Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani-American writer and doctor. His fiction has been reprinted in several years’ best anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Million Writers Award, and twice for the Nebula. He has won the Bram Stoker and the British Fantasy Awards. He is a co-founder of the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction, which seeks to nurture science fiction writers of Pakistani origin. Usman’s debut collection, Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan, has garnered praise from writers such as Aamer Hussein, Brian Evenson, Joe Hill, Paul Tremblay, and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy Fowler. The book will be out in early 2021.

C.L. Polk is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed debut novel Witchmark, which was also nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Aurora, and Lambda Literary Awards. It was named one of the best books of 2018 according to NPR, Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, the Chicago Review, BookPage, and the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. Her newest novel, The Midnight Bargain, is upcoming in 2020 from Erehwon Books. She lives in Alberta, Canada.

Mark Oshiro is the Hugo-nominated writer of the online Mark Does Stuff universe (Mark Reads and Mark Watches), where they analyze books and TV series. Their debut novel, Anger Is a Gift, was a recipient of the Schneider Family Book Award in 2019. Their lifelong goal is to pet every dog in the world.

Andrea Hairston is the author of Master of Poisons (out September 8, 2020). Her other books include Will Do Magic For Small Change (finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and Tiptree Awards, and a New York Times Editor’s pick), Redwood and Wildfire (Tiptree and Carl Brandon Award winner), and Mindscape (winner of Carl Brandon Award). She has published essays, plays, and short fiction and received grants from the NEA, Rockefeller and Ford Foundation.

Alaya Dawn Johnson has been recognized for her short fiction and YA novels, winning the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” which also appears in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (2015), guest edited by Joe Hill. Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Her follow up YA novel, Love is the Drug, won the Andre Norton Award in 2015.

Stephen Graham Jones is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, a Bram Stoker Award, four This Is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. By day, he is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Katie M. Flynn is a writer, editor, and educator based in San Francisco. Her short fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Indiana Review, The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, Tin House, Witness Magazine, and many other publications. Katie has been awarded the Colorado Review’s Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, a fellowship from the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and the Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing.

K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with a tiny dog. Kellan’s debut alt-/near-future novel, Docile (March 3, 2020; Tor.com Publishing), explores the snowballing debt crisis, consent, and privilege, and can be described as “really gay.” He is the author of “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” a Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette about a gay trans man who’s bitten by a vampire. More of his fiction can be found in venues such as Uncanny, Lightspeed, and Shimmer.

Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator. They are a graduate of the Clarion Writing Workshop and the University of Kansas’s MFA program. Their award-winning debut fiction collection, Homesick, came out from Dzanc Books in 2019, and their novella Finna will be published by Tor.com in the spring of 2020. Nino has also written plays, poetry, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer.