Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly 100 novels, 48 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader's Choice Award, and New York Times Notable Book. By any measure, he is one of the most popular writers currently working in the genre.

Anderson has coauthored eleven books in the Dune saga with Brian Herbert, including the most recent, The Winds of Dune. Herbert and Anderson are co-producers on a major new film of Dune from Paramount. Anderson's popular epic SF series, The Saga of Seven Suns, is his most ambitious work; all seven volumes were just released in paperback and topped international bestseller lists. He is currently at work on a sweeping fantasy trilogy, Terra Incognita, about sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. The first novel, The Edge of the World, was released in June 2009.

As an innovative companion project to Terra Incognita, Anderson cowrote (with wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for an ambitious rock CD based on The Edge of the World. Performed by the new supergroup Roswell Six for ProgRock Records, the CD is a groundbreaking project featuring performances by rock legends from Dream Theater, Asia, Saga, Kansas, Rocket Scientists, Shadow Gallery, and others.

His novel Enemies & Allies chronicles the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s during the Cold War; also for HarperCollins/DC, Anderson wrote The Last Days of Krypton, chronicling the end of Superman's planet.

He has written numerous Star Wars projects, including the Jedi Academy trilogy, Darksaber, the Young Jedi Knights series (with Moesta), and Tales of the Jedi comics from Dark Horse. Fans might also know him from his X-Files novels or Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son. He has published comics with DC, Marvel, IDW, Wildstorm, Topps, and Dark Horse.

Born in Austin, Texas, Katherine Arden spent her junior year of high school in Rennes, France.

Following her acceptance to Middlebury College in Vermont, she deferred enrolment for a year in order to live and study in Moscow. At Middlebury, she specialized in French and Russian literature.

After receiving her BA, she moved to Maui, Hawaii, working every kind of odd job imaginable, from grant writing and making crêpes to serving as a personal tour guide. After a year on the island, she moved to Briançon, France, and spent nine months teaching. She then returned to Maui, stayed for nearly a year, then left again to wander. Currently she lives in Vermont, but really, you never know.

She is the author of The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower. These novels make up the first two parts of The Winternight Trilogy.

Callie Bates is a writer, harpist and certified harp therapist, sometimes artist, and nature nerd. When she's not creating, she's hitting the trails or streets and exploring new places.

She lives in the Upper Midwest. Her debut fantasy novel, The Walking Land, is forthcoming in 2017.

She occasionally writes nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Shambhala Sun, The Best Buddhist Writing 2012, All Things Girl and online journals.

Terry Brooks is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books, including the Dark Legacy of Shannara adventures Wards of Faerie and Bloodfire Quest

The Legends of Shannara novels Bearers of the Black Staff and The Measure of the Magic; the Genesis of Shannara trilogy Armageddon's Children, The Elves of Cintra and The Gypsy Morph; and The Sword of Shannara.

The author was a practising attorney for many years but now writes full time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest.

Delilah S. Dawson is the writer of the Blud series, the Shadow series (as Lila Bowen), Servants of the Storm, Hit, Strike, and a variety of short stories and comics. Dawson teaches writing courses online for LitReactor and lives in Florida with her family.

Lev Grossman is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Magicians trilogy, which has also become a successful TV series.

Previously an award-winning journalist who interviewed the likes of Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling, this is his first foray into the world of children's literature. He lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

John Gwynne studied and lectured at Brighton University. He's been in a rock 'n' roll band, playing the double bass, travelled the USA and lived in Canada for a time.

He is married with four children and lives in Eastbourne, running a small family business rejuvenating vintage furniture. His debut novel, Malice, won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut.

Brian Herbert, son of Frank Herbert, wrote the definitive biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune, which was a Hugo Award finalist. Brian is president of the company managing the legacy of Frank Herbert and is an executive producer of the motion picture Dune, as well as of the TV series Dune: The Sisterhood. He is the author or coauthor of more than forty-five books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers, has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and is always working on several projects at once. He and his wife, Jan, have traveled to all seven continents, and in 2019, they took a trip to Budapest to observe the filming of Dune.

Robert Jordan (1948-2007), was a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He taught himself to read at age four with the incidental aid of his older brother, and was tackling Mark Twain and Jules Verne by five. He was a graduate of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, with a degree in physics.

He served two tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and received multiple decorations for his service. He began writing in 1977 and is best known for the internationally bestselling The Wheel of Time series.

Mark Lawrence was born in Champagne-Urbanan, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. He went back to the US after taking a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College to work on a variety of research projects including the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme.

Returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He says he never had any ambition to be a writer so was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight.

His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a ground-breaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the Gemmell Legend award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.

Megan Lindholm was born in California in 1952 and majored in Communications at Denver University, Colorado. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Award, she wrote a number of successful fantasy novels, including Cloven Hooves, The Windsinger trilogy and Wizard of the Pigeons before taking the name, Robin Hobb. Assassin's Apprentice was Robin Hobb's first novel, and was followed by the equally successful Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest. She lives outside Seattle, Washington.

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.

An avid reader of fantasy literature since age six, Naomi Novik is also a history buff with a particular fascination with the Napoleonic era and a fondness for the work of Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen.

She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City along with many purring computers.

Brandon Sanderson was born in Nebraska in 1975.

Since then he has written, amongst others The Mistborn books and begun the internationally bestselling Stormlight Archive.

He was also chosen by Robert Jordan's family to complete Jordan's Wheel of Time Sequence. He lives in Utah.

Anna Smith Spark lives in London, UK. She has a BA in Classics, an MA in History and a PhD in English Literature. Besides her fantasy novels, she has been published in the Fortean Times, Hansard and the poetry website www.greatworks.org. Previous jobs include fetish model, English teacher and petty bureaucrat. Anna can often be spotted at SFF conventions wearing very unusual shoes.

Anna Stephens has worked in a variety of roles over the years, the latest being in corporate communications for an international law firm. She's currently living the dream as a full-time writer and hopes never to have to get a proper job again.

Anna loves all things speculative and horrifying, from books to film to TV, and is a second Dan black belt in Shotokan Karate, as well as a keen weightlifter and beginner swordfighter.

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.

Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions worldwide, in twenty-five languages.

His considerable output of epic fantasy and science fiction book-series, stories of all kinds, urban fantasy novels, comics, scripts, etc., have strongly influenced a generation of writers: the Otherland epic now plays as an MMO on steam.

Tad is currently immersed in the creation of The Last King of Osten Ard, planned as a trilogy with two intermediary novels. He, his family and his animals live in the Santa Cruz mountains in a suitably strange and beautiful house.

Deborah A. Wolf has some personal knowledge of life as a barbarian warrior, having grown up in a wildlife refuge in Alaska. She later worked as an Arabic linguist for the US Army.

Before Wolf's formative years in Alaska, she spent some of her early years on a deserted island. She has a love of different cultures where she can use those settings to create giant monsters, as well as flora and fauna. Deborah currently lives in northern Michigan.