Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) is a legend of the SFF, horror and speculative fiction genres. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media.

Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars. Many of Ellison’s short stories have been adapted into a variety of formats, including television episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.

Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. Only Forward, his groundbreaking first novel, won the Philip K. Dick and August Derleth Awards. Its critically acclaimed successors Spares and One Of Us were optioned by major Hollywood studios.

He has since written the internationally bestselling novels The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels, and his menacing thriller, The Intruders, was adapted as a major BBC television series. He lives in California with his wife, son and two cats.

Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he established the highly successful MA in Creative and Critical Writing in 2002. He has also had a central role in the shaping of creative writing teaching at Sussex at undergraduate level over the past fifteen years.

Nicholas has published two novels with Myriad; Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017). Nicholas has written numerous other critical books, including the academic best-selling textbook An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Fifth edition, 2016) (with Andrew Bennett).

Kim Newman is a well known and respected author and movie critic. He writes regularly for Empire Magazine and contributes to The Guardian, The Times, Time Out and others. He makes frequent appearances on radio and TV. He has won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy and British Science Fiction Awards and been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and James Herbert Awards.

Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was a winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, as well as the Nebula Award (2), the World Fantasy Award (3-most recently for Soldier of Sidon), the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Prix Apollo. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In 2013, he received the SFWA Grand Master Award.