The following people are all essential cogs in the machine that makes Lightspeed possible.

John Joseph Adams, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. Upcoming anthologies include: Armored and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. He has been nominated for two Hugo Awards and three World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble.com. John is also the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

Robert Barton Bland, Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland dabbles in writing, independent film, and, when struck by fancy, will even patronize the arts. He subsidized and helped found his sister’s start-up dance company, Company Stefanie Batten Bland, currently a Baryshnikov Arts/Jerome Robbins New Fellow. Rob also produced the touring and creation of “Chapters an Evening of Repertory,” which toured at Symphony Space in New York City, Saratoga Arts Festival, and in 2010 at Ris Orangis in France. In film, Rob is a two-time CINE Eagle Award winner for the independent shorts, “On Time” and “Writer’s Block,” and is currently executive producing a feature length independent film, ’79 Parts, directed by Ari Taub. Rob is also an alum of Jeanne Cavelos’s Odyssey Workshop (2001), and he is currently pecking away at an urban fantasy novel, Divinity Bind.

Stefan Rudnicki, Audio Editor

Stefan Rudnicki is an independent director, producer, narrator, and publisher of audiobooks. For his work, he has received more than a dozen Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association, a Ray Bradbury Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a GRAMMY Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for The Children’s Shakespeare. Outside of the audiobook industry, he’s probably best known for the dozen books he’s written or edited, from actor’s resource anthologies to a best-selling adaptation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He is president of Skyboat Road Company, Inc., the most respected independent audio production team on the West Coast. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Karen Jones, Art Director

Karen Jones is a freelance User Interface Designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her creative pursuits include photography, vector-based art, and character design for video games. When she isn’t working in Photoshop or Illustrator or looking for artists on Cool Vibe and Deviant Art, she’s being chased by zombies on the Xbox 360, reading about the art and architecture of the ancient world, or traveling. Follow her on Twitter as @karenjUX.

Erin Stocks, Assistant Editor

Erin Stocks is a writer, musician, and graduate of the 2011 Clarion Writer’s Workshop. Her fiction can be found in the upcoming anthology Anywhere but Earth by Coeur de Lion, Flash Fiction Online, the Hadley Rille anthology Destination: Future, and The Colored Lens.

Robyn Lupo, Assistant Editor

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

Andrew Liptak, Editorial Assistant

Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He has written for such places as io9, Tor.com, SF Signal, Blastr, Kirkus and Armchair General. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewLiptak.

Theodore Quester, Editorial Assistant

Theodore Quester spent three years after college in Europe and now speaks seven languages; he spends his days teaching two of them to high school students. He is obsessed with all things coffee–roasting, grinding, pulling espresso–and with food, especially organic and locally grown. He earned his geek street credentials decades ago, publishing an article in 2600 magazine as a young teenager, then writing reviews for SF Eye and interning at Omni magazine. In his spare time, he swims, bikes, runs, and reads a little bit of everything; when inspired, he writes fiction, mostly for children and young adults.

Jennifer Konieczny, Editorial Assistant

While abroad to research fourteenth-century Latin legal texts and woefully unable to carry months-worth of books, Jennifer Konieczny discovered online speculative fiction. Since then she has volunteered as a slush reader, author interviewer, and editorial assistant at Lightspeed.

Gina Guadagnino, Copy Editor

Gina Guadagnino compensates for being extremely short by cultivating her expansive vocabulary. She is overly-impressed by her education and the number of books in her personal library. A fiction writer and a blogger, she earns her living in social media, and still can’t believe that someone actually pays her to muck about on Facebook all day. Gina lives in exile in Florida with her husband, his rapier wit, and their precocious child.

Dana Watson, Copy Editor

Dana Watson is a freelance copy editor, a martial arts instructor, and an obsessive reader. She lives in North Carolina with her wonderfully geeky husband, her bookshelves, two hyper dogs, and an ever-increasing number of fiddly, painstaking hobbies.

Moshe Siegel, Proofreader

Moshe Siegel works as a slusher and proofreader at Lightspeed, interns at the pleasure of a Random House-published author, freelance edits hither and yon, and is a Publisher’s Assistant at Codhill Press. His overladen bookshelf and smug e-reader glare at each other across his upstate New York home office, and he isn’t quite sure what to think about it all. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshe_e_siegel.

Kevin McNeil, Proofreader

Kevin McNeil reads slush and proofreads for Lightspeed. He is a physical therapist, sports fanatic, and volunteer coach for the Special Olympics. He’s beginning to get serious about his own writing and is a recent graduate of Kij Johnson’s Novel Writer’s Workshop. Kevin is a New Englander currently living in California. Find him on Twitter @kevinmcneil.

Our Slush Team

Bethany Aronoff, Britt Baker, Jenny Barber, David Carani, Paolo Chikiamco, Bob Cooper, Michael Curry, Katie Lavers, Andrew Liptak, Nick Matthews, Kevin McNeil, Suzanne Myers, Theodore Quester, Shannon Rampe, John Remy, Lisa Rodgers, Caleb Jordan Schulz, Moshe Siegel, Patrick Stephens, Andy Stewart, LaShawn Wanak, Dana Watson, Sandra Wickham.

Becky Sasala, Advertising Manager

Becky Sasala has written nonfiction for local news media and edits a local interest newsletter. An avid historical re-enactor, Becky spends much of her free time participating in renaissance fairs or planning for the next one. Her sometimes updated blog follows her rambling interests. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, her children, and her beloved rottweiler mix, Kali. Follow her on Twitter @becky_sasala.

Jeremiah Tolbert, Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert‘s fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Ideomancer, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Seeds of Change, Federations, and Polyphony 4. He’s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and Podcastle podcasts and has an article in the new ebook fanzine b0t edited by Grant Stone. He is also a web designer, photographer, and graphic artist—and he shows off each of those skills in his Dr. Roundbottom project, located at www.clockpunk.com. He lives in Colorado, with his wife and cats.