Kelley Eskridge is a writer and screenwriter, author of the novel Solitaire and the short story collection Dangerous Space. Solitaire was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Nebula, Gaylactic Spectrum, and Endeavour awards, and is currently in film development with Eskridge as screenwriter. The works gathered in Dangerous Space include an Astraea Prize winner, two Nebula finalists, three James Tiptree, Jr. Honor List stories, a story collected in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1995), and a story adapted for SyFy.
Eskridge edits and coaches writers as co-owner of Sterling Editing. She is a board member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She is currently working on a screenplay about dangerous women and pondering new fiction. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner, novelist Nicola Griffith, where she loves to talk, drink, laugh, dance, and write.
Wendy Froud is a doll- and model-maker, writer, and teacher.
She was born in Detroit, Michigan, and has lived for the past thirty-two years with her husband, Brian Froud, in Devon, England. She worked on the films Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and The Empire Strikes Back, and has illustrated, written, or otherwise contributed to more than a dozen published books.
Neil Gaiman has been writing professionally for almost thirty years. He won the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, and the Hugo Award for The Graveyard Book. He won no awards of any kind for A Walking Tour of the Shambles, his little book with Gene Wolfe, but is ridiculously proud of it anyway. He has three children, two dogs, and about half a million bees.
In addition to teaching British Literature at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia, and helping raise a family, Bruce Glassco’s biggest claim to fame is designing the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, winner of the 2004 Origins Gamers Choice award.
John Kaiine is a writer, artist, photographer — and former London gravedigger. He is the author of the critically acclaimed metaphysical thriller Fossil Circus.
He lives on the Sussex Weald, England, with his wife, Tanith Lee, and their two cats.
Garry Kilworth has now written a book for every year of his life. Some are science fiction, many are fantasy, and several are historical novels. He winters in the Spanish Sierra Nevadas and summers in Suffolk, England. He is currently writing his autobiography, On My Way to Samarkand, which he finds infinitely interesting, but suspects others will probably find less so. Warner Brothers recently exercised its contracted option to film his young adult fantasy Attica; Kilworth is anxious to see this adaptation on the silver screen before the end of the world, which a man with a placard told him is nigh.
Ellen Kushner’s first novel, Swordspoint, introduced readers to the city to which she has since returned in The Privilege of the Sword (Locus Award winner and Nebula award nominee), The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman), and a handful of related short stories, most recently “The Duke of Riverside” in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City.
Kushner and Holly Black co-edited Welcome to Bordertown, a revival of the original urban fantasy shared-world series created by Terri Windling. Kushner’s second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the Mythopoeic and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing at the Clarion and Odyssey workshops, and is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. Kushner is also the longtime host of the public radio show Sound & Spirit. Neil Gaiman Presents/Audiobook Creation Exchange recently released her own recording of the audiobook of Swordspoint. Kushner lives in New York City with author and editor Delia Sherman, but no cats whatsoever. It is all made clear at www.EllenKushner.com.
Tanith Lee has written nearly one hundred books and over two hundred and ninety short stories, besides radio plays and television scripts. Her work spans fantasy, science fiction, horror, young adult, historical, detective, and contemporary fiction, plus combinations of them all. Her latest publications include the Lionwolf Trilogy (Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, and No Flame but Mine) and the three Piratica young adult novels. All of the Flat Earth series is being reprinted, with two new volumes to follow, and a series of contemporary’ strange novels will be published as well.
She has also recently contributed short stories and novellas to publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, The Ghost Quartet, and Wizards.
In 2009, Lee was named Grand Master by the World Horror Convention.
She lives on the Sussex Weald, England, with her husband, writer/artist John Kaiine, and two omnipresent cats. More information can be found at www.TanithLee.com.
Pat Murphy has won many awards for her thoughtful, literary science fiction, including the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Christopher Award. Her favorite color is ultraviolet. Her favorite book is the one she is working on right now. Visit her online at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific and respected writers in the United States today. Oates has written fiction in almost every genre and medium. Her keen interest in gothic and psychological horror has spurred her to write dark suspense novels under the name Rosamond Smith. She has written enough stories in the genre to have published five collections of dark fiction — the most recent being The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense and The Corn Maiden—and to edit American Gothic Tales. Oates’s has won two Bram Stoker awards, for her short novel Zombie and her short story collection The Corn Maiden, and she has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association.
Oates’s most recent novels are The Gravedigger’s Daughter, My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, and Little Bird of Heaven.
She teaches creative writing at Princeton University. With her late husband, Raymond J. Smith, she ran a small press and literary magazine, The Ontario Review, for many years.
Melissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and Analog Science Fiction and Fact, as well as several anthologies. Shaw is a Clarion West Writers Workshop graduate and a Writers of the Future contest winner. She is currently working in the video game industry.
Delia Sherman’s most recent short stories have appeared in the young adult anthologies Steampunk! and Teeth, as well as in Ellen Datlow’s urban fantasy anthology Naked City. Sherman’s adult novels include Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, and The Fall of the Kings (with Ellen Kushner). Novels for younger readers include the New York Between novels Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Her newest novel, The Freedom Maze, time-travel historical about antebellum Louisiana. It was nominated for the Andre Norton Award.