Called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker, NYT bestseller Jeff VanderMeer has been a published writer since age 14. His most recent fiction is the critically acclaimed novel BORNE, which has received raves from the NYTBR, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many more. Paramount Pictures has optioned BORNE for film.

VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy was one of the publishing events of 2014, the trilogy made more than thirty year’s best lists, including Entertainment Weekly’s top 10. Paramount Pictures has made a movie out of the first volume of the Southern Reach, Annihilation, slated for release in 2018 and starring Tessa Thompson, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Natalie Portman, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

His nonfiction appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic.com. VanderMeer also wrote the world’s first fully illustrated creative-writing guide, Wonderbook. With his wife, Ann VanderMeer, he has edited may iconic anthologies. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with two wonderful cats. His hobbies include hiking, reading, and bird watching.

Kelly Barnhill is an author, teacher and mom. She wrote THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, THE WITCH'S BOY, IRON HEARTED VIOLET, THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK and many, many short stories. She won the World Fantasy Award for her novella, THE UNLICENSED MAGICIAN, a Parents Choice Gold Award for IRON HEARTED VIOLET, the Charlotte Huck Honor for THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, and has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the Andre Norton award and the PEN/USA literary prize. She was also a McKnight Artist's Fellowship recipient in Children's Literature. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her three brilliant children, architect husband, and emotionally-unstable dog. She is a fast runner, a good hiker, and a terrible gardener. You can visit and chat at her blog: www.kellybarnhill.com

Jess Gulbranson is an author, artist, critic, and composer. At his most recent appearance at The Hour That Stretches, he and coauthor Garrett Cook had an audience feed their mana to an egregore called “Tony Shrapnel”. Current projects include children’s books, a grimoire, and the unofficial _Dark Souls_ manga. He lives in Portland with his wife and daughters.

Hugo Award winner Ann VanderMeer founded the critically acclaimed Buzzcity Press and she currently serves as the fiction editor for Weird Tales, the oldest fantasy magazine in the world. Ann has partnered with her husband, author Jeff VanderMeer, on such editing projects as the World Fantasy Award winning Leviathan series, The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, The New Weird, Steampunk and Fast Ships, Black Sails, recently nominated for a Shirley Jackson award. A guest editor for Best American Fantasy, she also coedited The Leonardo Variations and Last Drink Bird Head anthologies.

S.J. Chambers's fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including Bookslut, Fantasy, the Baltimore Sun's Read Street Blog, Yankee Pot Roast, Tor.com, and the anthologies: Thackery T. Lambshead's Cabinet of Curiosities (HarperCollins), Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages (Prime Books), and The New Gothic (Stone Skin Press). She co-authored The Steampunk Bible (Abrams Image) with Jeff VanderMeer, which readers can now enjoy as a calendar. You can find out more at www.selenachambers.com.

Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning author and critic: her short fiction has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, while her poetry has won the Rhysling award three times. She is the author of THE HONEY MONTH, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey, and writes the OTHERWORLDLY column for the New York Times Book Review. She's the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR, an epistolary time-travelling spy vs spy novella. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com, or on Twitter @tithenai.

Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and she graduated from Clarion West in 2005. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy and Sturgeon Awards. She’s twice won the Nebula Award: for her 2010 novella, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” and her 2014 short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.”

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