Max Gladstone is a fencer, a fiddler, and a two-time finalist for the John W. Campbell Award. He is fluent in Mandarin and has taught English in China. He is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Craft Sequence of novels, a game developer, and the showrunner for the fiction serial, Bookburners. A graduate of Yale, Max lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Lindsay Smith (lindsaysmith.net) is the author of Sekret and other novels for young adults. She writes for Serial Box's Marvel's Black Widow, Orphan Black- The Next Chapter, and The Witch Who Came in from the Cold.

Her comics and short stories have appeared on Tor.com and in the anthologies Shout Out! an LGBTQ YA Anthology, A Tyranny of Petticoats, Toil & Trouble, and That Way Madness Lies. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and dog, where she works in cybersecurity.

Cassandra Rose Clarke is the author of Our Lady of the Ice, Magic of Blood and Sea, Magic of Wind and Mist, Star’s End, Halo: Battle Born, and Halo: Meridian Divide. She grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and teaches composition at a local college.

Cassandra’s first adult novel, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award, and her YA novel, The Assassin’s Curse, was nominated for YALSA’s 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction.

Michael Swanwick has received the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy and Hugo Awards, and has the pleasant distinction of having been nominated for and lost more of these same awards than any other writer. He has written ten novels, over a hundred and fifty short stories, and countless works of flash fiction.