LAcon V is delighted to announce the following Featured Program Participants confirmed for appearing at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, either in person or virtually. We will have many other program participants to announce in the weeks to come, as we move closer to revealing our complete schedule for the convention, so keep an eye on this page for details.
Biographies as well as links to websites and social media accounts are provided, when available.
Note: Program participants appearing virtually only are denoted with a (V) next to their name.
| LAcon V Featured Program Participants |
|---|
| Ada Palmer (V) |
| Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series explores a future of borderless nations and globally commixing populations. The first volume Too Like the Lightning was a Hugo finalist and Compton Crook winner, while Ada received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Terra Ignota was a finalist for the Hugo for Best Series. Her next project is the Norse mythology fantasy ‘And Loki in His Prison’ (2027; book 1 of ‘Hanged God’s Game’). She teaches history at the University of Chicago, studying the Renaissance, Enlightenment, heresy, atheism, and censorship. Her pop history Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age (2025) uses Machiavelli to look at the origins of the myth of a bad Middle Ages & good Renaissance, and how golden and dark ages recur in our fiction and imaginations. She composes music including Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok, and performs with the group Sassafrass. She studies anime/manga, especially Osamu Tezuka, post-WWII manga and feminist manga, and consults for anime and manga publishers. Links: Website Bluesky Mastodon |
| Ai Jiang |
| Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Clarkesworld, The Masters Review, Prairie Fire, Ex-Puritan, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of A Palace Near the Wind, Linghun and I AM AI. Find her at www.aijiang.ca Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Twitter |
| Akua Lezli Hope (V) |
| Akua Lezli Hope is a Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry (SFPA), multi-award-winning creator, & paraplegic wisdom seeker whose work explores consciousness & communication across distance & difference. In print since 1974, she has published more than 600 poems. Her collections include Embouchure: Poems on Jazz and Other Musics (Writer’s Digest Book Award), Them Gone, & Otherwheres (Elgin Award). Her honors include NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, Rhysling, IGNYTE, & Critter awards. She edited NOMBONO, the landmark BIPOC speculative poetry anthology & founded the Speculative Sundays Reading Series, now in its 7th year. Her newest collection is TELEPATH (2026) from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Her short fiction appears in Dark Matter, Africa Risen & AfroFuturism Short Stories, among others. Links: Website Facebook Instagram |
| Amal El-Mohtar |
| Amal El-Mohtar writes fiction, poetry, and criticism. She won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” and again for her novella This Is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which also won the BSFA and Aurora awards, became a New York Times bestseller, and has been translated into over ten languages. Her reviews and articles have appeared in the NYT and on NPR Books. The River Has Roots, her solo debut, is out now from Tordotcom Publishing. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. Online at: amalelmohtar.com. Links: Website |
| Annalee Newitz |
| Annalee Newitz is a science journalist who writes science fiction. They are the author, most recently, of the novella ‘Automatic Noodle’ and the nonfiction book ‘Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.’ Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Mastodon |
| Anuja Varghese |
| Anuja Varghese is an award-winning writer of literary fiction, fantasy, and erotica/romance where women of color get leading roles! In 2023, her genre-blending short story collection, titled CHRYSALIS, won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and in 2024, was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel, A KISS OF CRIMSON ASH, the first in a new medieval India-inspired romantasy trilogy, is forthcoming in spring 2026. Anuja lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner, two kids, and two cats. Find Anuja at anujavarghese.com or on social (@anuja_v). Links: Website Instagram TikTok |
| Arley Sorg |
| ARLEY SORG is an associate agent at kt literary and Senior Editor at Locus Magazine. He is a two-time World Fantasy finalist and three-time Locus Award finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. He is also a three-time Ignyte finalist, a Solstice recipient, and more. Arley is a book reviewer for Lightspeed, an interviewer for Clarkesworld, and a columnist for F&SF, among other projects. He was the week five instructor at the six-week Clarion West workshop, and has taught at and been a guest speaker for numerous other organizations, including the Odyssey workshop, Cascade workshop, Wayward Wormhole, and many more. Links: Website Facebook Bluesky Twitter |
| Arturo Serrano (V) |
| Arturo Serrano is an Ignyte-winning, Hugo-winning reviewer and editor at the blog Nerds of a Feather, as well as a member of the editorial teams at Strange Horizons and Galactic Journey. He wrote the alternate history novel To Climates Unknown. Links: Website Bluesky Mastodon |
| Brandon O’Brien |
| Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and tabletop roleplaying game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. He is the former Poetry editor of the Hugo Award-winning magazine FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle? is the winner of the 2022 Elgin Award. He recently served as Poet Laureate of the 2025 World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle, Washington–the first Poet Laureate Guest of Honor in the convention’s history. Links: Website Bluesky |
| Bruce Schneier |
| Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by the Economist. He is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 books – including Rewiring Democracy and A Hacker’s Mind — as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His long-running newsletter and blog, “Schneier on Security,” is one of the most popular sources of cybersecurity news on the internet. Schneier is a Fellow and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. He has been actively involved in fandom since 1978. Links: Website Instagram |
| Carrie Vaughn |
| Carrie Vaughn’s work includes the Philip K. Dick Award winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times Bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, over twenty novels and upwards of 150 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. Her latest novels are historical fantasies, The Naturalist Society and The Glass Slide World, about 19th century ornithologists and the magic of binomial nomenclature. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com Links: Website Facebook |
| Catherynne M. Valente |
| Catherynne M. Valente is the NYT & USA Today bestselling author of over fifty books of science fiction, fantasy, & horror, including Space Opera, Deathless, Radiance, The Refrigerator Monologues, and the Fairyland novels, as well as writing for IP such as Mass Effect, Star Wars, and World of Warcraft. They have won the Hugo, Nebula, Otherwise, Sturgeon, Locus, and Lambda Awards, among others. They live in Maine with their child and many, many animals. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon Twitter |
| Charlaine Harris |
| Charlaine Harris is a NYT bestselling author. Her career has spanned forty-five years and has been translated into thirty languages. She has grandchildren, rescue dogs, and a house on a bluff above the Brazos River. Links: Website Facebook Bluesky |
| Charlie Jane Anders |
| Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster, coming August 2025 from Tor Books. Her other novels include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night and the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy. She’s also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can’t Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. She’s won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she’s currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon |
| Chris Kluwe |
| Chris Kluwe is a former NFL player who spent 8 years with the Minnesota Vikings, setting multiple team records, is the author of ‘Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies,’ ‘Otaku,’ and ‘Shades of Forever,’ is the lead designer of the tabletop card game ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ advocates relentlessly for social justice and empathy, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and occasionally lies in his bios to see if anyone is actually paying attention. Links: Bluesky |
| Corry L. Lee |
| Author, Ph.D. physicist, data geek. Corry’s Russian-inspired epic fantasy trilogy, beginning with Weave the Lightning (Solaris), concluded in April 2026: lightning mages navigate romance, torn loyalties, and dangerous magic while fomenting rebellion against the fascist state. Corry won the Writers of the Future Award & multiple teaching awards. During Ph.D. research at Harvard, they studied rare sub-atomic particles. In the tech industry, they connected science & technology to improve the user experience. Corry loves cross-country skiing, tai chi & queer books. Links: Website Facebook Instagram |
| Daryl Gregory |
| Daryl Gregory is a Seattle writer whose novels and short stories have been translated into a dozen languages and have won multiple awards, including the World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Crawford awards, and have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and other awards. His latest novel is When We Were Real (2025). His seven other novels include Revelator, Spoonbenders, and Pandemonium. Other books include the novellas The Album of Dr. Moreau and We Are All Completely Fine, and the collection Unpossible and Other Stories. He also teaches writing and is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| David J. Peterson |
| David J. Peterson is an author and language creator. He’s created languages for HBO’s Game of Thrones, Legendary’s Dune, and Warner Bros. Superman. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| 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 over 30 novels and more than a hundred short stories. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Ellen Datlow |
| Ellen Datlow has been editing sf/f/h short fiction for more than four decades. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and Nightfire. She has edited numerous anthologies for adults, young adults, and children, including The Best Horror of the Year annual series, Night and Day, and the reprint anthology Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror. She’s won multiple awards and was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for ‘outstanding contribution to the genre,’ the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention. She runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in the NYC, with Matthew Kressel. She can be found on the website Datlow.com, and on twitter, Blue Sky, facebook (google her). Links: Website Facebook Bluesky Twitter |
| Fonda Lee |
| Fonda Lee is the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of a dozen fantasy and science fiction books, including the science fiction novel The Last Contract of Isako, and the modern epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, which has been translated into seventeen languages and named one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. She is also the author of the novella Untethered Sky and several young adult novels: Zeroboxer, the Exo duology, and, cowritten with Shannon Lee, the Breathmarked duology. Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award, as well as a six-time winner of the Aurora Award and a finalist for the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. A former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist, she hails from Canada and the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in New England. Learn more at fondalee.com. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Twitter |
| Foz Meadows |
| Foz Meadows is a queer Australian SFF author and essayist currently based in California. His most recent works include A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, All the Hidden Paths and Finding Echoes, and in 2019, he won the Hugo Award for Best Fanwriter. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Fran Wilde |
| Two-time Nebula Award-winner Fran Wilde has (so far) published nine novels, a poetry collection, and over 70 short stories for adults, teens, and kids. Her stories have been finalists for six Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards, and a Lodestar. They include her Nebula- and Compton Crook-winning debut novel Updraft, and her Nebula-winning, Best of NPR 2019, debut Middle Grade novel Riverland. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple years’ best anthologies. The Managing Editor for The Sunday Morning Transport, Fran teaches or has taught for schools including Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, and Tor.com. You can find her on Instagram, Bluesky, and at franwilde.net. Links: Website Instagram |
| Gail Carriger |
| Gail Carriger has multiple NYT bestsellers and millions of books in print in dozens of different languages. She writes book hugs – comedies of manners mixed with steampunk, urban fantasy, or sci-fi (and cozy queer joy as GL Carriger). She is best known for the Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School series. She was once an archaeologist and is fond of shoes, octopuses, and tea. gailcarriger.com Links: Website |
| Harry Turtledove |
| Harry Turtledove is an escaped Byzantine historian. For the past 35 years, he has made a poor but not too honest living writing alternate history, others, fantasy (a lot of it historically based), and, every now and then, historical fiction. He is married to fellow writer and Broadway maven Laura Franks. They have three daughters, two grand granddaughters, and three spoiled cats. Links: Bluesky |
| Heather Fawcett (V) |
| Heather Fawcett is the New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times bestselling Canadian author of books for adults, kids, and teens, including Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Even the Darkest Stars, Ember and the Ice Dragons, The Grace of Wild Things, and more. Her books, which somehow all include dragons in one form or another, have been translated into more than twenty languages and nominated for various awards, including the Locus, Mythopoeic, and Silver Birch. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature and a Bachelor’s in Archaeology. She lives on Vancouver Island. Links: Website Instagram |
| Holly Black |
| Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy books, including the Cruel Prince series, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Charlatan Duology. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and a Lodestar Award, and the recipient of a Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula Award, and a Newbery Honor. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages worldwide and adapted for film and television. She currently lives in New England with her husband and children in a house with a secret library. Links: Website Instagram |
| Isabel J. Kim |
| Isabel J. Kim is a speculative fiction author who lives near New York City in an apartment filled with books and swords. Her short fiction has won the Nebula, Locus, and Shirley Jackson Awards, was a finalist for the Hugo and Sturgeon Awards, and she has previously been a finalist for the Astounding Award. She has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other venues, and has been reprinted in multiple best of the year anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy ‘23, ‘24, and ‘25, translated into Chinese and Japanese, and optioned for film and television. She is a two-time graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and is delighted that she uses the creative writing degree more than the law degree. When she’s not writing, she’s either co-hosting her internet culture podcast, Wow if True, or contemplating returning to her biglaw career. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| James Islington |
| James Islington is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Will of the Many (the first novel in the Hierarchy series), The Licanius Trilogy (beginning with The Shadow of What Was Lost), and Scion. He has sold more than two million books, and his work has been translated into twenty-three different languages. He lives on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia, with his wife and two children. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter |
| Janet Forbes |
| By day, Janet Forbes (she/her) is the CEO and founder of World Anvil, the award-winning worldbuilding platform, novel writing software and RPG campaign manager with over 3 million users. By night, she’s a published author (FlameTree Press, Bona Books, Dream Theory Media) and game writer (Dark Crystal RPG – lead author, Kobold Press, Infinite Black). Janet’s past experience as an archaeologist, opera singer, teacher and educator, motivational speaker, polyglot, dinosaur-lover, entrepreneur and, somehow, professional recorder player, all find their way into the rich worlds woven through her stories. Her work explores everything from dungeon delving and dinosaurs, to feminism and freedom. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Jason Sanford |
| Jason Sanford is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who’s also a passionate advocate for fellow authors, creators, and fans, in particular through reporting in his Genre Grapevine column. He’s also published dozens of stories in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Interzone, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies along with appearances in various “year’s best” anthologies and The New Voices of Science Fiction. His first novel Plague Birds was a finalist for both the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards. Born and raised in the American South, Jason’s previous experience includes work as an archaeologist, journalist and a Peace Corps Volunteer. His website is www.jasonsanford.com. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Mastodon Twitter |
| Jay Kristoff |
| Jay Kristoff is a #1 international, NYT and Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction novels, including the EMPIRE OF THE VAMPIRE and NEVERNIGHT series. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Twitter |
| Jessie Peterson |
| Jessie Peterson has a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and was a professor of linguistics for 13 years. She is now a full-time professional conlanger and works with her husband, David Peterson. Her work appears in a number of TV shows and films, including Warner Brothers’ Superman, Pixar’s Elemental, Legendary’s Dune: Part Two, Netflix’s Shadow and Bone. Jessie and David co-host the weekly live stream LangTime Studio on YouTube, and she is the author of the book How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide (Cambridge University Press). Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Joe Haldeman |
| Joe Haldeman has won five Hugos and five Nebulas and is an SFWA Grandmaster of science fiction. His best-known book is THE FOREVER WAR. His latest novel is WORK DONE FOR HIRE. He’s won the Rhysling Award for his poetry. Joe was a combat soldier in Vietnam, which strongly influences his work. He’s retired from M.I.T, where he taught every fall semester for 30 years. When Joe’s not writing or teaching, he paints, bicycles, plays the guitar, and is an amateur astronomer. He’s been married to Mary Gay Potter Haldeman for 61 years. Links: Website Facebook |
| John Chu |
| John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer by night. His fiction has appeared in venues including Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Reactor. His translations have been published at venues including Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, including the Best Short Story Hugo for ‘The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere’ and the Best Novelette Nebula for ‘If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.’ The Subtle Art of Folding Space, his debut novel, was published by Tor in 2026. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon Twitter |
| John Picacio |
| John Picacio is the Hugo Award-winning co-author and illustrator of the USA Today-bestselling picture book THE INVISIBLE PARADE, created with #1 New York Times-bestselling author Leigh Bardugo. His award-winning cover art has illustrated 30 years worth of major science fiction, fantasy and horror books including works for George R. R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series, as well as the STAR TREK and X-MEN franchises, plus classic novels by Rebecca Roanhorse, Michael Moorcock, James Tiptree, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Sheri S. Tepper, C. Robert Cargill, and many, many more. His artistic accolades include three Hugo Awards, nine Chesley Awards, five Locus Awards, and the World Fantasy Award. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky |
| John Scalzi |
| John Scalzi has an asteroid named after him. He’s ridiculously proud of that. Links: Website Bluesky |
| Julie Lew |
| Julie Lew (she/they) loves all things fantasy and horror, the darker and queerer the better. They are the author of the adult gothic horror novel THE WIVES OF HERRICK HALL and the upcoming YA fantasy mystery DEATH IN VERSE. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, and when she’s not writing books about the magical and the monstrous, she’s likely playing endless games of fetch with her chihuahua-terrier mix pup, Kody. Links: Website Instagram TikTok |
| Kamilah Cole |
| Kamilah Cole is a USA Today & national indie bestselling Jamaican-American author, who has been nominated for a Dragon Award, a Lambda Award, a Lodestar Award, and an Astounding Award. She worked as a writer and entertainment editor at Bustle for four years, and her nonfiction has appeared in Marie Claire and Seventeen. A graduate of New York University, Kamilah lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she’s usually playing Kingdom Hearts for the hundredth time, quoting early SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, or crying her way through Zuko’s redemption arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Twitter |
| Kat Kourbeti (V) |
| Kat Kourbeti is a queer Greek/Serbian speculative fiction writer, culture critic, narrator and podcaster based in London, UK. She is a Hugo and British Fantasy Award-winning Senior Podcast Editor at Strange Horizons magazine, hosts The Write Song Podcast, and writes about SFF arts and theatre for the BSFA. She also organises Spectrum Writers, London’s longest running SFFH critique and community group, while her day job is in theatre. Find her on all social media as @darthjuno. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon |
| Kate Elliott |
| Kate Elliott has been publishing science fiction and fantasy novels and stories for over 30 years with a particular focus in immersive world building and epic stories of adventure and transformative cultural change. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Norton, and Locus Awards. She lives in Hawaii where she writes, paddles outrigger canoes, and spoils her schnauzer. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Kieron Gillen (V) |
| Kieron Gillen is a writer, game designer and recovering critic. As a comic writer, he’s best known for co-creating books like the Wicked + the Divine, DIE, the Power Fantasy, Once & Future, Phonogram and more. When not doing his own works, he has written extensively for Marvel comics, on all the characters you’ve heard of and quite a few you probably haven’t. He’s based in Bath. The city, not the water immersion device, alas. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Kylie Lee Baker |
| Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of dark fantasy and horror novels such as The Keeper of Night, The Scarlet Alchemist, and Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. She grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her writing is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, and Irish), as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and a MS in library and information science degree from Simmons University. Links: Website Instagram |
| Larry Niven |
| I’ve been a published writer since 1964. See Neutron Star, Ringworld, A Mote in God’s Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer, for a sampling. Links: Website |
| Leigh Bardugo |
| Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Parade, The Familiar, and the Ninth House series. The Netflix original series Shadow and Bone brought together multiple titles from her Grishaverse which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University. Links: Website Instagram |
| Lin Codega |
| Linda H. Codega is a writer, author, and award-winning entertainment journalist who has written about science fiction and fantasy media for nearly ten years. In 2024 they co-founded the tabletop roleplaying game news site Rascal News. They are a writer and editor for Fansplaining (https://fansplaining.com). In 2021 they won a Hugo as part of the editorial team of Strange Horizons for ‘Best Semi-Pro Zine.’ They specialize in writing about tabletop roleplaying games, SFF media, fandom, and queer intersections. They most recently worked on Season 3 of Interview With the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat as the Writers’ Room Assistant. Their first book, MOTHEATER, was released in 2025. Their second book, PASHA THE STORM, will publish in June 2026. Lin is transgender and nonbinary and use they/them pronouns exclusively. They currently live in Los Angeles with their dog, Zigzag, after ten years in New York (but not in the city). Links: Website Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Martha Wells |
| Martha Wells has been writing since 1993. Her work includes The Murderbot Diaries, The Books of the Raksura, the Ile-Rien series, and most recently Witch King and its sequel Queen Demon, as well as other novels, short fiction, non-fiction, and media tie-ins. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her work has won Nebula, Hugo, Locus Awards, and an Alex Award and a Dragon Award, and appeared on the World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, and the BSFA Award ballots, as well as the New York Times, USA Today, and the Sunday Times Bestseller Lists. She is a consulting producer on the Apple TV Murderbot series. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Mary Robinette Kowal |
| Mary Robinette Kowal is the USA Today Bestselling author of a dozen novels, including Apprehension and the Lady Astronaut series. A winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, she is also a professional puppeteer and award-winning audiobook narrator. She co-hosts the Writing Excuses podcast, served as SFWA President, and has an asteroid named after her. Also, her cat talks. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Max Gladstone |
| Hugo-, Nebula-, and Locus Award winning author Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Last Exit, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels, and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the internationally bestselling This is How You Lose the Time War. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Micaiah Johnson |
| Micaiah Johnson is the Compton Crook Award-winning author of The Space Between Worlds. Her debut novel was a Sunday Times Bestseller, an Editors’ Choice at The New York Times and was named one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, has been named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2024 and was a finalist for the Ursula Le Guin Prize. In her academic life she studies race, the unhuman, and death — topics she explores in her upcoming horror novel, The Unhaunting. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Mur Lafferty |
| An inaugural inductee of the Podcast Academy’s Hall of Fame, Mur Lafferty began podcasting in 2004 and used the new medium to build a writing career from her work as a science fiction podcaster. Mur has written 10 novels, 8 novellas, and 1 nonfiction book ranging from Star Wars to space murder mysteries to cozy fantasy. After winning the 2013 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Parsec, Philip K. Dick, Manly Wade Wellman, and Podcast Peer Awards. Her podcast Ditch Diggers, with Matt Wallace, won the 2018 Best Fancast Hugo Award. With Valerie Valdes, Mur is the editor of eight-time Hugo finalist semiprozine Escape Pod. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table and on the podcast The Dragon Page. In 2014, she received an MFA in popular fiction from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband. She likes video games, tabletop games, murder mysteries, and dogs. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| N.E Davenport |
| Nia ‘N.E.’ Davenport is an award-winning & bestselling Science Fiction/Fantasy and Romance author. Her recent October 2025 release, OUR VICIOUS OATHS, is a USA Today Bestseller. In addition, she’s the co-founder of StorySpinner Entertainment, a book packager aimed at bringing the world fun, innovative, and inclusive stories. She attended the University of Southern California and studied Biological Sciences and Theatre. She has an M.A. in Secondary Education, she taught secondary English and Science for several years, and designs English/Language Arts curriculum for school districts across the US. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys vacationing with her family and being a huge foodie. She’s an advocate for diverse, reflective perspectives and protagonists in literature. You can find her online at www.nedavenport.com or on Threads/Instagram @nia.davenport, where she talks about binge-worthy TV, fun movies, and killer books. Links: Website Instagram TikTok |
| Naomi Novik |
| Naomi Novik has written the Scholomance trilogy, the novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver, and the Temeraire series. She is a founder of the Archive of Our Own. She is currently working on an upcoming series called Folly, while building Wreccer in her copious free time. Her next publication will be a novella from Del Rey called The Lake Witch. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon TikTok |
| Neil Clarke |
| Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the multi-award-winning editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and over a dozen anthologies, including the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. He is a four-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form, four-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and two-time winner of the Locus Award for Best Editor. In 2019, Clarke received the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky Mastodon TikTok Twitter |
| Olivia Waite (V) |
| Olivia Waite writes queer historical romance, sff, and essays. She is the romance fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Patrick Nielsen Hayden |
| Patrick Nielsen Hayden was a full-time SF & fantasy editor at Tor Books for 37 years. For his original anthology Starlight 1 (Tor, 1996), he won a World Fantasy Award; he also won three Hugo Awards for his editorial work. With his wife, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, he’s among the regular instructors at the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop. He and Teresa were among the guests of honor at the 2016 Worldcon. Links: Website Bluesky |
| Rachel Hartman (V) |
| Rachel Hartman is the author of five YA fantasy novels, most notably SERAPHINA, TESS OF THE ROAD, and AMONG GHOSTS. She lives, writes, curls, and walks her whippet in Vancouver, BC. Links: Website Bluesky |
| Robert J. Sawyer |
| Robert J. Sawyer, a guest of honor at the 2023 Worldcon, won the 2023 Hugo Award for best novel of the year (for *Hominids*) and has twelve other Hugo nominations to his credit. He’s also won the best-Novel Nebula Award (for *The Terminal Experiment*) and a record-setting 17 Canadian Aurora Awards, plus the Robert A. Heinlein Award and NESFA’s Skylark. Rob is a member of the Order of Canada, the highest honor given by his country. The ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name, and his latest novel is *The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine*. Links: Website Facebook Bluesky Twitter |
| Robert Jackson Bennett |
| Robert is the author of the Hugo Award-winning novel The Tainted Cup and its sequel A Drop of Corruption, as well as The Divine Cities trilogy and The Founders Trilogy. His work has received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Citation of Excellence, and he has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus Awards. He also dug a very good french drain in his backyard back in 2019. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Robin Hobb |
| Robin Hobb is best known for The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin’s Quest) and the sequels in The Realm of the Elderlings. Robin Hobb also writes as Megan Lindholm. In 2017, San Diego Comic Con awarded her an Inkpot award for her works. In 2021, she was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement award. The resides in rural Washington State and enjoys gardening on her smallholding with chickens, ducks and geese. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky TikTok Twitter |
| Samantha Mills |
| Samantha Mills is a multiple-award winning SFF author living in Southern California. Her short story ‘Rabbit Test’ won the Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards in 2023. Her science fantasy novel, The Wings Upon Her Back, won the Compton Crook Award for best SFFH debut and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2025. Her first short story collection, Rabbit Test and Other Stories, is available now! You can find more at www.samtasticbooks.com. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Sara Felix |
| Sara Felix is a Hugo award winning mixed media artist working in resin and alcohol inks. She also creates a tiara every week for Tiara Tuesday and has made over 300 tiaras since the beginning of the pandemic. She is the president of ASFA, The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists and has designed two Hugo awards along with many other awards. She lives in Austin with her family and her cat Cheeto. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Sarah Rees Brennan |
| Sarah Rees Brennan was born in Ireland by the sea. In a previous life she was a New York Times bestselling, Lodestar finalist, Carnegie nominated writer of YA fiction. Her first work of adult fantasy, the portal fantasy LONG LIVE EVIL, was on the New York Times 2024 Best of Fantasy as a ‘careening meta-fantasy delight,’ was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller and a USA Today bestseller, and a Locus finalist. She’s written tie-ins for Netflix, Disney and Marvel. The sequel to LONG LIVE EVIL, ALL HAIL CHAOS, is out now. Talk to her about villains or musicals! Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| SB Divya |
| S.B. Divya (she/any) is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She is the award winning author of The Alloy Era duology and the novel Machinehood. Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and she is a former editor of Escape Pod, the weekly science fiction podcast. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Ignyte, and Locus Awards. Divya holds degrees in Computational Neuroscience from Caltech, and Signal Processing from UC San Diego. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Mastodon |
| Scott Lynch |
| Scott Lynch was born in St.Paul, Minnesota in 1978. He sold his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, in 2004. In addition to his writing, he also has a background in game design and firefighting. Scott currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife, award-winning SF/F novelist Elizabeth Bear. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Seanan McGuire |
| Seanan McGuire writes things. Good luck making her stop. Seriously, good luck. Heroes have failed and fallen. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky |
| Shay Kauwe |
| Shay Kauwe is a Native Hawaiian author from Hawaiʻi. Her debut novel The Killing Spell (Saga/Solaris) was the first traditionally published adult fantasy novel by a Hawaiian writer. Her modern gothic, House of Salt (Saga), is forthcoming. Shay holds a M.Ed, was named an NCTE Early Educator of Color in 2021, and received an E OLA award from the Hawaiian Council in 2022. A member of Pacific Islanders in Publishing, Shay works to amplify the voices of writers from the Pacific. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky TikTok |
| Tamika Thompson |
| Tamika Thompson is author of The Curse of Hester Gardens. A former journalist and producer, she is also author of Unshod, Cackling, and Naked, which is the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner for Horror, as well as author of Salamander Justice. Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Interzone, Prairie Schooner, and The New York Times, among others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she hosts her own blog and newsletter, Tamika Talks Terror. Visit her online at tamikathompson.com or on social media @tamikadthompson. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky TikTok Twitter |
| Tara Sim |
| Tara Sim is the critically acclaimed author of the Dark Gods Saga, the We Shall Be Monsters duology, the Scavenge the Stars duology, and the Timekeeper trilogy. She can typically be found wandering the wilds of the Bay Area, California. When she’s not chasing cats or lurking in bookstores, she writes books about magic, murder, and mayhem. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky TikTok Twitter |
| Teresa Nielsen Hayden |
| Teresa Nielsen Hayden has edited books by, among others, Poul Anderson, Avram Davidson, John M. Ford, Jane Lindskold, James White, Robert Charles Wilson, Jo Walton, and Charles Stross. At various points in her career she has also edited comic books, literary criticism, and utopian literature. Her essay collection Making Book (NESFA Press, 1994) was a finalist for the Hugo Award; for other writing and publishing, she has been a Hugo finalist four more times. In 2016 she and Patrick were guests of honor at the Worldcon. A second collection, Making Conversation, was published by NESFA Press in connection with that. Links: Website Bluesky |
| Theodora Goss |
| Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the Athena Club trilogy of novels, including The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her other publications include short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, Snow White Learns Witchcraft, The Collected Enchantments, and Letters from an Imaginary Country as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. You can find her at theodoragoss.com. Links: Website Facebook Instagram Bluesky |
| Tia Tashiro |
| Tia Tashiro is a multiracial science fiction and fantasy writer hailing from the Pacific Northwest. She has won a Derringer Award and been a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Sturgeon, and Astounding Award for her short fiction. By day, she works in cognitive science; by night, she writes; and in between, she dabbles in stained glass and juggling, though never at the same time. Her short fiction is published in Uncanny, Clarkesworld, Diabolical Plots, and Apex, among other venues. Find her at tiatashiro.com. Links: Website Bluesky Twitter |
| Valerie Valdes (V) |
| Valerie Valdes lives in an elaborate meme palace with her husband and kids, where she writes, edits and moonlights as a muse. When she isn’t co-editing Escape Pod, she enjoys crafting bespoke artisanal curses, playing video games, and admiring the outdoors from the safety of her living room. Her debut novel Chilling Effect was shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and her short fiction and poetry have been featured in Uncanny Magazine, Magic: the Gathering and numerous anthologies. Writing as Lia Amador, her first contemporary fantasy romance novel, Witch You Would, was published by Avon Books in September 2025. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky Mastodon |
| Van Hoang |
| Van Hoang is the author of Girl Giant and the Monkey King, Girl Giant and the Jade War, and the forthcoming Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon for middle grade readers. Her adult debut novel The Monstrous Misses Mai released in 2024, with Silver and Smoke scheduled for 2025. She earned her bachelor’s in English at the University of New Mexico and her master’s in library information science at San Jose State University. She was born in Vietnam, grew in up Orange County, California, and now resides in Los Angeles with her family. Links: Website Instagram TikTok |
| Wole Talabi (V) |
| Wole Talabi is an engineer, writer and editor from Nigeria. He is the author of THE FIST OF MEMORY (2026) and SHIGIDI AND THE BRASS HEAD OF OBALUFON (2023). His short fiction is collected in the books CONVERGENCE PROBLEMS (2024) and INCOMPLETE SOLUTIONS (2019). Talabi’s writing has earned him the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, the Nommo award for African speculative fiction, and multiple nominations, including as a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus awards and the Caine Prize for African Writing. He has edited five anthologies. He currently lives in Perth, Australia. Links: Website Instagram Bluesky TikTok Twitter |
