George R.R. Martin is the wildly popular author of the A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, and many other novels, such as Dying of the Light and The Armageddon Rag. His short fiction—which has appeared in numerous anthologies and in most if not all of the genre’s major magazines—has garnered him four Hugos, two Nebulas, the Stoker, and the World Fantasy Award. Martin is also known for editing the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero anthologies, and for his work as a screenwriter on such television projects as the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. A TV series based on A Song of Ice and Fire debuted on HBO in 2011.
Anne McCaffrey is a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, a SFWA Grand Master, and an inductee into the SF Hall of Fame. Her work is beloved by generations of readers. She is best known for authoring the Dragonriders of Pern series, but she has also written dozens of other novels. She was born in Cambridge, Mass. in 1926 and currently makes her home in Ireland, in a home named Dragonhold-Underhill.
Jack McDevitt, who Stephen King describes as “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke,” is the author of sixteen novels, nine of which were finalists for the Nebula Award. His novel Seeker won the Nebula in 2007, and other award-winners include his first novel, The Hercules Text, which won the Philip K. Dick Special Award, and Omega, which received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. McDevitt’s most recent books are Time Travelers Never Die and The Devil’s Eye, both from Ace Books. A Philadelphia native, McDevitt had a varied career before becoming writer, which included being a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, a taxi driver, and a management trainer for the US Customs Service. He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.
Tessa Mellas is currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati. She is an editorial assistant for The Cincinnati Review. Her fiction has been published in StoryQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Fugue, and New Orleans Review. She has been a vegetarian for over two decades, was formerly a competitive synchronized figure skater, grew up on the St. Lawrence River, where each June shadflies rose out of the water in great gray clouds, and is an aficionado of snow.
Nnedi Okorafor is the author of the novels Zahrah the Windseeker, The Shadow Speaker, and Who Fears Death. Her book for children, Long Juju Man, won the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa. She is also the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature and the Carl Brandon Society’s Parallax Award, and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, Andre Norton Award, and the Essence Magazine Literary Award. Forthcoming books include Akata Witch and Iridessa the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and in anthologies such as Eclipse Three, So Long Been Dreaming, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, and in John Joseph Adams’s Seeds of Change and The Way of the Wizard.
Variously known as a student of Linguistics, a web application developer, a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West class, a writer of speculative fiction, and a purveyor of medieval armor and fine baked goods, An Owomoyela mostly resides in places contrary to consensus reality but is compelled to list a university town in the American Midwest as home on most official documents. Fiction bearing the mark of this elusive author can be found in an increasing variety of “here”s and “there”s, and more general information can be found at an.owomoyela.net.
Susan Palwick’s publication credits include the novels Flying In Place, The Necessary Beggar, and Shelter. Much of her short fiction—which has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and elsewhere—was recently collected in the volume The Fate of Mice. Her work has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic awards, and Flying in Place won the Crawford Award for best first fantasy novel. She is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada with her husband and three cats.
Cat Rambo writes in the Pacific Northwest. Her collection, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight, appeared from Paper Golem Press in 2009, following her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories in 2007. Among the places her work has appeared are Asimov’s, Weird Tales, and Clarkesworld.
Robert Reed is the author of more than two hundred works of short science fiction, with the occasional fantasy and odd horror thrown into the mix. He has also published various novels, including Marrow and The Well of Stars, two epic tales about a world-sized starship taking a lap around the galaxy. His novella, “A Billion Eves,” won the Hugo in 2007. Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter, and a computer jammed with forgotten files.
Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry in 1966. He spent his early years in Cornwall, then returned to Wales for his primary and secondary school education. He completed a degree in astronomy at Newcastle, then a PhD in the same subject at St Andrews in Scotland. He left the UK in 1991 and spent the next sixteen years working in the Netherlands, mostly for the European Space Agency, although he also did a stint as a postdoctoral worker in Utrecht. He had been writing and selling science fiction since 1989, and published his first novel, Revelation Space, in 2000. He has recently completed his tenth novel and has continued to publish short fiction. His novel Chasm City won the British Science Fiction Award, and he has been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award three times. In 2004 he left scientific research to write full time. He married in 2005 and returned to Wales in 2008, where he lives in Rhondda Cynon Taff.
Hugo-award winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch publishes fiction in many genres under many names. Her novels have appeared in fifteen countries, and her short stories have appeared in many year’s best collections. Once upon a time, she edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, but she gave all that up for writing. Over the next three years, WMG Publishing will put her entire backlist into print, including all of her short stories (in electronic form). For more information on her work, visit kristinekathrynrusch.com.
Robert Silverberg—four-time Hugo Award-winner, five-time winner of the Nebula Award, SFWA Grand Master, SF Hall of Fame honoree—is the author of nearly five hundred short stories, nearly one hundred-and-fifty novels, and is the editor of in the neighborhood of one hundred anthologies. Among his most famous works are Lord Valentine’s Castle, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. Learn more at www.majipoor.com.
Bruce Sterling is the author of many novels, including Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather, Distraction, Holy Fire, The Zenith Angle, The Caryatids, and, with William Gibson, The Difference Engine. He is the winner of three Locus Awards, two Hugos, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He is also the editor of the seminal cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades. Much of his short fiction, which has appeared in magazines such as F&SF and Omni, was recently collected in Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling.