Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling author and one of two singer/ songwriters for rock band The High Strung. His debut novel, Bird Box, is the inspiration for the hit Netflix film of the same name. His other novels include Unbury Carol and Inspection. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancee, the artist/musician Allison Laakko.

Paul Tremblay is a multiple Bram Stoker Award finalist and author of the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland.

He has served as the president of the board of directors of the Shirley Jackson Awards, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and numerous year's best anthologies.

He has a master's degree in mathematics and lives outside Boston with his wife and two children.

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.