Jill Pantozzi, aka The Nerdy Bird, is a journalist, editor, and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She's the former Deputy Editor of io9.gizmodo.com (G/O Media) and former Editor in Chief of The Mary Sue (Abrams Media. She’s also written for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Publisher’s Weekly, MTV News, IGN, HitFix/Uproxx, tor.com, Blastr (Syfy Wire), Comic Book Resources, Newsarama. Jill wrote "IncrediBuilds: Marvel: Infinity Gauntlet," "IncrediBuilds: Ant-Man and the Wasp," and "IncrediBuilds: Black Panther" for publisher Insight Editions. She's also contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and another titled "Hey Kids, Comics!" and wrote a comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s “Comic Store Heroes,” a documentary on the lives of comic book fans, and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, “Legends of the Knight.” Diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy at two and a half, Jill has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the Muscular Dystrophy Association since she was seven and has appeared for over twenty years on the New York broadcast of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

Glen Weldon is a contributor to NPR's pop culture blog Monkey See, where he posts weekly about comics and comics culture. He also reviews books and movies for NPR.org and is a regular panelist on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Over the course of his career, he has spent time as a theater critic, a science writer, an oral historian, a writing teacher, a bookstore clerk, a PR flack, a seriously terrible marine biologist and a slightly better-than-average competitive swimmer. Weldon is the author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, a cultural history of the iconic characte. His fiction and criticism have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Story, The Iowa Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Dallas Morning-News, Washington City Paper, Quarterly West, the American Literary Review and many other publications. He received an NEA Arts Journalism Fellowship, a Ragdale Writing Fellowship and a PEW Fellowship in the Arts for Fiction.

Gene Hult is a writer, publisher, and teacher living in the suburbs south of Houston, Texas with his dog Henry. He has more than 120 books for children published under his pseudonym J. E. Bright. His imprint, Brighten Press, publishes poetry, humor, and fiction for all ages. Please visit jebright.com and brightenpress.com for more information.

See also John Harkness. Steve Englehart went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After a stint in the Army, he moved to New York and began to write for Marvel Comics. That led to long runs on Captain America, The Hulk, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and a dozen other titles. Midway through that period he moved to California (where he remains), and met and married his wife Terry. He was finally hired away from Marvel by DC Comics, to be their lead writer and revamp their core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern). He did, but he also wrote a solo Batman series (immediately dubbed the "definitive" version) that later became Warner Brothers' first Batman film (the good one). After that he left comics for a time, traveled in Europe for a year, wrote a novel (The Point Man™), and came back to design video games for Atari (E.T., Garfield). But he still liked comics, so he created Coyote™, which within its first year was rated one of America's ten best series. Other projects he owned (Scorpio Rose™, The Djinn™) were mixed with company series (Green Lantern [with Joe Staton], Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four). Meanwhile, he continued his game design for Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Brøderbund. And once he and Terry had their two sons, Alex and Eric, he naturally told them stories. Rustle's Christmas Adventure was first devised for them. He went on to add a run of mid-grade books to his bibliography, including the DNAgers™ adventure series, and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright brothers selected by NASA as the basis for their school curriculum on the invention of the airplane. In 1992 Steve was asked to co-create a comics pantheon called the Ultraverse. One of his contributions, The Night Man, became not only a successful comics series, but also a television show. That led to more Hollywood work, including animated series such as Street Fighter, GI Joe, and Team Atlantis for Disney.

Alan Brennert is the author of the historical novels Palisades Park, Honolulu (chosen one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post), and Moloka'i, which won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year (and has sold over 600,000 copies since publication). It was also a 2012 One Book, One San Diego selection. He has won an Emmy Award and a People's Choice Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law, and his short story "Ma Qui" was honored with a Nebula Award. His new novel, Daughter of Moloka'i, will be published by St. Martin's Press on February 19, 2019. Follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alan.brennert. http://us.macmillan.com/palisadespark...

James Kakalios is a physics professor at the University of Minnesota. Known within the scientific community for his work with amorphous semiconductors, granular materials, and 1/f noise, he is known to the general public as the author of the book The Physics of Superheroes, which considers comic book superheroes from the standpoint of fundamental physics. Kakalios, who earned PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985, began his comic book collection as a graduate student as a way to relieve stress. At Minnesota, he taught a freshman seminar that focused on the physics of superheroes as a way to motivate students to think about physics. This course gained great popularity as an enticing alternative to the typical inclined planes and pulleys of physics. The seminar was a great success, leading to articles in popular magazines including People, lectures on the subject, and publication of The Physics of Superheroes. In his talks, favorite examples are the death of Gwen Stacy (Spider-Man's girlfriend), "can Superman jump over tall buildings and what does this tell us about Krypton?", the high-velocity actions of The Flash, and the shrinking problem of the Atom. His analysis of Gwen Stacy's death eventually became integral to the plot of a new Spider-Man comic. Kakalios is of the opinion that the most unrealistic aspect of the comic-book universe is often the sociology. He notes that pedestrians don't usually provide running monologues describing everything around them. There is one aspect of the story of the Atom that he does not question, however. The Atom begins as a physics professor, who encounters a chunk of white dwarf star and picks it up. "By a conservative estimate, he is lifting about 5000 metric tons. This is not unreasonable," Kakalios will say at the end of his talk, taking off his glasses before walking offstage. "We physics professors are just that strong." He provides content on the DVD of the film Watchmen. Under extras, he is filmed discussing the physics of superheroes. Dr. Kakalios has been nominated by the University of Minnesota to be one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Speakers who will speak about his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010.

Award-winning author of books for all ages, including one that changed history and inspired the first documentary based on a nonfiction picture book. I've had the privilege of being invited to speak at schools and conferences in 30+ states and a dozen countries from Thailand to Tanzania.

From the Author's Website John Zakour is a humor/sf/fantasy writer with a Master's degree in Human Behavior and slowly plugging away at his Ph.D. He has written zillions (well, thousands) of gags for syndicated comics and comedians (including: Rugrats, Grimmy, Bound and Gagged, Dennis the Menace and Joan River's old TV show.) John also writes his own syndicated comic, Working Daze for United Media. John has been the regular cartoonist for Geek.com and has sold cartoons or gags to hundreds of journals and magazines. John is also a contributor to Nickelodeon magazine writing Fairly Odd Parents and Jimmy Neutron comic books. Recently he has started writing Simpsons comics for Bongo. John’s first humorous SF mystery book, The Plutonium Blonde (DAW 2001, co-written with Larry Ganem and started of as an interactive web story for the Sci Fi channel) was named one of the top 30 SF books of 2001 by The Chronicle of Science Fiction who called it, “the funniest SF book of 2001”. His second novel, The Doomsday Brunette (DAW Feb 2004) has made the Locus best sellers list. The third book in the series, The RadioActive Redhead, also made the SF best seller list. Besides his novels John has sold numerous short stories to anthologies and magazines. John has written the dialog and song lyrics for Frogwares Software computer game Around the World in 80 days. For something a bit different John writes skits for the Harlem Rockets basketball team. In the past, John has written and helped develop the first year and season of the comic book and animated series: Caramel Crew, for Mobtoons. John also has written for the independent SF TV show, “Realm of the Mind”. John also helped develop an animated sf horror series, called Prime Squad for MUV Technologies in India. His romantic comedy, Skin Deep about an ordinary guy who can’t believe the hottest girl on campus is actually in love with him has won a couple of writing awards. John has also written for Ebru tv. John use to be a database programmer / web guru / science writer for NYSAES. When he's not writing or studying John likes to play softball, watch TV and hang out with his wife and son. He use to do judo and karate, but those have been replaced by tai chi and archery.