Kelly Sue DeConnick’s work spans stage, comics, film and television. Ms. DeConnick first came to prominence as a comics writer, where she is best known for reinventing the Carol Danvers as “Captain Marvel” at Marvel and for the Black Label standard-setting Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons at DC. Her independent comics Bitch Planet and Pretty Deadly (both from Image Comics) have ranked as New York Times best-sellers and been honored with Eisner Awards, British Fantasy Awards and Hugo nominations. Ms. DeConnick’s screen work includes stints on Captain Marvel, a film that earned $1B for Disney worldwide, and 2023’s forthcoming The Marvels with Marvel Studios; in addition to having consulted on features for Skydance and ARRAY, and developed television for NBCUniversal, Legendary Entertainment and HBOMax. Her most recent stage work is the mythic spectacle AWAKENING, which opened at the Wynn Resort Las Vegas in November 2022. Mission-driven, Ms. DeConnick is also a founding partner at Good Trouble Productions, where she has helped to produce non-fiction and educational comics including the “Hidden Voices” and “Recognized” series for NY Public Schools and Congressman John Lewis’ Run, in partnership with Abrams Comics. In 2015, Ms. DeConnick founded the #VisibleWomen Project, whose mission is to help women and other marginalized genders find paid work in comics and its related industries. The project continues to this day and recently expanded in partnership with Dani Hedlund of Brink Literacy. Ms. DeConnick lives in Portland, OR with her husband, writer Matt Fraction, and their two children.

I'm a writer, editor, artist and story lover. I've written the New York Times Bestselling True Blood: All Together Now GN and edited The Last Unicorn. Other writerly titles: True Blood: The French Quarter, Servant of the Bones, Illyria: Haunted, Angel, and contributed to Whedonistas. I've edited books like Fables, Lucifer, The Sandman: Endless Nights, and Death: At Death's Door, and Womanthology. I'm a big old geeky nerd who loves talking about stories and storytelling. Hope you like my work!

Toby Litt was born in Bedfordshire, England. He studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury, winning the 1995 Curtis Brown Fellowship. He lived in Prague from 1990 to 1993 and published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled Adventures in Capitalism, in 1996. His latest project is A Writer's Diary, on Substack. In 2018, he published Wrestliana, his memoir about wrestling, writing, losing and being a man. His latest novel, Patience, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2019. It was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. He is the author of the novels: Beatniks: An English Road Movie (1997), a modern On the Road transposed to middle-England; Corpsing (2000), a thriller set in London's Soho; and deadkidsongs (2001), a dark tale of childhood. Exhibitionism (2002), is a collection of short stories that explore the boundaries of sex and sexuality. A short story by Toby Litt was included in the anthology All Hail the New Puritans (2000), edited by Matt Thorne and Nicholas Blincoe. In 2003 Toby Litt was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College.

Lauren Beukes is an award-winning, best-selling novelist who also writes screenplays, TV shows, comics and journalism. Her books have been translated into 26 languages and have been optioned for film and TV. Her awards include the Arthur C Clarke Award, the prestigious University of Johannesburg prize, the August Derleth Prize, the Strand Critics Choice Award and the RT Thriller of the Year. She’s been honoured in South Africa’s parliament and most recently won the Mbokondo Award from the Department of Arts and Culture, celebrating women in the arts for her work in the Creative Writing field. She is the author of Broken Monsters, about art, ambition, damaged people and not-quite-broken cities, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer, the nature of violence, and how we are haunted by history, Zoo City, a phantasmagorical noir set in Johannesburg which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and Moxyland, a dystopian political thriller about a corporate apartheid state where people are controlled by their cell phones. Her first book was a feminist pop-history, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past, which has recently been reprinted. Her comics work includes Survivors' Club, an original Vertigo comic with Dale Halvorsen and Ryan Kelly, the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom with Inaki Miranda, and a Wonder Woman one-shot for kids, “The Trouble With Cats” in Sensation Comics, set in Mozambique and Soweto and drawn by Mike Maihack. Her film and TV work includes directing the documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands, about Cape Town’s biggest female impersonation beauty pageant. The film won best LGBT film at the San Diego Black Film Festival. She was the showrunner on South Africa’s first full length animated TV series, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika which ran for 104 half hour episodes from 2006-2009 on SABC3. She’s also written for the Disney shows Mouk and Florrie’s Dragons and on the satirical political puppet show,ZANews and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s South African Story. Before that she was a freelance journalist for eight years, writing about electricity cable thieves, TB, circumcision, telemedicine, great white sharks, homeless sex workers, Botswana’s first female high court judge, and Barbie as a feminist icon for magazines ranging from The Sunday Times Lifestyle to Nature Medicine, Colors, The Big Issue and Marie Claire. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her daughter. www.laurenbeukes.com Twitter.com/laurenbeukes Instagram.com/laurenbeukes Facebook.com/laurenbeukes Awards & Achievements 2015 South Africa’s Mbokondo Award for Women In The Arts: Creative Writing 2014 August Derleth Award for The Shining Girls 2014 Strand Critics Choice Award for The Shining Girls 2014 NPR Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters 2014 LA Times Best Books of the Year Broken Monsters 2013 University of Johannesburg Literature Prize for The Shining Girls 2013 RT Thriller of the Year for The Shining Girls 2013 WHSmith Richard & Judy BookClub Choice 2013 Exclusive Books’ Bookseller’s Choice for The Shining Girls 2013 Amazon Best Mysteries and Thrillers for The Shining Girls 2011 Kitschies Red Tentacle for Zoo City 2010 Arthur C Clarke Award for Zoo City

Aleš Kot is a post-Chernobyl, pre-revolution, Czech-born, California-based writer/producer who started in graphic novels and now makes films, television, and an occasional novella. A. believe in art and community. A. doesn't believe in borders nor cops. A. believes in love, which they know is a very Libra answer. And what about it?