John Joseph Adams is the editor and publisher of the Hugo Award-winning Lightspeed and publisher of its sibling magazine, Nightmare. He’s also the editor of more than fifty anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, Wastelands, A People’s Future of the United States, and the New York Times bestselling Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele). John is a winner of the Hugo, Stoker, Locus, and British Fantasy awards, and is a ten-time World Fantasy Award finalist. In addition to his short fiction work, he’s the co-creator of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, and for five years he ran a novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s also been working as an editor and game designer on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press, Paizo, and Monte Cook Games. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.

Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy in the American mid-west. She is a Hugo and British Fantasy Award winner, a Locus and World Fantasy Award finalist, editor of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, consulting editor for Tordotcom’s acclaimed line of novellas, co-editor of four anthologies, and author of just enough published stories to need most of your fingers and toes to count them. She presently attempts to balance her full-time dayjob and her creative life with varying degrees of success.

Leighanna DeRouen is freelance writer and proofreader who lives with her husband and their dog GG somewhere in Ohio. When she’s not rewatching the 1990 hit film Rockula, she can be found lurking in the abyss that is Twitter at @fleurdleigh.

Kevin Figueroa Quiñones, born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Pittsburgh area, worked in the steel industry until he found his home working in student affairs. Kevin is fluent in both English and Spanish, and he is passionate about working with the Latinx community. He is an Indiana University of Pennsylvania alumni with a BA in English Writing Studies. His love for writing spawned from an introductory English course at IUP which featured a creative writing assignment. The unassuming class led to a revived love for literature which caused a change in academic majors and career pursuits. The would-be Spanish teacher now works passionately with students pursuing higher education all while still writing independently. He writes fictional pieces as well as personal essays, all while also playing bass and writing lyrics in a Pittsburgh-based metal band.

Mayookh Barua (s/he/they) is a Los Angeles-based writer from India who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Southern California. He holds an MFA in Fiction from North Carolina State University. His work explores sexuality, art, mythology, education and family through a queer South-Asian voice. A 2023 Roots.Wounds.Words Non-Fiction fellow, MOZAIK Philanthropy’s 2023 Future Art Writers Award winner, and a Dorianne Laux Poetry Prize 2023 Finalist, his works appear in The Audacity by Roxane Gay, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Litro Magazine and elsewhere.

Madison Brake is a scribbler, freelance illustrator, and casual skeleton enthusiast. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida. Her fiction has appeared in the anthology All Worlds Wayfarer: Into the Dark, and her illustrations have appeared on the covers of Lightspeed, Plott Hound Magazine, and several books and anthologies. In her free time, she endlessly rewrites her fictional worlds, battles her TBR pile, and plays too much Final Fantasy XIV.

Arley Sorg is an associate literary agent at kt literary. He is a two-time World Fantasy Award finalist and a two-time Locus Award finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards, for his work as a critic as well as his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus, a reviewer for Lightspeed, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer, and book reviewer, and ran a series of interviews on his site: arleysorg.com. He has been a guest instructor or speaker at a range of events—and for a variety of audiences—from Worldcons to WisCons, from elementary students to PhD candidates. He was a guest critiquer for the 2023 Odyssey Writing Workshop and the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West Workshop. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in the SF Bay Area and writes in local coffee shops when he can. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Melissa A Watkins has been a teacher, a singer, an actress, and a very bad translator but now has found her way back to her first artistic love, writing. Her work has previously appeared in khoreo, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Fantasy Magazine. After fifteen years of living in Europe and Asia, she now resides in California, where she reads and reviews books at EqualOpportunityReader.com.

Chris Kluwe grew up in Southern California among a colony of wild chinchillas and didn’t learn how to communicate outside of barking and howling until he was fourteen years old. He has played football in the NFL, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and lies occasionally. He is also the eternal disappointment of his mother, who just can’t understand why he hasn’t cured cancer yet. Do you know why these bio things are in third person? I have no idea. Please tell me if you figure it out.

Anthony R. Cardno calls northwest New Jersey home when he’s not traveling the country for his day-job as an instructor on regulatory compliance. In his spare time, he writes fiction and interviews real people. His short fiction has appeared in Willard & Maple, Sybil, and Full Throttle Space Tales. His short Christmas novel The Firflake is available through most online book retailers. He can usually be found on Twitter as @talekyn and interviewing various creative types on anthonycardno.com.

Devin Marcus is a writer and editor living in Olympia with his partner. He would love it if you sent him cool horror-related stuff on Twitter and BlueSky @DubbleOhDevin.

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 GRAMMY Awards for the audiobooks The Children’s Shakespeare and Society’s Child. 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 Media, the most respected independent audio production team on the West Coast. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Clockpunk Studios is a web design company based in Lawrence, Kansas. They specialize in websites for authors, publishers, and small businesses, and are experts in WordPress design and development. Clockpunk Studios is run by writer Jeremiah Tolbert.

Adam Israel (he/they) grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, IL before moving to southwest Ontario, Canada with his wife and a cadre of cats. A software engineer by day, he wrote the ebook store software that powers Lightspeed/Nightmare/Fantasy magazines because he was tired of forgetting to download new issues of his favourite ‘zines. He is a 2010 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and writes short stories in between wrestling with the elusive first novel. His website is here.