The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) is a society based in the United States with the aim of fostering an international community of writers and readers interested in poetry pertaining to the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror. The SFPA oversees the quarterly production of literary journals dedicated to speculative poetry and the annual publication of anthologies associated with awards administered by the organization, i.e. the Rhysling Awards for year's best speculative poems in two length categories and the Dwarf Stars Award for year's best very short speculative poem. Every year since 2013, the SFPA has additionally administered the Elgin Awards for best full-length speculative poetry collection and best speculative chapbook.
Dean Francis Alfar, is a Filipino playwright, novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His plays have been performed in venues across the country, while his articles and fiction have been published both in his native Philippines and abroad, such as in Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the Exotic Gothic series.
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.
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian American fiction writer and poet. Her writing has been nominated for major awards, including the Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Year's Best volumes.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author, translator, art director, and puppeteer. She has worked on puppetry for shows including Jim Henson Productions and the children's show LazyTown. As an author, she is a four-time Hugo Award winner, and served as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2019-2021.
Mike Chinn is a horror, fantasy, science fiction and comics writer from Birmingham, England.
K. Tempest Bradford is an African-American science fiction and fantasy author and editor. She was a non-fiction and managing editor with Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2009 and has edited fiction for Peridot Books, The Fortean Bureau, and Sybil's Garage. She is the author of Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion, her debut middle grade novel published in 2022, which won the Andre Norton Award in 2023.
Paul Matthew Jessup is an American writer of short stories, novels, poetry, and plays. He is also a video game designer, and solo developer/pixel artist for Riddle Fox Games, creator of the best selling game Bad Writer.
Anil Menon is an Indian writer of speculative fiction, as well as a computer scientist with a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, who has authored research papers and edited books on Evolutionary Algorithms. His research addressed the mathematical foundations of replicator systems, majorization, and reconstruction of probabilistic databases, in collaboration with professors Kishan Mehrotra, Chilukuri Mohan, and Sanjay Ranka. After working for several years as a computer scientist, he started to write fiction. His short stories and reviews have appeared in the anthology series Exotic Gothic, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Chiaroscuro, Sybil's Garage, Apex Digest, and others.
Maurice Broaddus is an American author who has published fiction across a number of genres including young adult, horror, fantasy and science fiction. Among his books are The Knights of Breton Court urban fantasy trilogy from Angry Robot, the steampunk novel Pimp My Airship from Apex Publications, and the young adult novel The Usual Suspects from HarperCollins. His Afrofuturist space trilogy Astra Black will be released by Tor Books beginning in March, 2022. He has also published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Black Static, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales along with anthologies including Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy and Sunspot Jungle.
Chesya Burke is an American editor, educator and author of comic books and speculative fiction, most notably horror and dark fantasy. She has published over a hundred short stories, essays, and articles in magazines and anthologies such as Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. Her short story collection Let's Play White was published in 2011 while her debut novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa, was released in late 2015. Nikki Giovanni has compared Burke's fiction to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.
Carmen Maria Machado is an American short story author, essayist, and critic best known for Her Body and Other Parties, a 2017 short story collection, and her memoir In the Dream House, which was published in 2019 and won the 2021 Folio Prize. Machado is frequently published in The New Yorker, Granta, Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. Her stories have been reprinted in Year's Best Weird Fiction, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year,The New Voices of Fantasy, and Best Women's Erotica.
R. B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender, and autistic Ukrainian-American author, poet, and editor of speculative fiction. Their work has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, Uncanny Magazine, and Transcendent 3: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2017.
Sandra Kasturi, is a poet, editor and publisher.
Mari Ness is an American poet, author, and critic. She has multiple publications in various science fiction and fantasy magazines and anthologies. Her work has been published in Apex Magazine, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and Uncanny Magazine. In Locus, Paula Guran said of The Girl and the House that Ness: "subverts and glorifies the clichés and tropes of every gothic novel ever written, in less than 1,800 words"
Julia Rios is an American writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator.
David Annandale is a Canadian speculative fiction author. He received a BA (1990) and an MA (1992) from the University of Manitoba, and took a PhD from the University of Alberta; he currently teaches at the University of Manitoba. Annandale is a regular contributor to "The Skiffy and Fanty Show" podcast as "The Kaiju Whisperer". His contributions to that podcast have led to two Hugo nominations for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast, once in 2014 and later in 2021. He is predominantly known for his numerous fiction contributions to various Warhammer 40,000 series.
Jeremy Szal is an Australian space opera and fantasy author. He often describes his work as "spacepunk" or gothic space opera. His first novel, Stormblood, was published by Gollancz in 2020, with the sequel Blindspace following in 2021. He has published forty short stories, and his work has appeared in nine languages.
Philip Fracassi is an American writer of horror, thriller, and science fiction. He has written multiple novels, screenplays, and short stories. His 2021 collection of short stories, Beneath a Pale Sky, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. The short story "Death, My Old Friend", featured in this collection, was optioned in 2022 by Christopher Riggert for a feature film adaptation.
