Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve.

Garth's books include the award-winning young adult fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen and Clariel; the dystopian novel Shade's Children; the space opera A Confusion of Princes; and a Regency romance with magic, Newt's Emerald. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of the Seventh Tower sequence; the Keys to the Kingdom series; and the Troubletwisters series and Spirit Animals: Blood Ties (co-written with Sean Williams).

More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world, his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Times and The Australian, and his work has been translated into forty-one languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

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.

Pat Cadigan (1953 -)Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, NY, and grew up in Fitchburg, MA. Attending the University of Massachusetts on a scholarship, she eventually transferred to the University of Kansas where she received her degree.

Since embarking on her career as a fiction writer in 1987, her Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated short stories have appeared in such magazines as Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as well as numerous anthologies.

Her first collection, Patterns, was honoured the Locus Award in 1990, and she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools. Pat Cadigan moved to the UK in 1996 and now lives in London.

Helen Marshall is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of two short story collections and two poetry chapbooks. Her stories and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com.

She obtained a PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and then spent two years completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford investigating literature written during the time of the Black Death.

Helen has worked as a managing editor for ChiZine Publications, and was recently hired as a permanent Lecturer in Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, and now resides in Cambridge.

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and been recipient of several awards including: the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder

Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen works of fiction.

He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and has won an International Horror Guild Award and American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel.

He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year.

His story collections are, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace.

His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, from MAD Magazine to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories.

Robert Shearman is an award-winning writer for television, radio and the stage, as well as several acclaimed short story collections, the first of which won him a World Fantasy Award, and Doctor Who audio scripts for Big Finish Productions.

Carole Johnstone’s award-winning short fiction has been reprinted in many annual 'Best of' anthologies in the UK and US. She lives in Argyll & Bute, Scotland, with her husband. Mirrorland is her debut novel.

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for more than thirty years. She was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Sci Fiction and has edited almost one hundred anthologies.

Datlow has also won lifetime achievement awards from three prominent genre organizations and current acquires short fiction for Tor.com.