Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series, The Doll Collection, Mad Hatters and March Hares, The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Edited By, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles. She's won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre," was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

Journeyman. Croupier. Editor for "The Rag." Dan grew up in relatively uninteresting times: The Cold War was over and by the time he was in high school it was cool to think Nirvana sucked, yet he still came of age pre-9/11. His values: amorphous, not bound by history. He came of age in a space of time that escapes history. The big deal was the president got a blowjob from some chick, the stock market went wild over some fake businesses, a dollar bought you a gallon of gasoline and the world did not end when the calendar flipped to 2000. He was born to a single mother, nursed from mores and values shaped by AIDS, Madonna and Reaganomics. Dan is necessarily confused, lost, apart from the culture he lives in. He finished his first novel in his early-twenties, which turned out to be an utter disaster. From the ashes and humility of his mistakes he ultimately learned an important skill; how to empathize with a reader. He now uses this experience to select and publish other people's work, and as it turns out, living vicariously through the success of far more talented people is a close second, in his mind, to the glory of being published himself. Dan has no formal literary background, though he's been writing fiction since he was 18. His background is in neuroscience, which he gave up in 2008 when all the world's money magically disappeared and he decided to play poker for a living. Today he lives in New York City where he continues to write fiction and play cards. "The Rag" is his second full-time job.

Brian Hodge, called “a writer of spectacularly unflinching gifts” by Peter Straub, is the award-winning author of ten novels of horror and crime/noir. He’s also written well over 100 short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and four full-length collections. His first collection, The Convulsion Factory, was ranked by critic Stanley Wiater as among the 113 best books of modern horror. He lives in Colorado, where he also dabbles in music and photography; loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga, grappling, and kickboxing, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.

I wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and wrote my first proper short story at 14. I also wrote a novel that year, called “Skin Deep”‘, which I really need to type up. I started sending stories out when I was about 23, and sold my first one, “White Bed”", in 1993. Since then I’ve sold about 70 short stories, two short story collections and three novels. I’m an avid and broad reader but I also like reality TV so don’t always expect intelligent conversation from me.