Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, a Victorian era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include the Small Change series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown. Her fantasy novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history My Real Children received the 2015 Tiptree Award.
Barbara Hambly is an American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Benjamin January mystery series featuring a free man of color, a musician and physician, in New Orleans in the antebellum years. She also wrote a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln.
Kim Harrison is a pen name of American author Dawn Cook. Harrison is best known as the author of the New York Times #1 best selling Hollows urban fantasy series, but she has also published over two dozen books spanning the gamut from young adult, accelerated-science thriller, anthology, and a unique, full-color world book, and has scripted two original graphic novels set in the Hollows universe. She has also published traditional fantasy under the name Dawn Cook.
Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards.
James S. A. Corey is the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, authors of the science fiction series The Expanse. The first and last name are taken from Abraham's and Franck's middle names, respectively, and S. A. are the initials of Abraham's daughter. The name is also meant to emulate many of the space opera writers of the 1970s. In Germany, their books are published under the name James Corey with the middle initials omitted.
Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.
Shadow and Bone is a young adult fantasy adventure and debut novel written by Israeli-American author Leigh Bardugo. It was published by Macmillan Publishers on June 5, 2012. The novel is narrated by Alina Starkov, a teenage orphan who grows up in the Russia-inspired land of Ravka when, unexpectedly harnessing a power she never knew she had in order to save her childhood best friend, she becomes a target of intrigue and violence. It is the first book in the Shadow and Bone trilogy, followed by Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. It is also the basis for the Netflix adaptation, Shadow and Bone, which premiered in April 2021.
Marlon James is a Jamaican writer. He is the author of five novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), which won him the 2015 Man Booker Prize, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019), and Moon Witch, Spider King (2022). Now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the U.S., James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.
Leigh Bardugo is an American fantasy author. She is best known for her young adult Grishaverse novels, which include the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Scars duology. She also received acclaim for her paranormal fantasy adult debut, Ninth House. The Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows series have been adapted into Shadow and Bone by Netflix and Ninth House will be adapted by Amazon Studios; Bardugo is an executive producer on both works.
Six of Crows is a fantasy novel written by the Israeli-American author Leigh Bardugo and published by Henry Holt and Co. in 2015. The story follows a thieving crew and is primarily set in the city of Ketterdam, which is loosely inspired by Dutch Republic–era Amsterdam. The plot is told from third-person viewpoints of seven different characters.
Fonda Lee is a Canadian-American author of speculative fiction. She is best known for writing The Green Bone Saga, the first of which, Jade City, won the 2018 World Fantasy Award and was named one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Time magazine. The Green Bone Saga was also included on NPR's list, "50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade".
Rebecca F. Kuang is an American fantasy and contemporary fiction writer. Her first novel, The Poppy War, was released in 2018, followed by the sequels The Dragon Republic in 2019 and The Burning God in 2020. Kuang released a stand-alone novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, in 2022. Kuang has won the Compton Crook Award, the Crawford Award, and the 2020 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, along with being a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, The Kitschies, and British Fantasy awards for her first novel. Yellowface is her first work of fiction outside of the fantasy genre.
Crooked Kingdom is a fantasy novel by American author Leigh Bardugo, published by Henry Holt and Co. in 2016. Set in a world loosely inspired by 19th-century Europe, it takes place days after the events of the duology's first book, Six of Crows. The plot is told from the third-person viewpoints of eight characters.
Shadow and Bone is an American fantasy streaming television series developed by Eric Heisserer for Netflix. It is based on two series of books by Leigh Bardugo set in the Grishaverse, namely, the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. All eight episodes of the first season premiered on April 23, 2021. In June 2021, the series was renewed for a second season, also consisting of eight episodes which premiered on March 16, 2023.
Gideon the Ninth is a 2019 science fantasy novel by the New Zealand writer Tamsyn Muir. It is Muir's debut novel and the first in her Locked Tomb series, followed by Harrow the Ninth (2020), Nona the Ninth (2022), and Alecto the Ninth (2023).
Tamsyn Muir is a New Zealand author of fantasy, science fiction and horror. Muir won the 2020 Locus Award for her first novel, Gideon the Ninth, and has been nominated for several other awards as well.
King of Scars is a fantasy novel by American author Leigh Bardugo published by Imprint in 2019. It is the first in a duology, followed by Rule of Wolves, and a continuation of Bardugo's Grishaverse. The story is primarily told in third person by three point of views: Nikolai Lantsov and Zoya Nazyalensky from the original trilogy in Ravka, and Nina Zenik from Six of Crows in Ketterdam.
Travis John Klune is an American author of fantasy and romantic fiction featuring gay and LGBTQ+ characters. His fantasy novel The House in the Cerulean Sea is a New York Times best seller and winner of the 2021 Alex and Mythopoeic Awards. Klune has spoken about how his asexuality influences his writing. His novel Into This River I Drown won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Romance in 2014.
Rule of Wolves is a fantasy novel by American author Leigh Bardugo published by Imprint in 2021. It is the seventh overall novel in Bardugo's Grishaverse and the final novel in the King of Scars duology. The story takes place several weeks after the end of King of Scars and follows the third-person perspectives of Nikolai Lantsov, Zoya Nazyalensky, Nina Zenik, Mayu Kir-Kaat, and the Darkling
