Matthew Sanborn Smith

Matthew Sanborn Smith’s work has appeared at Tor.com, Nature, Chiaroscuro and GUD magazine. He makes an irregular spot on the StarShipSofa called The Fiction Crawler, but Tony has thus far managed to scrub the cushions clean. If you haven’t had enough of his foolishness, enjoy his brilliant podcast at bewarethehairymango.com

Gregory Frost

Gregory Frost is a writer of best-selling fantasy, Science Fiction, and thrillers. He has been a finalist for every major SF, fantasy, and horror fiction award. His latest novel-length work is the duology Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet, which was voted “one of the four best fantasy novels of the year” by the American Library Association; it was also a finalist for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2009, receiving starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. Paul Witcover in SciFi Weekly described the books as “A master class on storytelling and myth-making by a gifted writer working at the top of his game.” His previous novel, the historical thriller, Fitcher’s Brides, was a finalist for both the World Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for Best Novel. And Publishers Weekly called his Golden Gryphon short story collection, Attack of the Jazz Giants & Other Stories, “one of the best of the year.” His latest short story, The Dingus leads off in Ellen Datlow’s anthology Supernatural Noir, out in July 2011. He is one of the fiction workshop directors at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA.

Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman writes fiction for a living, and also teaches writing at the Massachussets Institute of Technology. His Science Fiction has won five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 2010. His latest novel is Starbound.

Jack Calverley

Jack Calverley says, “I like making things. I enjoy the crafting process whether virtual goods like software (the day job) or, preferably, make-believe worlds made from words and images.” Jack is the creator of Rooms 3D Desktops and believes in cross-over between mediums since he has been heard reading for StarShipSofa and has been seen at exhibitions trying to flog his Photoshop’d holiday snaps. His multi-dimensional publicity machine (which you will no doubt never have heard of) can be found at jackcalverley.com

Dennis M. Lane

Dennis M. Lane was born the year that Mysterious Island hit the cinemas, deep in the industrial heartland of England. Coming of age during the Thatcher Years (she was Prime Minister from Alien to Frankenstein Unbound) the conflict that he experienced during the Steel Strike and the Teacher’s Strike played a great part in his political development. The year that Flight of the Navigator was out, he travelled to rural Nigeria as a volunteer teacher, and this led to a long career working in international development, which continues to this day. He has lived in seven countries across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, each country making its own impact upon him. He has finally settled in South Africa where he has now lived since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was not being shown at his local cinema. When not watching movies, Dennis can be found typing until his fingers bleed. His first poetry collection 8 Million Stories was published in November 2010; his first novel Talatu, a Young Adult SF tale which draws on elements of his experience in Nigeria, will be out soon. He is also putting together a collection of genre short stories, poetry and flash fiction which is tentatively entitled Worlds-R-Us and Other Stories”. In order to avoid becoming soft and lazy he is currently outlining his second novel Unmedicated and he will begin work on it in earnest late in 2011. Outside of his writing, Dennis paints, cooks, plays the harmonica and spends far too much time watching football. For more information please visit dennislanebooks.com

Mercurio D. Rivera

Mercurio D. Rivera is a New York City attorney who enjoys travel, baseball and all things genre-related. His fiction has appeared in markets such as Nature, Black Static, Electric Velocipede, Unplugged: The Web’s Best SF and Fantasy, 2008 Download, edited by Rich Horton (Wyrm Publishing), and numerous issues of Interzone. His work has been acknowledged on the StorySouth Million Writers List for 2008 and the Locus Recommended List for 2008 (finishing at #25 among all short stories published that year). His stories have received honorable mention by editors Gardner Dozois, Ellen Datlow and on various Year’s Best lists. His Science Fiction has been podcast at StarShipSofa, Escape Pod and Beam Me Up. His story about human/alien unrequited love, “Longing for Langalana,” won the Interzone Reader’s Poll for 2006 and the prequel, “In the Harsh Glow of its Incandescent Beauty,” appeared last year in Interzone and is reprinted here. He is a proud member of the highly acclaimed writers group Altered Fluid (alteredfluid.com). You can visit his website at mercuriorivera.com

Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith is an English novelist living in Seattle. Author of five novels – Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, Stay, Always – and a multimedia memoir – And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner notes to a writer’s early life. Co-editor of the Bending the Landscape series of original queer F/SF/H stories. Essayist. Teacher. Website builder. Blogger. She is a winner of the Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy, and 6 Lambda Literary Awards. She has also won a BBC poetry prize, some Gaylactic Spectrum awards, the Premio Italia, and others. Alongside her partner writer Kelley Eskridge she runs Sterling Editing. She drinks just the right amount of beer and takes enormous delight in everything.

Peter Watts

Peter Watts is an awkward hybrid of biologist, science-fiction author, and (according to Homeland Security) tewwowist. Described by the Globe & Mail as one of the best hard-SF authors alive, his work has been translated into thirteen languages. His first novel (Starfish) was a NY Times Notable Book, while his sixth (Blindsight) – a philosophical rumination on the nature of consciousness with an unhealthy focus on space vampires – has become a core text in such diverse undergraduate courses as “The Philosophy of Mind” and “Introduction to Neuropsychology”. It also made the final ballot for a shitload of domestic genre awards, including the Hugo, winning exactly none of them (although it has, for some reason, won multiple awards overseas). This may reflect a certain critical divide regarding Watts’ work in general; his bipartite novel Behemoth, for example, was praised by Publisher’s Weekly as an “adrenaline-charged fusion of Clarke’s The Deep Range and Gibson’s Neuromancer” and simultaneously decried by Kirkus as “utterly repellent… horrific porn” (Watts happily embraces the truth of both views). Watts’ 2009 novelette The Island was reprinted a dozen times and finally won the damn Hugo, possibly because fandom wanted to give DHS the finger. The Things seems to be racking up the hits as well: an unabashed piece of fanfic which nonetheless showed up in several Best-of-Year collections and has, as of this writing, made the finals for a bunch of awards (one of which it has already lost, one of which it has already won, and three for which it is currently in the running). Watts’ most recent novel, Crysis: Legion, once again transcends boundaries, elevating the video game tie-in to the giddy status of “not-completely-horrible potboiler”. (His sidequel to Blindsight is currently overdue.) Both Watts and his cat have appeared in the prestigious journal Nature. You can visit him at rifters.com

Saladin Ahmed

Saladin Ahmed has been a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, the Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer, and the Harper’s Pen Award for best Sword and Sorcery/Heroic Fantasy Short Story. His short fiction has earned praise from Publisher’s Weekly and Locus Magazine, has appeared in numerous magazines and podcasts (including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, PodCastle, and the Hugo Award winning StarShipSofa), and has been translated into Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, and Romanian. His novel Throne of the Crescent Moon, cited by several major fantasy book blogs as a “most anticipated” 2012 title, is forthcoming from DAW Books. He can be found online at saladinahmed.com

Catherynne M. Valente

Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award She has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, and Spectrum Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and 2009. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, and enormous cat.

James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His most recent book, a collection of stories, The Wreck Of The Godspeed, was published in the summer of 2008. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette Think Like A Dinosaur and in 2000, for his novelette, Ten to the Sixteenth to One. His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast. His website is jimkelly.net

Gareth L. Powell

Gareth L. Powell is the author of the novels The Recollection and Silversands, and the acclaimed short story collection The Last Reef. He is a regular contributor to Interzone and his work has appeared in a number of recent anthologies. Gareth has given guest lectures on creative writing at Bath Spa University; and has written a series of non-fiction articles on Science Fiction for The Irish Times. Gareth lives in North Somerset, UK and can be found online at garethlpowell.com

James Morrow

James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since, as a seven-year-old living in the Philadelphia suburbs, he dictated The Story of the Dog Family to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. Morrow’s passion for storytelling continued into adulthood, enabling him to win the World Fantasy Award (twice), the Nebula Award (twice), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, the Prix Utopia, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. So far the author’s best known effort is the postmodern historical epic The Last Witchfinder, praised by Janet Maslin of the New York Times for fusing “storytelling, showmanship and provocative book-club bai … into one inventive feat.” He followed it with a thematic sequel, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, which NPR called “an ingenious riff on Frankenstein.” Morrow’s most recent book is a novella, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, set in 1945 and dramatizing the US Navy’s attempts to leverage a Japanese surrender via a biological weapon that strangely anticipates Godzilla.

Amy H. Sturgis

Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History at Vanderbilt University. A specialist in Science Fiction/Fantasy Studies and Native American Studies, Sturgis is the author of four books and the editor of another five. Her critical essays have appeared in dozens of scholarly journals, popular magazines, and books, most recently in the collections The Philosophy of Joss Whedon (2011), Fringe Science: Parallel Universes, White Tulips, and Mad Scientists (2011), and Nyx in the House of Night: Mythology, Folklore and Religion in the PC and Krisin Cast Vampire Series (2011). She is a regular speaker at universities and genre conventions across the United States and Canada. In 2006, she was honored with the Imperishable Flame Award for J.R.R. Tolkien Scholarship. In both 2009 and 2011, she received the Sofanaut Award for her regular “Looking Back at Genre History” segments on StarShipSofa. Her official website is amyhsturgis.com

Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson was born in 1962, and raised in small town Oregon, Wisconsin, south of Madison — an environment that was a cross between a Ray Bradbury short story and a Norman Rockwell painting. At eight years old, Kevin wrote his first “novel” (three pages long on pink scrap paper) on the typewriter in his father’s den – The Injection, a story about a mad scientist who invents a formula that can bring anything to life… and when his colleagues scoff, he proceeds to bring a bunch of wax museum monsters and dinosaur skeletons to life so they can go on the rampage. At the age of ten, he had saved up enough money from mowing lawns and doing odd jobs that he could either buy his own bicycle or his own typewriter. Kevin chose the typewriter… and has been writing ever since. After he had published ten of his own Science Fiction novels to wide critical acclaim, he came to the attention of Lucasfilm, and was offered the chance at writing Star Wars novels; he ended up doing 54 projects for them. Along the way he also collected over 750 rejection slips, and a trophy as “The Writer with No Future” because he could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at an entire conference. When asked for advice about how to be a successful writer, he answers quickly: PERSISTENCE!

Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific Science Fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. He has received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years and has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards as well as receiving nominations for the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His new novel, Dancing With Bears, featuring post-Utopian confidence artists Darger and Surplus, was recently published by Night Shade Books.

Lawrence Santoro

As literary manager and dramaturge of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company, Lawrence Santoro led the script development arm of one of the nation’s leading producing theaters. As story supervisor and associate producer of the syndicated television series, Hyde & Seeke, Larry wrote, directed and supervised production during the comedy/mystery show’s first season. In 2001, the Horror Writers Association nominated his novella God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him for a Bram Stoker Award in long fiction. His production of Gene Wolfe’s The Tree Is My Hat was presented at World Horror Con 2002. Introduced by Gahan Wilson, the audio drama featured a performance by best selling author Neil Gaiman. Larry’s script was nominated for a Stoker Award in 2003. A compact disc of the production is available. His first novel, Just North Of Nowhere, was published in 2007. A collection of his short fiction, Drink For The Thirst To Come, was published by Silverthought Press in June, 2011. An expanded version of Just North Of Nowhere, was also published in several e-formats at the same time.

Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar is the author of novels The Bookman and Camera Obscura, and the forthcoming weird-lit novel Osama. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Vanuatu and Laos. Other works include novellas Cloud Permutations, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, and linked-story collection HebrewPunk.

Frederick Himebaugh

Frederick Himebaugh first came to the attention of the StarShipSofa crew at episode 6 of the original show and quickly became the podcast’s most epistolary fan. He has contributed to the podcast as a narrator, reviewer, and roundtable blowhard. His current contribution is a bimonthly fact article on graphic novels. Fred earns his living as a programmer of CAD software. His other interests include writing Science Fiction and composing music, including a “Science Fiction jazz chamber opera” setting of Terry Bisson’s classic story They’re Made Out of Meat, and an a cappella pop song Earth Girl where he also served as the lyricist. Both these songs have received promos on the StarShipSofa and are available commercially. He has had several works of choral music premiered, including the SF-themed The Moon That Dreamed of Earth, based on his own short story of the same name.

Aliette de Bodard

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a Computer Engineer, and a time-consuming hobby writing speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared in venues such as Asimov’s, Interzone, and the Year’s Best Science Fiction; her Obsidian and Blood books, a noir series of Aztec fantasies, is published by Angry Robot. She has won the British Science Fiction Association Award, and been up for the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Visit aliettedebodard.com for more information about her and her work.

Allen Steele

Allen Steele was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his B.A. in Communications from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, and his M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. Before turning to SF, he worked for as a staff writer for daily and weekly newspapers in Tennessee, Missouri, and Massachusetts, freelanced for business and general-interest magazines in the Northeast, and spent a short tenure as a Washington correspondent, covering politics on Capitol Hill. He became a full-time Science Fiction writer in 1988, following publication of his first short story, Live From The Mars Hotel” (Asimov’s, mid-Dec. ‘88). Since then he has become a prolific author of novels, short stories, and essays. His novels include Orbital Decay, Clarke County, Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night, The Jericho Iteration, The Tranquillity Alternative, A King of Infinite Space, Oceanspace, Chronospace, the Coyote Trilogy – Coyote, Coyote Rising, and Coyote Frontier – the Coyote Chronicles – Coyote Horizon and Coyote Destiny – Spindrift, and Galaxy Blues. He has also published five collections of short fiction: His work has appeared in most major American SF magazines, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, Absolute Magnitude, and Science Fiction Age as well as in dozens of anthologies.

Tad Williams

Tad Williams has held more jobs than any sane person should admit to – singing in a band, selling shoes, managing a financial institution, throwing newspapers, and designing military manuals, to name just a few. He also hosted a syndicated radio show for ten years, worked in theater and television production, taught both grade-school and college classes, and worked in multimedia for a major computer firm. He is co-founder of an interactive television company, and is currently writing comic books and film and television scripts as well as novels. Tad and his wife, Deborah Beale, live in the San Francisco Bay Area with their children and far more cats, dogs, turtles, pet ants and banana slugs than they can count.

Jack Mcdevitt

When Jack Mcdevitt started writing he was also living with a full-time job. At that time, in the early 80s, he was the training officer for the North Central Region of the Customs Service. They were based in Chicago but he lived in the suburbs, which meant a 2-1/2 hour daily travel time. So he had to make the time available for writing count. He set aside three hours each evening, between 7:00 and 10:00. But writing can be a struggle, so he tended to find reasons to stay away from his computer. Need some fresh air. Need to get out and think. Need to stare at the shrubbery some more. The result was very little output. Eventually he discovered a better method. Set a goal of a given number of pages each day, or a scene, get it done, and take the rest of the night off. It’s the only system that has ever worked for him. Visit Jack at jackmcdevitt.com

Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of five novels and three short story collections. Her first novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian; her third, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner; and The Jane Austen Book Club was a New York Times bestseller. She has two Nebulas for short fiction, one being for the title story in a new collection, What I Didn’t See. Another story, The Pelican Bar, recently won the Shirley Jackson and the World Fantasy Award. She lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband and her daughter’s dog.

Will McIntosh

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose short stories have appeared in such venues as Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Reader’s Award for short story), Strange Horizons, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year. His first novel, Soft Apocalypse, was released in April from Night Shade Books. It is based on his 2005 short story of the same name, which was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Association and the British Fantasy Society awards. His story Followed, which was published in the anthology The Living Dead, has recently been produced as a short film. Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University; in 2008 he became the father of twins. Check him out at willmcintosh.net

Morgan Sterling Saletta

Morgan Sterling Saletta is trained as an anthropologist and historian of science. When not playing at Indiana Jones among the old standing stones of Europe, he can be found curled up with a good Science Fiction tome, dreaming of life among the stars. He counts three of the loveliest cities in the world home: San Francisco – where he was born, Paris – where he spent his youth, and Melbourne – where his is eagerly awaiting the birth of his first child. Life, the Universe and Everything: reflections on science, Science Fiction and philosophy on the StarShipSofa.Visit him at
morgansaletta.com

Adam Troy Castro

Adam Troy Castro’s short fiction has been nominated for six Nebulas, two Hugos, and two Stokers. He won the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel Emissaries From The Dead. His next books will be a series of middle school novels from Grossett and Dunlap in 2012, starting with Gustav Gloom And The People Taker. He lives in Miami with his wife, Judi, and his insane cats Uma Furman and Meow Farrow.

David Brin

David Brin is a scientist, technology speaker, and author. His 1989 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and the world wide web. A 1998 movie by Kevin Costner was based on The Postman. His fifteen novels, including New York Times Bestsellers, have been translated into more than twenty languages, and won Hugo and Nebula awards. David also appears frequently on shows such as Nova. The Architechs, The Universe and Life After People. He is much in demand as a speaker on topics dealing with trends and the future. Brin’s non-fiction book – The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? – won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association.