Melissa Bugaj is the proud mom of a nine-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl. She is a special educator in her sixteenth year of teaching.

Mel has taught all grade levels from preschool to grade five in both general and special education. This past year, however, she left the world of elementary school to teach Special Education in a High School Conceptual Physics and Chemistry class. She survived her first year of being the shortest person in the classroom and was enthusiastic to get back to teaching velocity, gravity and atoms for the 2014-2015 school year.

In her “free time,” she co-produces a children’s story podcast with her techie husband called Night Light Stories and writes a blog about the silly antics of her family called According To Mags.

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Emma Bull has written novels, screenplays, a children’s book, and short stories. She and her husband, Will Shetterly, are members of the Interstate Writers’ Workshop, aka The Scribblies. Emma and Will conduct writing workshops now and then; they’ve taught in Los Angeles, at Clarion West, the Pima Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.

Emma played guitar and sang in the Flash Girls, a goth-folk duo. She was a member of Cats Laughing, a psychedelic improv folk-jazz band that included Steven Brust, Adam Stemple, Lojo Russo, and Bill Colsher.

She is the producer for Shadow Unit, a webfiction project she shares with Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, and Amanda Downum. It combines novella-length episodes of a series story with hypertext “DVD extras” and character on-line journals. Contributing writers in its eight-episode second “season” include Holly Black and Leah Bobet.

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Ben Burgis is a graduate of Clarion West, and he has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast program in Maine. He writes speculative fiction and realist fiction and grocery lists and Facebook status updates and academic papers. (He has a PhD from the University of Miami, and currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship at Yonsei University in South Korea.) His work has appeared in places like Podcastle and GigaNotoSaurus and Youngstown State University’s literary review Jenny. His story “Dark Coffee, Bright Light and the Paradoxes of Omnipotence” appeared in Prime Books’ anthology People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy.

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Stephanie Burgis grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now lives in Wales with her husband and two sons, surrounded by mountains, castles and coffee shops. She writes wildly romantic adult historical fantasies, most recently the Harwood Spellbook series, and also fun MG fantasy adventures, most recently the Dragon with a Chocolate Heart trilogy. She has had over forty short stories for adults and teens published in various magazines and anthologies.

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Avi Burton is a speculative fiction writer studying theater and film at the University of Toronto. They are a mentee in the #DVMentor program with DiverseVoices, Inc. and are currently revising a YA Fantasy novel for publication. Their stories usually feature religion, curses, tragic chosen ones, and — on occasion — laser swords. When not writing, they are usually fencing, hiking, or talking to their cat.

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Thomas Busby is an up and coming Actor from South Wales, United Kingdom. He’s just starting his acting career and hopes to do voice work as well. You’ll find him on The Larp Book Podcast where he and three friends discuss LARPing and generally just have a good time.

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Pete M. Butler is a writer from Pittsburgh. He penned the popular Squonk stories that began on Escape Pod and found their way to PodCastle.

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Scott Campbell searches for challenges that will increase his skills for the battles to come. The slush pile underneath PseudoPod Towers is a worthy opponent. Scott is an associate editor at PseudoPod starting in 2016. He became Web Wrangler in 2021, and promoted to Assistant Editor in 2022. He is an invaluable resource for not only his assistance with reviewing stories but also helping to build all the blog posts and ensuring the website and bios are up to date.

He also writes, directs, and performs for the queer (in every sense of the word) cabaret The Mickee Faust Club. He also writes far too infrequently at the official online home of the Sleep Deprivation Institute (and pop culture website) Needcoffee.com. He lives in Florida with absolutely no pets.

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Audris Candra is a queer disabled writer and freelance editor. As a dukun, they always seek to preserve Chinese & Indonesian culture through spec fic. Their stories have found home in Augur’s Tales & Feathers, If There’s Anyone Left, and more.

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Alicia Caporaso is a marine archaeologist living in New Orleans, LA. Her technical specialty, and one of the more exciting parts of her job, is exploring and documenting historic shipwrecks in the ultra deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico using robots called remotely operated vehicles. She has been an active listener of Escape Artists podcasts since 2009, and has been a slush wrangler with Cast of Wonders since September of 2017.

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