Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Tehran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old. Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on a Jane Austen short story of the same name (and which later inspired her current pen name). After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city. She turned to writing fantasy fiction full time in 2006 and hopes never to have to write about Paris Hilton again. Cassie’s first professional writing sale was a short story called “The Girl’s Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord” in a Baen anthology of humor fantasy. Cassie hates working at home alone because she always gets distracted by reality TV shows and the antics of her cats, so she usually sets out to write in local coffee shops and restaurants. She likes to work in the company of her friends, who see that she sticks to her deadlines. City of Bones was her first novel. Sword Catcher is her most recent novel.

I grew up in the Midwest, although I call home a mildly haunted, fey-infested house in metro Atlanta that I share with my husband, Matthew. After receiving my Master of Arts degree in Developmental Psychology, I retired from academia to pen flights of fancy. I also edit legislation for the Georgia General Assembly, which from time to time I suspect is another venture into flights of fancy. I received the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, the 2011 and 2012 Drabblecast People’s Choice Award for Best Story, and was named the 2009 Author of the Year by Bards and Sages. The Dragon and the Stars anthology, edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, with my story, “Mortal Clay, Stone Heart,” won the 2011 Aurora Award for Best English Related Work. My fiction has also received the 2002 Phobos Award; been translated into eight languages; and been a finalist for the Hugo, Washington Science Fiction Association, and British Science Fiction Association awards. My short story collection, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, was published in 2009 and has been used as a textbook at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of California-Davis. Check out my fiction index for a list of all my published and forthcoming works. I am represented by literary agent William Reiss of John Hawkins & Associates, Inc., and I’m a voting member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), the non-profit writers organization founded by Damon Knight in 1965 and presenter of the Nebula awards. I also keep a blog where I indulge in self-absorbed musings and document my writing progress, and I post regular updates on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

Lynne Jamneck is a fiction writer and editor with an MA in English Literature from Auckland University. Her work has earned nominations for the Sir Julius Vogel and Lambda awards. Her short fiction has been published in a variety of venues including Jabberwocky, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and the anthologies So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction and Black Wings of Cthulhu V. She has also edited several anthologies, including *Periphery* (2008), *Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror* (2015), and, co-edited with S.T. Joshi, Gothic Lovecraft (2016).

Delia Sherman (born 1951) is a fantasy writer and editor. Her novel The Porcelain Dove won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. She was born in Tokyo and brought up in New York City. She earned a PhD in Renaissance studies at Brown University and taught at Boston and North-eastern universities. She is the author of the novels Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove (a Mythopoeic Award winner), and Changeling. Sherman co-founded the Interstitial Arts Foundation, dedicated to promoting art that crosses genre borders. She lives in New York City with her wife and sometime collaborator, Ellen Kushner.

Catherine Lundoff’s stories have appeared in over 80 publications including Callisto: A Queer Fiction Journal, The Cainite Conspiracies, Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam, So Fey: Queer Faery Stories, The Mammoth Book of Professor Moriarty Adventures, Tales of the Unanticipated, Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, Farrago’s Wainscot and Best Lesbian Erotica. She is the author of Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and Silver Moon: A Wolves of Wolf's Point Novel (new updated edition) and the editor of Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space), all from Queen of Swords Press. She was also the author of two award-winning collections of lesbian erotica: Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing (Lethe Press, 2007) and Night's Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009) and editor of the fantasy and horror anthology Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (Lethe Press, 2008). She was the co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of the sf/f anthology Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (Lethe Press, 2011) as well as the author of the fantasy/historicals collection A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2011) and the novel Silver Moon. As of 2014, she also writes erotica and erotic romance as Emily L. Byrne, with stories in such anthologies as Forbidden Fruit and Best Lesbian Erotica 20th Anniversary Edition, the novel Medusa's Touch and the short story collections Knife's Edge and Desire.

Scott studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, and earned her PhD. in comparative history. She published her first novel in 1984, and has since written some two dozen science fiction and fantasy works, including three co-authored with her partner, Lisa A. Barnett. Scott's work is known for the elaborate and well-constructed settings. While many of her protagonists are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, this is perfectly integrated into the rest of the story and is rarely a major focus of the story. Shadow Man, alone among Scott's works, focuses explicitly on issues of sexuality and gender. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1986, and has won several Lambda Literary Awards. In addition to writing, Scott also teaches writing, offering classes via her website and publishing a writing guide. Scott lived with her partner, author Lisa A. Barnett, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for 27 years, until the latter's death of breast cancer on May 2, 2006.