Khairani Barokka

Khairani Barokka is an Indonesian writer, artist, and translator in London, whose work has been presented extensively, in fifteen countries. She was Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-In-Residence, and is Researcher-in-Residence at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute. Among Okka’s honours, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow and is a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change. Okka is co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches), author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis; Vietnamese translation published by AJAR Press), and author of debut poetry collection Rope (Nine Arches Press).

Photo Credit: Derrick Kakembo

Christopher Barzak

Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award–winning novel, One for Sorrow, which has been made into the major motion picture, Jamie Marks is Dead. His second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and James Tiptree Jr. Awards. He is also the author of two collections: Birds and Birthdays, and Before and Afterlives, which won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. Christopher grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. His next novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, was recently published by Knopf. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University. Learn more about Chris at christopherbarzak.com

Amelia Beamer

Amelia Beamer’s biggest contribution to literature thus far is horny zombies: Barnes & Noble called her debut novel The Loving Dead one of the top genre novels of the past decade. She is at work on new novels and lives in Chicago after several years abroad doing things like riding horses across lava fields in Iceland and driving on the other side of the car in Australia.

Photo Credit: 8Eyes Photography

Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Astounding Award winning author of around 30 novels and over a hundred short stories.

L.X. Beckett

Toronto author and editor L.X. Beckett frittered their youth working as an actor and theater technician in Southern Alberta, before deciding to make a shift into writing science fiction. Their first novella, “Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling,” appeared in the July/August issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2018, and takes place in the same universe as their novels Gamechanger and Dealbreaker. Lex identifies as feminist, lesbian, genderqueer, married, and Slytherin. An insatiable consumer of mystery and crime fiction, as well as true crime narratives, they can be found on Twitter at @LXBeckett or at the Lexicon, http://lxbeckett.com.

Julia Watts Belser

Julia Watts Belser is a writer, activist, and academic whose fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Tikkun, and Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly. A professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University, she studies gender, sexuality, and disability in classical Jewish texts and writes queer feminist disability theology and ethics. She’s a passionate disability activist, a friend of wild places, and a lover of wheels.

Roxanna Bennett

Roxanna Bennett is a disabled poet living in Whitby, Ontario. She is the author of unseen garden (chapbook, knife | fork | book, 2018) and The Uncertainty Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014). Her poetry has appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies, most recently CV2, Grain, Riddle Fence, PRISM International, Plenitude Magazine, and Tiny Tim Literary Review. Her next book, Unmeaningable, is forthcoming from Gordon Hill Press in fall 2019.

Alex Bledsoe

Alex Bledsoe grew up in west Tennessee, where this story is set, near the actual (but vampire-free) Cades Bottom. He’s the author of the Tufa series and the Eddie LaCrosse novels. He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for its Norwegian trolls.

Leah Bobet

Novelist, editor, and critic Leah Bobet’s novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been selected for the Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets program, and shortlisted for the Cybils and the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and been transformed into choral work, and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US. She was guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice’s 2021 issue and her own poetry has appeared in both genre and literary journals through Canada and the United States.

She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at www.leahbobet.com.

Aliette de Bodard

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award, and four British Science Fiction Association Awards.

Her most recent book is Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., forthcoming June 28th, 20222), a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court. She also wrote Fireheart Tiger (Tor.com), a sapphic romantic fantasy inspired by pre colonial Vietnam, where a diplomat princess must decide the fate of her country, and her own. She lives in Paris. Visit https://www.aliettedebodard.com for more information.

Photo by Chloe Vollmer-Lo