China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice.

The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell and Philip K. Dick. His novel Embassytown was a first and widely praised foray into science fiction.

Nicola Griffith is the multiple-award-winning author of seven novels and a memoir. A native of Yorkshire, England - now a dual U.S./U.K. citizen - she is a onetime self-defense instructor who turned to writing full-time upon being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

She holds a Ph.D. from Anglia Ruskin University and lives with her wife, the writer Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle.

Greg Bear is one of the world's leading hard SF authors. A multiple Hugo and Nebula award winner, he sold his first short story, at the age of fifteen, to Robert Lowndes's Famous Science Fiction.

His novels Blood Music and Eon are both Gollancz Masterworks. A full-time writer, he lives in Washington with his family.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Wired, and many others.

He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. New York Times bestseller Little Brother was published in 2008.