Elizabeth Bear was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, A Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Bear lives in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

Yoon Ha Lee (yoonhalee.com) is the author of several critically acclaimed short stories and the Machineries of Empire trilogy for adults: Ninefox Gambit, Raven Strategem, and Revenant Gun. Yoon draws inspiration from a variety of sources, e.g. Korean history and mythology, fairy tales, higher mathematics, classic moral dilemmas, and genre fiction.

Dr John Chu is Senior National Curator, Midlands (Pictures and Sculpture) at the National Trust. He specialises in 18th-century British and French painting and has published and lectured widely on the art of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. He previously worked at Tate on the Turner Bequest and has taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Reading.

Fonda Lee is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of the epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, consisting of Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy. She is also the author of the acclaimed young adult science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire. Fonda is a winner of the Locus Award, a four-time winner of the Aurora Award, and a finalist for the Nebula Award and Hugo Award.

The Green Bone Saga has been translated into a dozen languages and named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. A black belt martial artist and former corporate strategist, she resides in the Pacific Northwest.

T. Kingfisher is the adult fiction pseudonym of Ursula Vernon. She is an author and illustrator based in North Carolina who has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Dragon awards.

Her debut adult horror novel, The Twisted Ones, won the 2020 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, and was followed by the critically acclaimed The Hollow Places.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the 2008 recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, a multiple Hugo winner, and a frequent finalist for the Nebula and Locus Awards.

A professional puppeteer and voice actor, she spent five years touring nationally with puppet theatres. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and nine manual typewriters.

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.

Karen Osborne is a speculative fiction writer and visual storyteller living in Baltimore. She is a graduate of Viable Paradise and the Clarion Writers' Workshop, and won awards for her news & opinion writing in New York, Florida, and Maryland. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Fireside, Escape Pod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more.