Heather Rose Jones write stories at the intersection of history and fantasy, usually centering around women’s lives and relationships. In addition to short fiction, I’m writing an epic-length Regency-era Ruritanian historic fantasy. The Alpennia series is currently at three novels, the most recent being Mother of Souls. Outside of writing, I work as an industrial failure analyst in biotech pharmaceutical manufacturing, which is far more exciting than it may sound. And as an additional hobby, I blog about source materials for lesbian history at alpennia.com.

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Jason K. Jones is a disembodied voice that occasionally cohabitates with a body of the same name.  They live together in Athens, Georgia, with one Jason’s wife and the other’s Weighted Companion Cube.  Most days they believe they are the same Jason.

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Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Rachael is a Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and Otherwise Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and all four Escape Artists podcasts. Follow her on Bluesky @‌RachaelKJones.bsky.social, or find her at http://www.RachaelKJones.com.

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Shelly Jones is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Delhi (pronounced: Del-high), where she teaches classes in mythology, literature, and writing. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from SUNY Binghamton. An editor for the academic journal, Analog Game Studies, she is an active nerd who enjoys board games, Dungeons and Dragons, being outdoorsy, and knitting.

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Vylar Kaftan writes speculative fiction of all genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream. She won a 2013 Nebula Award for her novella “The Weight of the Sunrise”, as well as a 2013 Sidewise Award for Short-Form Alternate History. She was also nominated for a 2010 Nebula Award for her short story “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno.”

Her stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, and Clarkesworld. Her work has been reprinted in Horror: The Best of the Year, honorably mentioned in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award.

A graduate of Clarion West, she’s volunteered for that group as well as the Little Owls mentoring program for young writers. She’s a member of SFWA, Codex, Broad Universe, and the Carl Brandon Society. In 2011, she founded FOGcon, a new literary-themed science fiction and fantasy convention in the San Francisco Bay Area. She blogs at VylarKaftan.com.

She lives with her husband Shannon in northern California. Her hobbies include modern-day temple dancing and preparing for a major earthquake. Her favorite color is all of them. She prefers the term “differently sane.”

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Shingai Njeri Kagunda is an Afrofuturist freedom dreamer, Swahili sea lover, and Femme Storyteller among other things, hailing from Nairobi, Kenya. Shingai’s short story “Holding Onto Water” was longlisted for the Nommo Awards 2020 & her flash fiction “Remember Tomorrow in Seasons” was shortlisted for the Fractured Lit Prize 2020. Her novella “And This is How to Stay Alive” won the Ignyte Award in 2022. She is also the co-founder of Voodoonauts: an afrofuturist workshop for black writers.

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Anna Kahn is a Manchester-based writer. They’ve been a Barbican Young Poet, a member of the Roundhouse Collective (and Roundhouse Slam finalist) and a London Library Emerging Writer. They’ve gigged everywhere from tiny pubs to literary festivals to music festival main stages, and their work has featured in publications like Nature, Tractor Beam and The Rumpus.

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Deborah Kalin is an award-winning writer of literary speculative fiction, author of the collection Cherry Crow Children and The Binding novels. Her work has won two Aurealis Awards, and has also been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Ditmar Awards and the Australian Shadows Awards. She lives in Melbourne, subject to the whims of a three year old who thinks she’s a cat and a cat who thinks she’s a person.

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The translator for this story, Toshiya Kamei, is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, New World Writing, and Utopia Science Fiction, among others.

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Damini Kane is a creative writing student at the University of British Columbia. This is her second story in Podcastle. The first, Mariska and Major, was featured in 2020. She has published one novel, The Sunlight Plane. Her writing has been published in literary journals, online and in print, such as the Lakeview Journal, Muse India, and The Purple Breakfast Review. Damini loves to write character-driven stories, and fantasy stories with a heavy focus on interpersonal conflicts. She occasionally blogs, and would love to have the time to make more Youtube videos.

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