Katherine Sparrow writes middle-grade, young adult, and adult fiction for humans of all ages. She understands that all stories are sneaky. Sometimes they take you somewhere fun and exciting. Other times they change minds and save lives. Her fiction tries really hard to do both. She was nominated for a Nebula Award, attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and organizes workshops for writers at all parts of their journey.

When not writing, she spends her time chasing two young children around, enjoying Seattle’s ample and lovely gloom, and planting things in a garden that mostly molds.

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Jake Squid is a person who exists.

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Benjanun Sriduangkaew writes love letters to the future and beautiful bugs. Her fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.

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Prashanth is a speculative fiction writer from Bengaluru, India. His works of short fiction have appeared in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Reckoning, Three-Lobed Burning Eye and Dark Matter among others. He is represented by Naomi Davis of BookEnds Literary Agency.

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Abra Staffin-Wiebe loves optimistic science fiction, cheerful horror, and dark fantasy. Dozens of her short stories have appeared at publications including Tor.com, F&SF, Escape Pod, and Odyssey Magazine. She lives in Minneapolis, where she wrangles her children, pets, and the mad scientist she keeps in the attic. When not writing or wrangling, she collects folk tales and photographs whatever stands still long enough to allow it. Her most recent book, The Unkindness of Ravens, is an epic fantasy coming-of-age story about trickster gods and unlikely heirs. Enjoy an excerpt at: http://www.aswiebe.com/moreunkindness.html

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Jeanna Mason Stay has always been a sucker for fairy tales and myths—the romantic, the gruesome, the macabre, the utterly bizarre. She loves fireflies, serial commas, and galahs [pronounced guh-LAHz], not necessarily in that order. She dreams of one day owning a herd of Chia sheep. Jeanna, her husband, and her four children currently live in Utah, but she misses the brilliant blue skies and unusual (occasionally deadly) fauna of Alice Springs.

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Kay Steele is her own evil twin and has a secret identity where she writes stories and makes art but she’s not telling unless you ask nicely, or ask at all, or just sort of glance in her general direction. A nerd by awkward accident and a geek by choice, Kay is also a gamer, an innuendo specialist and thankfully gets by on very little sleep. Sharing a tiny house with a small child and cartoonish number of pets wasn’t really the plan but it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her. She absolutely loves doing voice acting and narration because she’s a ham.

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David Steffen writes video processing algorithms for traffic control systems by day, and writes fiction at other times. He lives with his wife and three dogs in Minnesota. He is the co-founder of the Submission Grinder, and co-edits the non-fiction zine Diabolical Plots. His fiction has been published in many great venues including Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, Bull Spec, AE, and Pseudopod, as well as Tina Connolly’s Toasted Cake podcast.

David has been running periodic “Best Of” podcast fiction lists for many years, including Diabolical Plots Best of,  The Best Podcast Fiction of 2014 for SF Signal, and a mega-list of The Best Podcast Fiction of All Time, also for SF Signal. He has also created the Long List Anthology, which is a self-publishing anthology project collecting stories from the longer Hugo Award nomination list. (Info and vendors here.) David has been a dedicated listener to all the Escape Artists podcasts for years, and you can find him on the forum as “Unblinking”.

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Jae Steinbacher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she (or they) is an MFA candidate at North Carolina State University. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and her fiction appears in Terraform and Escape Pod. Learn more about her on her website.

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