Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for four decades. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and Nightfire. She has edited numerous anthologies for adults, young adults, and children, including The Best Horror of the Year annual series, When Things Get Dark:Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson, Body Shocks, and Screams from the Dark: 19 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous. She’s won multiple Locus, Hugo, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards. Datlow was recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career. She was honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

She runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in the East Village, New York City, with Matthew Kressel.
 
 
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of the collections Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, and North American Lake Monsters. He is a two-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards. His novella “The Visible Filth” was adapted into the movie Wounds, written and directed by Babak Anvari; North American Lake Monsters was filmed as Monsterland, an anthology series for Hulu. His first novel, The Strange, was recently published. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
 
Laird Barron spent his early years in Alaska. He is the author of several books, including The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, Swift to Chase, and The Wind Began to Howl. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Barron currently resides in the Rondout Valley writing stories about the evil that men do.
 
Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, Locus, and Astounding Award–winning author of dozens of novels and over a hundred short stories. She has spoken on futurism at Google, MIT, DARPA’s 100 Year Starship Project, and the White House, among others. Find her at www.elizabethbear.com.
 

Simon Bestwick is the author of several novels, the novellas Breakwater and Angels of the Silences, and full-length short story collections. His short fiction has appeared in Black Static,The Devil and the Deep,and The London Reader and has been reprinted in TheBest Horror of the Year and Best British Fantasy. Four times shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award, he is married to fellow author Cate Gardner. His latest book is the collection And Cannot Come Again. He’s usually to be found watching films, reading, or writing, which keeps him out of mischief. Most of the time. Bestwick lives on the Wirral while pining for Wales.

Still writing after all these years, three decades to be precise, P. D. Cacek has written over two hundred pieces of short fiction, eight novels, and six theatrical plays. Her latest novels are Second Lives, Second Chances, and Sebastian. Cacek lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Pat Cadigan is the author of more than a dozen books, including two nonfiction titles, a young adult novel, and two Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning novels, Synners and Fools. She has won two Scribe Awards for a novelization of Alita: Battle Angel and an adaptation of William Gibson’s unproduced screenplay for Alien 3, along with three Locus Awards and a Hugo Award for her novelette “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi.” Pat lives in North London with her husband, Chris Fowler.

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.  
Terry Dowling has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine. TheYear’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by Dowling in its twenty-one–year run than any other writer. Dowling is author of Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, 2007), An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Blackwater Days, and The Night Shop: Tales for the Lonely Hours. He can be found at www.terrydowling.com.
 
Paul Finch is an ex-cop and journalist turned bestselling author. He first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the long-running British TV series, The Bill, and has written extensively in horror and fantasy, including for Dr Who.

He is best known for his crime thriller novels, one of which, Strangers, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and for his recent historical adventure novel, Usurper.

Finch lives in Lancashire, England, with his wife and business-partner, Cathy.
 
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Japan’s Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award.
 
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Christopher Fowler was the multi award-winning author of over fifty books and short story collections, including the acclaimed Bryant & May mysteries. His novels include Roofworld, Spanky, The Sand Men, and Hell Train, plus two volumes of memoirs, Paperboy—winner of the Green Carnation Prize—and Film Freak, and The Book of Forgotten Authors. In 2015, he won the CWA Dagger In The Library for his body of work. His most recent novel was Hot Water. Fowler died in 2023.
 
Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of the British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has built a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. His fourteen novels include Valley of Lights, Down River, The Spirit Box, Nightmare, With Angel, and The Authentic William James, which features Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy.
 
John Grant, real name Paul Barnett, was the author of over sixty books, of which about one‑third were novels. His The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters is regarded as the standard work in its field. As co-editor with John Clute of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, he received the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and several other international awards. He received his second Hugo in 2004 for The Chesley Awards with Elizabeth L. Humphrey and Pamela D. Scoville. As technical editor of the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction he shared a rare British Science Fiction Association Special Award. He died in 2020.
 
Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman’s Children, Infinity Dreams, The Book of Bunk, and the Motherless Children trilogy. He is also the author of five widely praised story collections: The Two Sams, American Morons, The Janus Tree, The Ones Who Are Waving, and Tell Me When I Disappear. Hirshberg is a three-time International Horror Guild Award winner and five-time World Fantasy Award finalist. Hirshberg won the Shirley Jackson Award for the novelette, “The Janus Tree.” His Substack is at glenhirshberg.substack.com. He lives with his family and cats in the Pacific Northwest.
 
K. W. Jeter was born in Los Angeles in 1950. His novels include Dr. Adder, The Glass Hammer, and Infernal Devices. His most recent publication is Real Dangerous Place, the latest in his Kim Oh thriller series.
 
Mike O’Driscoll’s fiction has appeared in Black Static, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Interzone, Crime Wave and anthologies including Best New Horror, and TheYear’s Best Fantasy and Horror. O’Driscoll has published several collections of stories, including Unbecoming, The Dream Operator, and Eyepennies, which was the first of a series of standalone novellas. His story, “Sounds Like,” was adapted by Brad Anderson for an episode of the mid-noughts horror anthology show, Masters of Horror.
 
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over seventy books encompassing novels, poetry, criticism, story collections, plays, and essays. Her novel Them won the National Book Award in Fiction in 1970. Oates has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for more than three decades and currently holds the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professorship at Princeton University. 
 
Mark Samuels is an English author of seven short story collections: The White Hands, Black Altars, Glyphotech, The Man Who Collected Machen, Written in Darkness, The Prozess Manifestations, and a “best of” volume, The Age of Decayed Futurity. He is also the author of three short novels: The Face of Twilight, A Pilgrim Stranger, and Witch-Cult Abbey.
 
Lucius Shepard was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, grew up in Daytona, Florida, and lived the last years of his life in Portland, Oregon. His short fiction won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the National Magazine Award, the Locus Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He died in 2014.
Lee Thomas is the Bram Stoker and two-time Lambda Award–winning author of the books Stained, The Dust of Wonderland, The German, Parish Damned, Like Light for Flies, Down on Your Knees, and Distortion. His work has been translated and optioned for film. Lee lives in Austin, Texas, with his husband, John.
 
Conrad Williams is the author of over ten novels (most recently One Who Was With Me), four novellas, and three collections of short stories. He edited the anthologies Dead Letters and Gutshot. He has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Littlewood Arc Prize. He has taught creative writing at a number of universities around the United Kingdom, and has also worked in the video game industry. He lives in Manchester.