Michael Shea was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author. His novel Nifft the Lean won the World Fantasy Award, as did his novella Growlimb.
Michael Z. Williamson is an American military science fiction and military fiction author best known for his libertarian-themed Freehold series published by Baen Books. Between 2004 and 2016, Williamson published eight Freehold novels, exploring military and political themes as well as first contact with alien beings. This was followed by the Forged in Blood (2017) and Freehold: Resistance (2019) anthologies, consisting of short stories taking place in the Freehold universe, some by Williamson and some by other authors, including Larry Correia, Tony Daniel, Tom Kratman and Brad R. Torgersen.
David Barr Kirtley is an American short story writer and the host of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Laird Samuel Barron is an American author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror, noir, or horror noir and dark fantasy genres. He has also been the managing editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review. He lives in Upstate New York.
InterGalactic Medicine Show was an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It was founded in 2005 by multiple award-winning author Orson Scott Card and was edited by Edmund R. Schubert from 2006–2016, after which Scott Roberts took over. It was originally biannual, but became quarterly in 2008 and bimonthly in 2009, except for a brief hiatus in 2010. The magazine ceased publication in June 2019.
Alethea Kontis is an American writer of Teen & Young Adult Books, picture books and speculative fiction, primarily for children, as well as an essayist and storyteller. She is represented by Moe Ferrara at Bookends Literary Agency.
Eugie Foster was an American short story writer, columnist, and editor. Her stories were published in a number of magazines and book anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Interzone. Her collection of short stories, Returning My Sister's Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, was published in 2009. She won the 2009 Nebula Award and was nominated for multiple other Nebula, BSFA, and Hugo Awards. The Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction is given in her honour.
Tansy Rayner Roberts is an Australian fantasy writer. Her short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Aurealis. She also writes crime fiction as Livia Day.
The WSFA Small Press Award was inaugurated by the Washington Science Fiction Association in 2007. The award is open to works of imaginative literature published in English for the first time in the previous calendar year. Furthermore, the Small Press Award is limited to short fiction—works under 20,000 words in length—that was published by a small press. The nominees are narrowed down by a panel elected by the WSFA membership, and these finalists are then judged by the entire WSFA membership to select a winner. Throughout the process, the author and publisher of each story are kept anonymous.
Neil Clarke is an American editor and publisher, mainly of science fiction and fantasy stories.
David Walton is an American science fiction and fantasy writer living in Philadelphia. His novel Terminal Mind won the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award for the best paperback science fiction novel published in the United States, in a tie with Adam-Troy Castro's novel Emissaries from the Dead.
The 100 Year Starship project (100YSS) was a one-year joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) effort "to take the first step in the next era of space exploration—a journey between the stars". The study explored development of a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make interstellar space travel practicable and feasible. The goal was to examine what it would take — organizationally, technically, sociologically and ethically — to develop the ability to send humans to another star within 100 years. The study culminated in a $500,000 grant awarded to a consortium under the lead of the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, which led to the creation of an independent organization inheriting the name 100 Year Starship from DARPA. Annual 100YSS symposia were organized from 2011 to 2015, and again in 2023.
Edmund R. Schubert is an American author and editor best known for his work in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, though some of his short stories are mysteries, including one that was a preliminary nominee for an Edgar Award in 2006 for Best Short Story. In 2015 he was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Editor but subsequently withdrew himself from consideration due to the block voting tactics which had been used to shape the ballot, stating that "I can't in good conscience complain about the deck being stacked against me, and then feel good about being nominated for an award when the deck gets stacked in my favor. That would make me a hypocrite." He has also written for and edited several business magazines.
Eric James Stone is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. He won the 2004 Writers of the Future contest, and has published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Jim Baen's Universe. His 2010 novelette, "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made," won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and was a finalist for the Hugo Award.
James Maxey is an American author best known for his work in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. He has won the Phobos Award, been nominated for the WSFA Small Press Award, is a 2015 Piedmont Laureate, and reprinted in the Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. In addition to writing fiction, Maxey has also reviewed novels for the online magazine InterGalactic Medicine Show (IGMS), and appeared on panels and taught workshops at numerous conventions on the east coast. He currently lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with his wife, Cheryl.
Nancy Fulda is an American science fiction writer, editor, and computer scientist. She is an alumna of Brigham Young University in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. She has won multiple awards for her science fiction writing, which has been compared to that of Asimov and Clarke.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an American science fiction author and editor. He has edited twenty-two anthologies, and written a space opera trilogy, and an ongoing, near-future police procedural series set in Kansas City, Missouri, and a near future thriller novel being developed as a motion picture. He wrote a non-fiction book on how to write a novel. He was a finalist, with Jennifer Brozek, for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for the anthology Shattered Shields. His anthology, Infinite Stars, was nominated for the 2018 Locus Award for Best Anthology.
"Jackalope Wives" is a 2014 fantasy short story by Ursula Vernon, combining the legends of the swan maiden and the jackalope. It was first published in Apex Magazine and has been reprinted in the collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories. One of the characters, Grandma Harken, is the protagonist of another award-winning story by Vernon, "The Tomato Thief."
Ferrett Steinmetz is the pen name of author William Steinmetz, who writes science fiction and urban fantasy and has been active since 2004.
Leah Cypess is an American author of fantasy and science fiction, active in the field since 1995. Some of her earliest published stories were published under her maiden name, Leah Suslovich. She also writes Judaica under the pen name Leah Sokol.
