbinary, and Bay Area writers.Over the past decade and a half, her food, drink, and travel blog, theGourmez.com, has influenced every tasty bite of her fictional worldbuilding. Her replicator order is "Absinthe verte, one cube." Author Website: RebeccaGomezFarrell.com. Social Media: @theGourmez.

Rie Sheridan Rose is the author of five chapbooks of poetry. Her poems have been published in Penumbra, The Voices Project, and Wolf Willow magazine, as well as the Boundless, Metastasis, Twenty: In Memoriam, and Di-Verse-City anthologies. She has had poetry in Terror Train, Bones II, No Sight for the Saved, and Abandoned Towers as well. She is also a lyricist, having provided the words for many of the songs on Don't Go Drinking with Hobbits by Marc Gunn. Website: RieWriter.com

Rikki's work has appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm and The Main Street Rag. Two of her published collections have explored place: Front Nine (the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio) and Kahiki Redux (the late Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, Ohio). Clothesline Logic, was published by Pudding House as finalist in their national chapbook competition, and her latest book, Fishing for Rabbits, was published by Kattywompus Press. Website: www.rikkisanter.com

ROBERT KENNY is a speech-language pathologist and writer of poetry and speculative fiction. He has contributed to the Omaha-World Herald and Papillion Times newspapers in his home state of Nebraska, as well as CNN iReport. An avid explorer and photographer, he enjoys spending his time hiking and wandering the great outdoors.

ROY FREIRICH leads multiple lives as a writer—of lyrics, movies, and novels. His lyrics have been sung by legends Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Patti Labelle, among many others. He’s written screenplays for Fox Searchlight, Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, and Sony, and adapted his novel, WINGED CREATURES, for the film, FRAGMENTS, featuring Forest Whitaker, Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Josh Hutcherson, and Kate Beckinsale. He lives with his wife, ever-patient editor and frequent cowriter, Debrah, in Malibu, California. Together, they’ve written the libretto for a musical adaptation of Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, for Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre. Visit him online at RoyFreirich.com

SARAH KEY has had poems published in Poet Lore, Naugatuck River Review, InPatient Press, Solares Hill, Poetry Nook, Truck, Enizagam, Kaleidoscope, Prelude, and Melancholy Hypberbole. She has studied poetry in Barcelona and New York with Sharon Dolin and at Cave Canem with Eduardo Corral among other generous teachers. She has been honored with a prize by the Tennessee Williams Exhibit in Key West. In her other writing life, she has authored eight cookbooks, including a series called The Hollywood Hotplates, Serendipity Sundaes, and Serendipity Parties. Currently, she has eight essays on the Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-key/. At a Bronx community college, her hard-working writing students teach her about resilience. Not too many real chefs were hurt in the making of her phrenology reader.

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the 2015 Nebula Award winning novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road.” Her novelette “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” was the 2014 Sturgeon Award winner and a 2013 Nebula finalist. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Galician. She is also a singer/songwriter with three albums on various independent labels and a fourth forthcoming. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and dog. She can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and twitter.com/sarahpinsker.

SCOTT BEAL’S first book of poems, Wait ’Til You Have Real Problems, was published by Dzanc Books in 2014. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Muzzle, Southern Indiana Review, Sonora Review, and the 2014 Pushcart Prize anthology. Beal teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and serves as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School.

Seanan McGuire lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest, in a large, creaky house with a questionable past. She shares her home with two enormous blue cats, a querulous calico, the world’s most hostile iguana, and an assortment of other oddities, including more horror movies than any one person has any business owning. It is her life goal to write for the X-Men, and she gets a little closer every day. Seanan is the author of the October Daye and InCryptid urban fantasy series, both from DAW Books, and the Newsflesh and Parasitology trilogies, both from Orbit (published under the name “Mira Grant”). She writes a distressing amount of short fiction, and has released three collections set in her superhero universe, starring Velma “Velveteen” Martinez and her allies. Seanan usually needs a nap. Keep up with her at www.seananmcguire.com, or on Twitter at @seananmcguire.

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual writer born in Paris in 1963. His novels, all set in a dystopian universe revolving around competing cities-states, have been published in the UK and in the USA. He currently lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches at the university.

Shannon Phillips lives in Oakland, where she keeps four chickens, three sons, a dog, and a husband. Her first novel, The Millennial Sword, is about the adventures of the modern-day Lady of the Lake in San Francisco.Website: joshannonphillips.com

Stephanie Lai is a Chinese-Australian writer and occasional translator. She has published long meandering thinkpieces in Peril Magazine, the Toast, the Lifted Brow and Overland. Of recent, her short fiction has appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction, Cranky Ladies of History, and the In Your Face Anthology. Despite loathing time travel, her defence of Dr Who companion Perpugilliam Brown can be found in Companion Piece (2015). She is an amateur infrastructure nerd and a professional climate change adaptation educator (she’s helping you survive our oncoming climate change dystopia). You can find her on twitter @yiduiqie, at stephanielai.net, or talking about pop culture and drop bears at no-award.net.

Steve Simpson lives in Sydney, Australia mostly. He has a paid job but the voices at night tell him to write speculative fiction. He thinks it might be the neighbors. Simpson’s hobbies include experiments with negative light and time travel, and research on epileptic seizure detection. Info on his short fiction, poetry, and other random stuff can be found at inconstantlight.com

STEVEN WINGATE is a multi-genre author whose work ranges from print to interactive media. His short story collection Wifeshopping won the Bakeless Prize for Fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2008. His prose poem collection Thirty-One Octets: Incantations and Meditations was published by WordTech/CW Books in 2014, and his digital lyric memoir daddylabyrinth premiered in 2014 at the ArtScience Museum of Singapore. He currently teaches at South Dakota State University.

Stuart Suffel’s body of “work,” includes stories published by Jurassic London, Evil Girlfriend Media, Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, Kraxon Magazine, and Aurora Wolf among others. He exists in Ireland, lives in the Twilight Zone, and will work for Chocolate Sambuca Ice cream. Twitter: @stuartsuffel

SUSAN BUCCI MOCKLER is the author of Noisy Souls (Finishing Line Press), and her poetry has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poet Lore, the Paterson Literary Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, the Cortland Review, and Voices in Italian Americana. She teaches composition at the university level and is a poet in the schools in Arlington, VA.

TANIS MACDONALD is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Rue the Day (Turnstone Press, 2008). She is widely known as a literary reviewer and essayist and lives in Waterloo, Ontario, in Canada.

TANYA BRYAN is a Canadian writer with poetry and short stories published in Latchkey Tales, Feathertale Review, and several anthologies. She loves to travel, writing and drawing her experiences, which are often surreal and wonderful. She can be found @tanyabryan on Twitter and her website is www.tanyabryan.ca

Terry Durbin is a writer of suspense, horror, and other, less classifiable fiction. He’s a husband, father, grandfather, and proud caretaker to two remarkable dogs. His books Chase, The Legacy of Aaron Geist, and his short story collection, Reflections in a Black Mirror are available from Amazon.Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/terrydurbin

Tom Epperson is a native of Malvern, Arkansas. He received a B.A. in English from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and an M.A. in English from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, then headed west with his boyhood friend Billy Bob Thornton to pursue a career in show business. Epperson’s co-written the scripts for One False Move, A Family Thing, The Gift, A Gun, a Car, a Blonde, and Jayne Mansfield’s Car. His book The Kind One was nominated in 2009 for both the Edgar Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel. His second novel, Sailor, was published in 2012. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Stefani, three pampered cats, and a frisky dog.Website: www.tomepperson.com Blog: www.tomepperson.com/blog

TRICIA ASKLAR received her MFA from UMass, Amherst and will teach writing at Stonehill College in the spring. Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, the Bakery, Cold Mountain Review, juked, Neon, Poet Lore, Portland Review, Redactions, Red Wheelbarrow, Sinister Wisdom, Tupelo Quarterly and Verse Daily, among other publications. Her sestina “A Series of Photos of Legs” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Asklar lives with her wife and three children near Boston.

Victoria Zelvin is a graduate of the inaugural class of Roanoke College’s Creative Writing program. She currently lives in Ballston, VA with her one eyed cat Leela. She strives to write things that don’t make sense, but that are internally consistent in the lack of sense she’s making. Website: victoriazelvin.com

W. LUTHER JETT is a native of Montgomery County, MD, where he works for the public school system. He began writing shortly after learning how to hold a crayon and started transcribing his ideas onto paper shortly thereafter. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, including the GW Review, Poetica, Syncopated City, Synæsthesia, ABRAXAS, Scribble, Beltway, Innisfree, Xanadu, Haiku Journal, Steam Ticket, Potomac Review, and Main Street Rag. He is the author of a chapbook, Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father, to be released in August 2015 by Finishing Line Press.

WILLIAM MINOR is an agile fellow who resides in Colorado. His work has appeared in Birdy and Nature. His hobbies include walking and making risotto.

WILLIAM WINFIELD WRIGHT is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of English at Colorado Mesa University. He has published in Fourteen Hills, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Field, the Ninth Letter, Permafrost, the Seattle Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured on Poetry Daily.

Ziggy Schutz is a young queer writer living on the west coast of Canada. She’s been a fan of superheroes almost as long as she’s been writing, so she’s very excited this is the form her first published work took. When not writing, she can often be found stage managing local musicals and mouthing the words to all the songs. Ziggy can be found at @ziggytschutz, where she’s probably ranting about representation in fiction.