Nikki Alfar can barely sustain coherent thought—much less write—without nicotine. Despite this, she has somehow managed to earn three Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, two Bewildering Stories Mariner Awards, a Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award, and selection as one of twelve ‘Filipina writers of note’ by the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings. Her short story, ‘Bearing Fruit’, was named one of the world’s best short speculative fiction pieces in Lois Tilton’s 2010 Locus magazine roundup.

She’s a founding member of the LitCritters writing and discussion group, has been a judge for the Philippines Free Press literary awards, and frequently co-edits the acclaimed annual anthology series Philippine Speculative Fiction.

Her fiction has been published nationally and internationally, in print and online, including the magazines Fantasy, Philippines Free Press, Bewildering Stories, Philippines Graphic, Our Own Voice, and The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories; the anthologies A Time for Dragons, Night Monkeys, Ruin and Resolve, Sawi, Tales of Fantasy & Enchantment, and The Farthest Shore; as well as the podcast sites Drabblecast and Pakinggan Pilipinas.

For all this and more, she thanks her husband Dean, their daughters Rowan and Sage, and the good people at the Marlboro company.

Brit Mandelo is a writer, critic and editor whose primary fields of interest are speculative fiction and queer literature, especially when the two coincide. She is a fiction editor for Strange Horizons Magazine and has two books out, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction and We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-telling. Her work—fiction, nonfiction, poetry; she wears a lot of hats—has also been featured in magazines such as Stone Telling, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and Ideomancer. She is a Louisville native and lives there with her partner in an apartment that doesn’t have room for all the books.

Yukimi Ogawa is currently nestled in a small town in Tokyo, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. One of her stories story is included in an Escape Collective Publishing anthology Orbital Hearts, and another is forthcoming in Jabberwocky magazine.

An Owomoyela (pronounce it “On”) is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and a pair of Year’s Bests.  An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between.  Se graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2008 and attended the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop in 2011, and doesn’t plan to stop learning as long as se can help it.

Angel Johnson has a journalism background and holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. When she’s not writing, she’s working with various non-profits in the Chicagoland area. Her non-fiction and fiction work has been awarded by such publications as the Daily Egyptian newspaper and Glimmer Train Magazine.

Christopher Reynaga is a recipient of the Bazzanella Literary Award for Short Fiction and a graduate of Clarion West 2008. He has stories appearing at GigaNotoSaurus, American River Literary Review, Cemetery Dance, and the Boys of Summer anthology. You can find him hanging out with Coyote at www.ChristopherReynaga.com.

Nathan Tavares is a recent graduate of Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing. When he’s not writing, he enjoys traveling, photography, and hours-long Wikipedia benders. He likes to write about thieves, love, and the end of the world. You can find more of his stuff at nathantavares.com.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her fiance and two literarily-named cats – Gimli and Don Quixote. Although she has published nonfiction and poetry, this is her first fiction publication. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program.