Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author of the acclaimed Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the epic science fiction blockbuster Children of Time.

He has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British Fantasy Society Award, and been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award.

In civilian life he is a lawyer, gamer and amateur entomologist.

Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to Nigerian parents of Igbo descent. Her novels include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel), Akata Witch (an Amazon.com Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (winner of the CBS Parallax Award).

Her work spans several genres and age ranges, as evidenced by her short story collection Kabu Kabu and science fiction novel Lagoon (finalist for Best Novel in the British Science Fiction Association Awards and the Red Tentacle Awards).

Her latest release, Binti, won both the Hugo Award for Best Novella and the Nebula Award for Best Novella. Nnedi is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, New York. She splits her time between Buffalo and Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo and family.

Victor LaValle is the author of six previous works of fiction. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Key to Southeast Queens.

He lives in New York with his wife and children and teaches at Columbia University.

Ruthanna Emrys lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, DC, with her wife and their large, strange family.

Her stories have appeared in a number of venues, including Strange Horizons, Analog, and Tor.com. She is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, which began with Winter Tide.

She makes homemade vanilla, obsesses about game design, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world.

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.

Daniel Polansky was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

He can be found in Brooklyn, when he isn't somewhere else.

This is his first totally contemporary fantasy novel.

Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer, whose fiction work has been nominated for several awards. You can find their fiction in places like F&SF, Year's Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is published in 2021. They currently live in Montreal, Canada.

Malka Older is a Campbell Award finalist, humanitarian worker, and PhD candidate studying governance and disasters.

She has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali.

Her debut novel was 2016's Infomocracy.

Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity.

He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.