Peter S. Beagle was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, but has lived in California for most of his life. He is the author of a number of works considered to be classics of modern fantasy, including The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place. The animated film version of The Last Unicorn has become a cult classic. Beagle has also written short fiction—his 2005 novelette “Two Hearts” won both the Hugo and Nebula awards—nonfiction, screenplays, poetry, and song lyrics.
Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award–winning author of twenty-seven novels (the most recent is The Stone in the Skull, the first of a new fantasy trilogy) and over a hundred short stories. She returns to science fiction with her novel Ancestral Night in 2018. Bear has never lived in New York, but grew up in Connecticut, which she notes is basically New York’s lawn. She now lives in Massachusetts with her husband, writer Scott Lynch.
Holly Black is the New York Times–bestselling author of contemporary fantasy books intended for kids and teens, but also loved by adults. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), The Modern Faerie Tale series, the Curse Workers series, Doll Bones, and The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. Her most recent novel is The Silver Mask, fourth in the Magisterium series co-authored with Cassandra Clare. A new series by Black will launch early in 2018 with The Cruel Prince. She is the recipient of both an Andre Norton Award and a Newbery Honor. She lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door.
Richard Bowes moved from Boston to Manhattan in 1965 and has lived there ever since. He has published six novels, four story collections, and over seventy short stories. He has won two World Fantasy Awards, and Lambda, Million Writer, and International Horror Guild Awards. His novel Dust Devil on a Quiet Street was on the World Fantasy and Lambda short lists. His novelette “Sleep Walking Now and Then” was on the Nebula short list. Recent appearances include: Tor.com, F&SF, Lightspeed, Interfictions, Uncanny, and the anthologies XIII, The Doll Collection, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, and Best Gay Stories 2016.
Karl Bunker’s short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Interzone, Cosmos, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. In the past Bunker has been a software developer, jeweler, musical instrument maker, sculptor, and mechanical technician. He currently lives in a small town north of Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife, sundry pets, and an assortment of wildlife.
Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times–bestselling author of the young adult novels Magonia and Aerie, the dark fantasy/alt-history novel Queen of Kings, the internationally bestselling memoir The Year of Yes, and The End of the Sentence, a novella co-written with Kat Howard. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times–bestselling co-editor of the monster anthology Unnatural Creatures. Although she grew up in rural Idaho, she now lives in Brooklyn.
Kat Howard lives and writes in New Hampshire. Her short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed on NPR, and anthologized in “year’s best” and “best of ” volumes. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer, a lawyer, and a college professor. Her debut novel, Roses and Rot, was released by Saga Press in 2016. Another novel, An Unkindness of Magicians—a fantasy thriller featuring New York City’s magicians—was published in fall 2017. Her short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, will be released in 2018.
N(ora). K. Jemisin lives and writes in Brooklyn. She won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers Choice awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr., awards. In 2016, she became the first black person to win the Best Novel Hugo for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. Her latest novel, The Stone Sky, is the final title in The Broken Earth trilogy. She currently writes a New York Times book review column covering the latest in science fiction and fantasy.
World Fantasy Award–winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of numerous comic books and thirteen novels, including Silk, Threshold, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, Daughter of Hounds, The Red Tree, and The Drowning Girl. She has authored more than 200 works of short fiction, much of which has been collected in fifteen volumes. Kiernan’s most recent long work is Agents of Dreamland. Born in Dublin, Ireland, she was raised and trained as a vertebrate paleontologist in the southeastern United States. She currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
In the last seven years, New York Times–bestselling author Seanan McGuire (and her science-fiction thriller-writer pseudonym Mira Grant) has published more than two-dozen novels and over seventy-five short stories. The most recent novel is the eleventh book in her Hugo-nominated October Daye series, The Brightest Fell. Winner of the 2010 Campbell Award for Best New Writer, McGuire is a native Californian who now lives in Washington State. Her 2017 standalone urban fantasy/ghost story novella Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day (Tor. com Publishing) has been called “a spooky, atmospheric love letter to New York.”
George R. R. Martin is best known for his international bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, which has been adapted into the HBO dramatic series Game of Thrones. Martin serves as Game of Thrones’ co-executive producer—for which he has received two Emmys—and has scripted four episodes of the series. Time named him one of the “2011 Time 100,” a list of the “most influential people in the world.” The winner of many other awards—including six Hugos and two Nebulas—he was given the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2012. Martin was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, and now resides with his wife, Parris, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Naomi Novik’s first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon, was published in 2006 along with the next two novels of the Temeraire series: Throne of Jade and Black Powder War. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. The fourth volume of Temeraire, Empire of Ivory, was a New York Times bestseller, and was followed by bestsellers Victory of Eagles, Tongues of Serpents, Crucible of Gold, and Blood of Tyrants. The ninth and final volume of the series, League of Dragons, was published in 2016. Her novel Uprooted (2015) was nominated for a Hugo Award; all of Temeraire was nominated for the Hugo for Best Series in 2017. Novik lives in New York City with her husband and eight computers