Nina Allan is a novelist and short story writer. Her previous fiction has won several prizes, including the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, the Novella Award and the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire for Best Translated Work. She lives and works in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. The Dollmaker is her third novel.

Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia and now lives in Birmingham.

She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer for her short fiction and won the Crawford Award.

Her debut novel, Sorcerer to the Crown, won the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer.

Rowan Coleman is a Sunday Times bestselling author, who contributed to THE ANNIVERSARY, a Quick Reads 2016 short story collection.

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year.

His story collections are, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace.

His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, from MAD Magazine to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories.

Hugo Award-winning and bestselling author Sarah Gailey is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their nonfiction has been published by Mashable and The Boston Globe, and they won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Their most recent fiction credits include Vice and The Atlantic. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, was a 2018 finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Their bestselling adult novel debut, Magic For Liars, was published in 2019.

Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy Award–winning author of many publications, including the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format; and the poetry collection Songs for Ophelia (2014); and the novels, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017) and European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018).

She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and her work has been translated into eleven languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program. 

Alix E. Harrow is an ex-historian with lots of opinions and excessive library fines, currently living in Kentucky with her husband and their semi-feral children. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. 

Margo Lanagan is an acclaimed writer of novels and short stories. Black Juice was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and won two World Fantasy Awards and the Victorian Premier's Award for Young Adult Fiction.

Red Spikes won the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Horn Book Fanfare title, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Her novel Tender Morsels won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was an Honor Book in the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Her novel Sea Hearts was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and won a WA Premiers Book Award, the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers, The Norma K Hemming Award and the Barbara Jefferis Award, an Indie Award and an Aurealis Award among many other honours.

Zeroes, and its sequel Swarm, co-authored with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti, were New York Times bestsellers.

Seanan McGuire is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works.

She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard.

She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organiser. His debut novel The Art of Starving, was called 'Funny, haunting, beautiful, relentless and powerful...a classic in the making' by Book Riot, and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and Publisher's Weekly.

His stories have been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards and have appeared in over a dozen 'year's best' anthologies. He's a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Workshop, and a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in New York City.

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan's Tales series, Deathless and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.

Carrie Vaughn is the New York Times Bestselling author of more than twenty novels and over eighty short stories. She's best known for the Kitty Norville urban fantasy series about a werewolf who hosts a talk radio advice show for supernatural beings.

She's also a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared-world novels edited by George R.R. Martin. She has been nominated for various awards, including the Hugo and RT Reviewer Choice Awards.

Jonathan Strahan has co-edited The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy series of anthologies for HarperCollins Australia, co-edits the Science Fiction: The Best of...and Fantasy: The Best of...anthology series with Karen Haber for Simon & Schuster/ibooks, edits the Best Short Novels anthology series for the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, and co-edited The Locus Awards for Eos with Charles N. Brown. He is also the Reviews Editor for Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Fields, and reviews for the magazine regularly. He is currently working on The New Space Opera II.