Tobias S. Buckell

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. His three Caribbean SF novels, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose were published by Tor Books, as well as the NY Times bestselling novel Halo: The Cole Protocol. He is currently working on his next book. He can be found online at www.TobiasBuckell.com

Jeff Carlson

Jeff Carlson was born on the day of the first manned moon landing and narrowly escaped being named Apollo, Armstrong, or Rocket. His father worked for nasa-Ames at the time, and his granddad on his mother’s side was a science fiction fan whose library included autographed copies of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Guess what they talked about. His 2007 debut, Plague Year, is a present-day thriller about a worldwide nanotech contagion that devours all warm-blooded life below 10,000 feet in elevation. Plague War and Plague Zone are its two sequels. In 2008, Plague War was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, a juried prize which goes annually to the best science fiction paperback original. Check him out at jverse.com

Paul Di Filippo

Paul Di Filippo is the author of over twenty-five books, and lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his mate of thirty-five years Deborah Newton. Visit him at pauldifilippo.com

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel, For The Win, is a young adult book about video-games, labor politics and economics. His New York Times Bestseller Little Brother was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is Overclocked: Stories Of The Future Present. His latest adult novel is Makers. His next book, With A Little Help, will be an audacious experiment in print-on-demand publishing. Visit him at craphound.com

Stephen R Donaldson

Stephen R. Donalds on was born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio, he lived in India (where his father was a medical missionary) until 1963. He graduated from the College of Wooster (Ohio) in 1968, served two years as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, doing hospital work in Akron, then attended Kent State University, where he received his m.a. in English in 1971. After dropping out of his ph.d. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first Covenant trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. The novels for which he is best known have received a number of awards. However, the achievements of which he is most proud are the ones that seemed the most unlikely. In 1993 he received a Doctor of Literature degree from the College of Wooster, and in 1994 he gained a black belt in Shotokan karate from Sensei Mike Heister and Anshin Personal Defense. After completing the five-book, sevenyear Gap sequence of science fiction novels, Donaldson spent quite some time “on vacation.” However, he has now returned to work. His most recent book prior to The Man Who Fought Alone was a second collection of short fiction, Reave the Just and Other Tales. He is currently hard at work on The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Visit him at stephenrdonaldson.com

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman has long been one of the top writers in modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. His notable works include The Sandman comic book series, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. His writing has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal and 2010 Carnegie Medal in Literature. Gaiman’s official website, neilgaiman.com, now has more than one million unique visitors each month, and his online journal is syndicated to thousands of blog readers every day. Born and raised in England, Neil now lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Gwyneth Jones

Gwyneth Jones, writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy, is the author of many novels for teenagers, mostly horror and thrillers, using the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded Sci-Fi novels for adults. Her critical essays and reviews are collected in Deconstructing The Starships, 1999 and Imagination/Space, 2009. Among other honours, several of her novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the latest being Spirit, 2009. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son, some goldfish and two cats; practices yoga & has done some extreme tourism in her time. Hobbies include gardening and cooking, and playing with her websites: boldaslove.co.uk and homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann

John Kessel

John Kessel teaches creative writing and literature at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A winner of the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Locus Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, his books include Good News from Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and The Pure Product. His story collection, Meeting in Infinity, was named a notable book of 1992 by the New York Times Book Review, and Kim Stanley Robinson has called Corrupting Dr. Nice “the best time travel novel ever written.” With James Patrick Kelly he edited the anthologies Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology; Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology; and most recently, The Secret History of Science Fiction. His recent collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories contains the 2008 Nebula-Award-winning story Pride and Prometheus.

Find out more at www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/index2.htm

Ted Kosmatka

Ted Kosmatka’s fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF and numerous Best of Year anthologies. He’s been nominated for both the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards and is co-winner of the 2010 Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award. He lives with his family on the north coast of the U.S., not far from the water.

Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-six books: three fantasy novels, twelve SF novels, three thrillers, four collections of short stories, one YA novel, and three books on writing fiction. She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with Beggers In Spain. The novel was based on a Nebula- and Hugo-winning novella of the same name. She won her second Hugo in 2009 in Montreal, for the novella The Erdmann Nexus. Kress has also won three additional Nebulas, a Sturgeon, and the 2003 John W. Campbell Award (for Probability Space). Her most recent books are a collection of short stories, Nano Comes To Clifford Falls and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2008); a bio-thriller, Dogs (Tachyon Press, 2008); and an SF novel, Steal Across The Sky (Tor, 2009). Kress’s fiction, much of which concerns genetic engineering, has been translated into twenty languages. She often teaches writing at various venues around the country. She blogs at nancykress.blogspot.com

Pat Cadigan

Pat Cadigan’s work is described as part of the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and some of her stories share a common theme, exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology. However, her short fiction covers a wider range, including crime, dark fantasy, horror, and science fiction (including recently inter-stellar stories). She was born in Schenectady, New York, and grew up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She was first published in 1980; success as an author encouraged her to write full time from 1987. She emigrated to England in 1996. Her first novel, Mindplayers, introduces what becomes the common theme to all her novels. Her stories blur the line between reality and perception by making the human mind a real, explorable place. Her second novel, Synners, expands upon the same theme. She has won a number of awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools, and was a guest speaker at Microcon in 2008. Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Cadigan. Visit her at fastfwd.livejournal.com

China Miéville

China Miéville is a writer who lives & works in London

Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts was born in London, England, two thirds of the way through the twentieth century. He lives there now, or thereabouts, with his wife and two children. When not writing he teaches nineteenth-century literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent novels are Gradisil (2007), Swiftly (2008) Yellow Blue Tibia (2009) and New Model Army (2010). His next novel will be called By Light Alone (2011). His author website is adamroberts.com and he blogs at Punkadiddle and Europrogovision.

Mary Rosenblum

As a child, Mary Rosenblum never really wanted to have a nine-to-five job to pay for doing what she wanted to do on the weekends. Mostly, she wanted to be a writer or an astronaut. Grownups kindly explained that these ambitions weren’t practical. But she was always bad at doing what she was told. She started out at Clarion West in 1988 and published one of her Clarion stories, For A Price, in Asimov’s Magazine. Since that first publication, she has published well more than 60 short stories in SF, mystery, and mainstream fiction, (she stopped counting at 60) as well as eight novels. Her newest novel, Horizons, was released in November 2006 from Tor Books and came out in paperback in November 2007. Water Rites a compendium of the novel Drylands as well as three prequel novelettes that first appeared in Asimov’s were released from Fairwood Press in January 2007. The hardcover collection of her early short fiction; Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities is available from Arkham House. Her speculative fiction stories have been published in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, SciFiction, and Analog among others. She won the Compton Crook award for Best First Novel, The Asimov’s Readers Award, and has been a Hugo Award finalist as well as a Nebula finalist, an Endeavor Award finalist , an Ellery Queen Reader’s Award finalist, and short listed for a number of other awards. She publishes in mystery as Mary Freeman, teaches writing for Long Ridge Writers Group, and at writers workshops, and was an instructor for the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2008.

When she is not writing, she lives sustainably on a small acreage where she trains dogs, raises sheep, teaches cheesemaking, and grows all her fruits and vegetables. On the flip side of all this, she is also an instrument rated pilot flying a small Cessna. Not quite an astronaut but a small step, at least.

And she still doesn’t have a nine-to-five job.

You can find more information at her website: www.maryrosenblum.com

Jason Sanford

Jason Sanford is an active member of the SFWA and was a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award for Best Novella. He has published a number of stories in Interzone, where he won their 2008 and 2009 Readers’ Polls. His other fiction has been published in places like Analog, Year’s Best SF 14, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboz, and Diagram. He’s also published a number of critical essays and book reviews in places like The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Pedestal Magazine, and SF Signal. His website is www.jasonsanford.com

Lawrence Santoro

Award-winning writer and narrator, Lawrence Santoro began writing dark tales at age five. In 2001 his novella God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. In 2002, his adaptation and audio production of Gene Wolfe’s The Tree Is My Hat, was also Stoker nominated. In 2003, his Stoker-recommended Catching received Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s 17th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. In 2004, So Many Tiny Mouths was cited in the anthology’s 18th edition. In the 20th, his novella, At Angels Sixteen, from the anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley, was similarly honored.

Larry’s first novel, Just North of Nowhere, was published in 2007. A collection of his short fiction, Drink for the Thirst to Come, will be released late in 2010. In 20111, his short novel, Lord Dickens’s Declaration, released in England in 2010, will be published in the U.S. Larry lives in Chicago and is working on a new novel, Griffon and the Sky Warriors.

Stop by Larry’s blog, At Home in Bluffton at: http://blufftoninthedriftless.blogspot.com/ and his audio website, Santoro Reads, at: http://www.santororeads.com/Home.html You can friend him at: http://www.facebook.com/lawrence.santoro

Lucius Shepard

Lucius Shepard lives and works in Portland, Oregeon. His fiction has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, the Sturgeon, the Shirley Jackson, and many more. He currently is working on a novel entitled The End of the Life As We Know It. Visit him at lucius-shepard.com

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is considered one of the world’s best fantasists. He is a two-time winner (six-time finalist) of the World Fantasy Award, as well as a past finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

His fiction includes several surreal/magic realist novels and story collections, in particular City of Saints & Madmen, Veniss Underground, and Shriek: An Afterword, published by Pan Macmillan, Tor Books, and Bantam Books, among others, and has been published in twenty countries. His books have made the best-of-year lists of Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, the LA Weekly, and several others. His award-winning short fiction has been featured on Wired.com’s GeekDad and Tor.com, as well as in many anthologies and magazines, including Conjunctions, Black Clock, and American Fantastic Tales (Library of America).

VanderMeer’s nonfiction has or will soon appear in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and many others. In addition, he has edited or co-edited more than a dozen influential fiction anthologies for Bantam Books, Pan Macmillan, and Tachyon Publications. On the pop culture front, VanderMeer’s work has been turned into short films for Playstation Europe and videos featuring music by The Church. As creative consultant and teacher, VanderMeer has lectured, conducted master classes, and given workshops all over the world, including at the Brisbane Arts Center in Australia, the University of California at San Diego, and Wofford College, in South Carolina. He is a frequent guest of honor at internationally recognized events, including Utopiales in France, the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, the Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia, Finncon in Helsinki, and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. He is 41 years old and lives in Tallahassee, Florida. For more information, visit jeffvandermeer.com

Sean Williams

Sean Williams, #1 New York Times-bestselling author, has been called “the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age”, the “Emperor of Sci-Fi”, and the “King of Chameleons” for the diversity of his output, which spans fantasy, science fiction, horror, and even the odd poem. He has published thirty-five novels and seventy-five short stories. These include works for adults (Philip K Dick Award-nominated Saturn Returns, Ditmar and Aurealis Award-winning The Crooked Letter), young adults (Locus-recommended The Storm Weaver & The Sand) and children (multiple award-nominee The Changeling, and the Troubletwister series co-written with Garth Nix). He lives with his wife and family in the dry, flat lands of South Australia.