Edward W. (Winslow) Bryant, Jr. was born on August 27, 1945, in White Plains, New York, but was raised in Wyoming, where he received his MA in English (University of Wyoming, 1968). He attended the famed Clarion Writer's Workshop in 1968, and in 1972 moved to Denver, Colorado, where he founded the Northern Colorado Writer's Workshop, and where he spent the remainder of his life. The NCWW counted among its alumni such acclaimed authors as Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, Wil McCarthy, Bruce Holland Rogers, Dan Simmons, and Connie Willis. Bryant also helped found and run many other workshops and classes as well, including the Colorado Springs Writers Workshop.

Bryant was an accomplished SF writer, working primarily in short fiction. His first published stories, released in early 1970, were “They Come Only in Dreams” and “Sending the Very Best”. Over the succeeding decades he wrote more than 100 short stories, notably including the Nebula Award-nominated works "Shark" (1973), "Particle Theory" (1977), "The Hibakusha Gallery" (1977), "Strata" (1980), and "The Thermals of August" (1981). He won the Nebula Award for "Stone" (1978) and "gIANTS" (1979), both of which were also Hugo Award finalists. Other stories of note include World Fantasy- and Stoker Award finalist “A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned” (1989), Stoker nominee “The Loneliest Number” (1990), and Sturgeon Memorial Award nominee “The Fire that Scours” (1994). Many of Bryant's stories were published in collections including Among the Dead and Other Events Leading up to the Apocalypse (1973), Cinnabar (1976), a collection of linked far-future stories, Wyoming Sun (1980), Particle Theory (1981), Neon Twilight (1990), Darker Passions (1991), The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age (2001), Trilobyte (2014), and Predators and Other Stories (2014).

In 1975 Bryant published his single novel Phoenix Without Ashes, co-written with Harlan Ellison. He also wrote several chapbooks between 1990-1993, and contributed stories to his friend George R.R. Martin's "Wild Cards" universe in the anthologies Wild Cards (1987), Jokers Wild (1987), Aces Abroad (1988), Down and Dirty (1988), and Dealer's Choice (1992).

Bryant was an active critic during his career, as well as a Toastmaster and/or Chair for various important genre conventions, including Devention II, the World Fantasy Convention, ArmadilloCon, and the World Horror Convention. In 1996, the International Horror Guild presented Bryant with its Living Legends Award.

Edward Bryant died at his home in Denver on February 10, 2017.

The popular and skilled urban fantasy writer Roxanne Longstreet was born on April 27, 1962, in White Sands, NM, and grew up in West Texas. She graduated with a B.A. in Accounting from Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University in 1985. Her first novel, the fantasy Stormriders, based on the Shadow World role-playing game, was published in 1990 (and republished in 1996 under the pseudonym 'Ian Hammell'). She then wrote three horror novels and one thriller between 1993-1996, all under her original name.

After marrying artist Richard Conrad in 1992, Conrad then wrote two mystery-thrillers under the name 'Roxanne Conrad': Copper Moon (1997) and Bridge of Shadows (1998). In 2002, the thriller Exile, TX was also published under her married name.

2003 saw the debut of Conrad's writing career under her most famous pen name, 'Rachel Caine'. She published Ill Wind, the first of her popular Weather Warden series published by Roc from 2003-2011. The urban fantasy series, which ran in two series across 14 novels and several short stories, takes place on an Earth where a group of individuals called Wardens can control different elemental forces and use that power to protect humanity from natural disasters. The series' main character, Joanne Baldwin, is a Weather Warden, and the main series involves her adventures. An offshoot series, Outcast Season, concerns an outcast Djinn who seeks safety and a new life amongst the Wardens. In 2015, Caine launched a Kickstarter to fund a new novel in the series, entitled Red Hot Rain, but the book was unfinished due to Caine's health complications and her 2020 death.

Other series followed. In 2005-2006, Caine produced the two-book Red Letter Days series, an urban fantasy/paranormal romance about two female detectives who find themselves obliged to start taking cases from a supernatural client with their own agenda. From 2011-2013, Caine published three books in her Revivalist series, telling the story of Bryn Davis, a woman murdered by her pharmaceutical corporate overlords and revived from death via an experimental drug on which she now relies for continued existence. Her final series for adults was the best-selling Stillhouse Lake series of mysteries, starring Tennessee PI Gwen Proctor and beginning with Stillhouse Lake in 2017. The fifth book in the series, Heartbreak Bay was published posthumously in 2021 and was Caine's last published book.

Caine was no stranger to works of fantasy, science fiction, and horror for young adults. Her popular The Morganville Vampires series ran for 15 books, beginning with Glass Houses in 2006 and ending with the short story "Home" in 2019, was set in the fictional West Texas town in Morganville, a town owned by vampires as a sanctuary and where they live in uneasy tension with humans. The series was adapted as a web series in 2014 and lasted for one season, starring Amber Benson and Robert Picardo.

In 2015, Caine published the first in her YA alternate history/fantasy The Great Library series - Ink and Bone. The series is set in a world where the Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed, and over the succeeding millennia has taken control of the world and the flow of information. Tne protagonists are several young Librarians who band together after discovering the injustice and tyranny behind the Library, and seek to bring it down through revolution. The series has five books, concluding with Sword and Pen in 2019. Caine co-wrote, with Ann Aguirre, another YA series - The Honors, a three-book space opera about a young woman named Zara Cole, who as an "Honor" pilots a living ship called a Leviathan along with her co-pilot Beatriz Teixiera. The first book in the series, Honor Among Thieves (2018) was named to the LITA Excellence in Children's and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable List for 2019. In addition to these series, Caine also wrote a YA standalone, Prince of Shadows (2015), a fantasy take on Romeo and Juliet.

Caine wrote several other standalone works as well, including Line of Sight (2007), a volume in the Athena Force series of novels about graduates of the Athena Academy, an elite school for girls with special talents, as they combat kidnappers, terrorists, and the forces of evil; a Stargate SG-1 media tie-in novel, Sacrifice Moon in 2007 (under the name 'Julie Fortune'), and a number of short stories contained in different science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal romance anthologies.

Rachel Caine lived for much of her life in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband R. "Cat" Conrad. She was diagnosed in 2019 with soft-tissue sarcoma, and died on November 1, 2020. Caine was posthumously awarded the 2021 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to science fiction and fantasy by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Emily P. Devenport Hogan is a science fiction writer based in Arizona, married to fellow writer Ernest Hogan. Devenport's publishing debut was in 1987, with her short story "Shade and the Elephant Man", published in Aboriginal Science Fiction in May 1987. The story was the basis of Devenport's first novel, Shade (1991), whose eponymous title character is a runaway orphan and psychic enmeshed in intrigue in a decadent alien city. It was followed by a sequel in 1993, Larissa.

Devenport's first stand-alone novel, Scorpianne was published in 1994, and told the story of Lucy, a prostitute who escapes a murder attempt on Earth and finds herself on Mars trying to avoid the ruthless assassin Scorpianne. Her two-book space operas EggHeads (1994) and GodHeads (1996) were separated in publication time by 1997's The Kronos Connection. Kronos concerns a group of psychically gifted children struggling against the mysterious Three - a trio of powerful telepathic adults who abuse the children and seek to use them for their own evil ends.

Under the pseudonym "Lee Hogan", Devenport published in 2000 the novel Broken Time, which was nominated for the 2001 Philip K. Dick Award. The novel concerns heroine Siggy Lindquist and her struggles against aliens and inmates at the offworld Institute for the Criminally Insane. Another two-book space opera, the Belarus series (Belarus in 2002, and Enemies in 2003) was published under the name "Lee Hogan". Devenport's most recent novels have been the two-volume "Medusa Cycle" - set in the far future aboard a socially stratified generation ship, the series consists of Medusa Uploaded (2018) and Medusa in the Graveyard (2019).

Devenport has written a number of short stories, including 1988's "Cat Scratch", which won Aboriginal Science Fiction's Boomerang Award for Best Story, that have been published in periodicals including Aboriginal, Critical Mass, Asimov's Science Fiction, Uncanny, and Clarkesworld.

Stephen Leigh (who writes as Leigh and under the names S.L. Farrell and Matthew Farrell) was born in Cincinnati, OH, on February 27, 1951. With a B.A. in Fine Arts and an M.A. in Creative Writing, Leigh taught creative writing at Northern Kentucky University from 2001 until his retirement in 2020.

Leigh's literary debut was the short story "And Speak of Soft Defiance", published in Eternity SF in 1975; this was the first of some 40 pieces of short fiction Leigh has written. Some of Leigh's short fiction include his December 1976 story "Answer in Cold Stone" (Leigh's first Analog publication), "When We Come Down" (Asimov's, 1978), "Shaping Memory" (Asimov's, 1985), "Evening Shadow" (Asimov's, 1988), "The Bright Seas of Venus (Galaxy's Edge*, 2013), and "Bones of Air, Bones of Stone" (2015).

In addition, Leigh has written numerous stories as an original member of George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards mosaic universe collective of writers. Leigh is responsible for the creation of several notable Wild Cards characters, including Gregg Hartmann/Puppetman, Bloat, Oddity, Gimli, and Steam Wilbur. To date, Leigh (sometimes writing as S.L. Farrell) has written content for eighteen of the Wild Cards books.

Leigh has also enjoyed a successful career as a science fiction and fantasy novelist. His debut novel was 1981's Slow Fall To Dawn, which was nominated for the 1982 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Slow Fall was the first of Leigh's Neweden/Hoorka trilogy, followed by Dance of the Hag (1983) and A Quiet of Stone (1984). He wrote The Secret of the Lona in 1988, the first in the Dr. Bones series (a fantasy series written by various authors, including Leigh's Wild Cards colleague William Wu). Leigh has written 6 novels in AvoNova's Ray Bradbury Presents series (1992-1995): Dinosaur World, Dinosaur Planet, Dinosaur Samurai, Dinosaur Warriors, Dinosaur Empire, and Dinosaur Conquest. His 1998-1999 Mictlan duology includes the novels Dark Water's Embrace and Speaking Stories,

Leigh has also written several popular fantasy series. most of them under the name S.L. Farrell. These include the Cloudmages series (2003-2005), which include Holder of Lightning, Mage of Clouds, and Heir of Stone; the Nessantico Cycle (2008-2010), which includes the novels A Magic of Twilight, A Magic of Nightfall, and A Magic of Dawn; the paranormal fantasy series Sunpath Cycle (2017-2018), which includes A Fading Sun and A Rising Moon. Leigh's standalone SF&F novels include The Bones of God (1981), The Crystal Memory (1987), The Abraxas Marvel Circus (1990), Thunder Rift (2001, as Matthew Farrell, republished in 2010 as The Shape of Silence), and several others. His most recent published novel is 2021's science fiction work Amid the Crown of Stars.

Ada Palmer is a cultural and intellectual historian who grew up in Annapolis, MD. She attended Simon's Rock College of Bard from 1997-1999, and then transferred to Bryn Mawr, where she graduated in 2001. She obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2009. From 2009-2014 Palmer was an Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University, specializing in the history of the Renaissance. In 2014 Palmer became an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Chicago. She published her first monograph, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, based on her dissertation, in 2014. She teaches on European intellectual history, the Renaissance, Early Modern and Enlightenment periods in Europe, and the history of science and technology, among other topics.

Palmer is very active in the science fiction fan and filker communities. She is an authority on manga and anime and has staffed a number of anime conventions, with special attention paid to cosplay events. In addition, she composes and performs her own music (mostly a capella) that generally incorporates folk and Renaissance styles. She is a member of the a cappella filk group Sassafras, and as part of that group has composed a song cycle based on Norse mythology and the history of medieval Iceland in which the myths took their most well-known written form, entitled Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok.

In addition to this, Palmer is also a science fiction novelist. Her first series, Terra Ignota, had the first book, Too Like The Lightning, released in May 2016. Set in Earth's far future, the series is written in the style of 18th-century philosophical fiction. It received the 2017 Compton Crook Award and was nominated in 2017 for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The sequel, Seven Surrenders, was released in early 2017, and the third volume in the series, The Will To Battle later that year. The final volume in the series, Perhaps The Stars was released in late 2021.

Palmer won the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Jessica Wynne Reisman was born in Philadelphia, PA, but has also lived in Florida, Southern California, and Maine, before moving to Austin, TX. She was graduated from the University of Texas-Austin with an M.A. in 1992. Reisman began publishing stories professionally in 1998, with "Rain Brujah", published in the anthology Horrors! 365 Scary Stories: Get Your Daily Dose of Terror (1998). She has been published in a number of venues, including Realms of Fantasy, The Third Alternative, Sci Fiction, Interzone, The Red Penny Papers, and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Her story "Bourbon, Sugar, Grace" was published as an e-chapbook by Tor in 2017.

Reisman's stories have also appeared (or been republished) in many anthologies, including Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E.Howard (2006), Otherwordly Maine (2008), Passing for Human (2009), Rayguns Over Texas (2013), and Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People (2022). Many of her stories were collected in the 2019 collection The Arcana of Maps and Other Stories, from Fairwood Press. In addition to this body of work, Reisman has written two novels: the first was The Z Radiant (2004), set on a planet that can only be accessed periodically through wormholes and thus produces a cargo cult mentality among the inhabitants. In 2017 Reisman published the far future space opera Substrate Phantoms, a troubling and expansive story of potential first contact aboard a distant space station and the dangers and psychological effects it produces. The novel received glowing reviews.

After a long residence in the Austin area, where she was a prominent member of the local writing and con scene, Reisman moved in late 2023 back to Southern California, where she currently resides.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a renowned and award-winning writer (under several pseudonyms as well as her real name) and editor of speculative fiction. Her published literary debut was the short story "Spare the Rat and Spoil the Child", released in 1987; this was the first in her long career writing short fiction, which to date has been assembled into nineteen separate collections. Several of her stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, and other industry awards: these include "Fast Cars" (1990), "The Gallery of Her Dreams" (1991, winner of the 1992 Locus Award), "Echea" (1998, winner of the 1998 HOMer Award and 1999 Asimov's Readers Award ), and "The Retrieval Artist" (2000). Her novelette "Millennium Babies" won the 2001 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and she has won several additional Asimov's Readers Awards for her short fiction ("Diving Into The Wreck", 2005; "Recovering Apollo 8", 2008; "The Application of Hope", 2014; "Inhuman Garbage", 2016; and "Lieutenant Tightass", 2019). "Recovering Apollo 8" also won the 2007 Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History. Her 1989 story "Phantom" was nominated for the Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. Rusch's short fiction has appeared in more than twenty Best Of The Year collections.

Rusch is also a well-received author of long form fiction, having written close to 100 novels since The White Mists of Power (1991). She has produced 10 novels (and several shorter works) within her "Diving Universe", and is responsible for creating several other literary universes, including "Faerie Justice", "Retrieval Artist", and "The Fey". In addition, Rusch has written books set in the Star Trek, Star Wars, and Aliens media franchises. She writes mysteries under the name "Kris Nelscott", and lighthearted romance and mystery works as "Kristine Grayson". Her 2002 "Retrieval Artist" novel The Disappeared won the 2002 Endeavour Award.

Rusch has also had a distinguished career as a professional editor and publisher. With her husband and fellow author Dean Wesley smith she co-founded the small press Pulphouse Publishing, which from 1988-1996 published 244 different titles from a wide variety of speculative writers through the hardback magazine Pulphouse, a more standard literary magazine, Pulphouse Weekly, and Author's Choice Monthly, a series of chapbooks from writers that included Lewis Shiner, Jack Williamson, Ron Goulart, Kate Wilhelm, Joe R. Lansdale, Charles de Lint, and Roger Zelazny. Pulphouse publications were nominated for numerous awards, and the hardback magazine won the 1989 World Fantasy Award for Special Award, Non-Professional.

From 1991-1997, Rusch edited the storied The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949 and originally edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. Under her editorship, F&SF began publishing more dark fantasy and and horror to complement its existing science fiction and fantasy corpus. She won the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Editor for her editorial work at F&SF, and the magazine itself was nominated for several industry awards during her tenure.

Rusch won the 1990 Campbell/Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Lisa Tuttle was born in Houston, TX on September 16, 1952. She was active from an early age in science fiction fandom (she founded and edited the Houston Science Fiction Society's fanzine Mathom while still in high school, and much of her early writing appeared in various fanzines), as well as writing. Tuttle graduated from Syracuse University in 1974 with a BA in English Literature, after which she moved to Austin and became an active member of the Texas science fiction community as well as a journalist for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.

Tuttle published her first professional short story, "Stranger In The House", in the 1972 Clarion II anthology. In 1973 she helped found the Turkey City Writer's Workshop in Austin, together with Howard Waldrop, Steven Utley, and Tom Reamy. The workshop has graduated a number of important writers, including Bruce Sterling, Ted Chiang, Cory Doctorow, George R.R. Martin, Steven Gould, Maureen McHugh, Lewis Shiner, Martha Wells, and Connie Willis.  In 1974 Tuttle was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (shared with Spider Robinson).

Tuttle has been writing continuously over the succeeding decades. In 1975 she co-wrote with George R.R. Martin the novella "The Storms of Windhaven", which won the 1976 _Locus_Award for Best Novella and was expanded into the 1981 novel WindhavenTuttle's first). Her other novels include, among others, Lost Futures (1992, nominated for the 1992 BSFA Award for Best Novel, the 1992 James Tiptree Award, and the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel), The Pillow Friend(1996, nominated for the 1996 Tiptree Award and the 1996 International Horror Guild Award), The Mysteries (2005), and The Silver Bough(2006). She has written a large number of acclaimed short stories and novellas, including, among others, "Stone Circle" (1976, nominated for the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novella), "One-Wing" (1980, co-written with Martin and winner of the 1980 _Analog_Award for Best Serial Novel/Novella), "In Translation" (1989, winner of the 1989 BSFA for Best Short Fiction), "And The Poor Get Children" (1995), and "My Death: (2004, nominated for the 2004 International Horror Guild Award for Best Long Form, the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella, and the 2005 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella).

Tuttle made history in 1982 for being the first, and to date only, writer to refuse a Nebula Award. Her short story "The Bone Flute" was awarded the Nebula for Best Short Story, but Tuttle had already withdrawn it from competition in protest of another nominee having actively campaigned for the award.

She has also written YA fiction, including Catwitch(with illustrator Una Woodruff) (1983), Panther in Argyll(1996) and Love-on-Line (1998). Tuttle has written under different pseudonyms for a number of books. In 1987 she wrote the novel Megan's Story under the name Laura Waring, and Virgo: Snake Inside for a series of twelve young-adult books called Horrorscopes(1995) under the house pseudonym of Maria Palmer. She was a contributing author to Ben M. Baglio's 2000-2002 YA series Dolphin Diaries.

Tuttle has also written non-fiction, including the Encyclopedia of Feminism(1986) and Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction(2002). As editor she has compiled several anthologies, including Skin of the Soul: New Horror Stories by Women(1990), and Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity(1998) .Her work, both fiction and non-fiction, is known for her focus on strong female characters and on gender issues.

Lisa Tuttle was married from 1981-1987 to fellow SF writer Christopher Priest, and is now married to Colin Murray. The two reside in Scotland. Her recent published works include the "Jesperson and Lane" paranormal mystery series, with The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief (2016) , its 2017 sequel The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross, and the latest book in the series, The Curious Affair of the Missing Mummies (2023); and the 2021 Stoker-nominated collection The Dead Hours of Night. Her most recent published collection of stories was Riding The Nightmare, published by Valancourt Books in June 2023.