BETH BERNOBICH comes from a family of story tellers, artists, and engineers. She juggles her time between working with computer software, writing, family, and karate. Her short stories have appeared publications such as Asimov's, Interzone, Postscripts, Strange Horizons, and Sex in the System. She lives with her husband and son in Bethany, Connecticut. Passion Play is her first novel.

ALEX BLEDSOE grew up in West Tennessee, but now lives in Wisconsin.

COL BUCHANAN lives in Lancaster, England. Farlander is his debut novel, and the first novel in the Heart of the World series.

BLAKE CHARLTON is currently a medical student at Stanford University. An active, engaging presence online, he lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

A.M. DELLAMONICA has had stories published in various fantasy and science fiction magazines and anthologies. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where she is at work on Blue Magic, the sequel to Indigo Springs.

IAN C. ESSLEMONT grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has studied archaeology and creative writing, has traveled extensively in South East Asia, and lived in Thailand and Japan for several years. He now lives in Alaska with his wife and children and is currently working on another novel set in the world of Malaz, a world he co-created with his friend Steven Erikson.

ALEXANDER JABLOKOV lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MICHELE LANG, like her protagonist, is the daughter of Hungarian Jewish parents. Neither a witch nor able to defy death like the Lazerii, she was inspired, nonetheless, by the selfless heroism of her family in WWII. She lives on Long Island.

EDWARD LAZELLARI has worked as an illustrator and graphic artist, doing projects for Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, and Jim Henson Productions. His short story, "The Date," won Playboy magazine's prestigious college fiction contest in 1999. Lazellari lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Awakenings is his first novel.

LARRY NIVEN is the award-winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces, and fantasy novels including the Magic Goes Away series. Beowulf's Children, co-authored with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes, was a New York Times bestseller. He has received the Nebula Award, five Hugos, four Locus Awards, two Ditmars, the Prometheus, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award, among other honors. He lives in Chatsworth, California.

EDWARD M. LERNER has degrees in physics and computer science, a background that kept him mostly out of trouble until he began writing science fiction full-time. His books include Probe, Moonstruck, and the collection Creative Destruction, and he has collaborated with Larry Niven on the other books in the Fleet of Worlds series. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Ruth.

L. E. MODESITT, JR., is the bestselling author of the fantasy series The Saga of Recluce, Corean Chronicles, and the Imager Portfolio. His science fiction includes Adiamante, the Ecolitan novels, the Forever Hero Trilogy, and Archform: Beauty. Besides a writer, Modesitt has been a U.S. Navy pilot, a director of research for a political campaign, legislative assistant and staff director for a U.S. Congressman, Director of Legislation and Congressional Relations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues, and a college lecturer. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.

J. A. PITTS is a graduate of the Oregon Coast Writers Workshops and holds degrees in English and Library Science. Black Blade Blues is the first in a fantasy series featuring Sarah Beauhall.

CHERIE PRIEST is the author of Dreadnought and Boneshaker, which was nominated for a Nebula and Hugo Award, won the Locus Award for best science-fiction novel, and was named Steampunk Book of the Year by steampunk.com. She is also the author of the near-contemporary fantasyFathom, and she debuted to great acclaim with Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, andNot Flesh Nor Feathers, a trilogy of Southern Gothic ghost stories featuring heroine Eden Moore. Born in Tampa, Florida, Priest earned her master's in rhetoric at the University of Tennessee. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Aric, and a fat black cat named Spain.

BRANDON SANDERSON is the bestselling author of books including Warbreaker, Elantris, The Way of Kings, and The Mistborn Trilogy—Mistborn, The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. He has also written Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, a book for middlegrade readers, and is completing the final books in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time® series—The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light—based on Jordan's notes and material. Sanderson teaches writing at Brigham Young University. He lives in Utah.

PAMELA SARGENT is the author of many highly praised novels, includingEarthseed, chosen as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association in 1983. She has won the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo Award. She lives with writer George Zebrowski in upstate New York.

JOHN SCALZI is the author of several SF novels, including the bestselling "Old Man's War" sequence, comprising Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. He is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and he won the Hugo Award for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of essays from his wildly popular blog The Whatever. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

JOHN SHIRLEY is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Black Butterflies and many other novels. He is also a song-writer, singer, and a prominent screenwriter, having cowritten the script for the "The Crow" and other films and TV shows. His new novel Bioshock: Rapture just came out July 19, 2011, and tells the prequel story to the awardwinning first game in the Bioshock videogame franchise. Shirley lives in the San Francisco Bay area in California.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE's first major release, The Orphan's Tales, was released in the fall of 2006 when Cat was twenty-seven. Volume I, In the Night Garden, went on to win the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. The series as a whole won the Mythopoeic Award for adult literature in 2008. Her most recent novel, Palimpsest, has been nominated for the Hugo Award and is a Locust Award finalist. She currently lives on a small island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, and one cat.

CARRIE VAUGHN is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books, includingKitty Goes to War and Kitty and the Midnight Hour. She is also the author of the standalone novelsAfter the Golden Age and Discord's Apple, and the young adult books Voice of Dragons and Steel. Vaughn had the nomadic childhood of the typical Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She earned her B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles, and a master's in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has worked as a Renaissance Festival counter wench, a theater usher, an editor, a buyer at an independent bookstore, and an administrative assistant. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

VERNOR VINGE is the author of the Hugo Award–winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, and Rainbows End. An acknowledged authority on the technological Singularity, he was for many years a professor of mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He lives in San Diego, California.

JO WALTON's novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award, and the novels of her Small Change sequence—Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown—have won acclaim ranging from national newspapers to the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal.

BILL WILLINGHAM is the critically-acclaimed, award-winning creator of several iconic comic book series, including the bestselling Fables franchise. In 2003, its first year of publication, Fables won the prestigious Eisner award for Best New Series, and has gone on to win fourteen Eisners to date. Bill lives in the wild and frosty woods of Minnesota.

MARK BUCKINGHAM has been working in comics professionally for the past twenty two years, building a reputation for design, storytelling and a chameleon like diversity of art styles. Since 2002 Mark has been the regular artist on Fables, working with its writer and creator Bill Willingham, for which they have earned numerous comic industry awards.

F. PAUL WILSON is the New York Times bestselling author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything in between. His books include the Repairman Jack novels, including Ground Zero, The Tomb, and Fatal Error; the Adversary cycle, including The Keep; and a young adult series featuring the teenage Jack. Wilson has won the Prometheus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Inkpot Award from the San Diego ComiCon, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers of America, among other honors. He lives in Wall, New Jersey.