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Sheree Renée Thomas is a Memphis-based short fiction writer, poet, and editor whose “black pot mojo” creative work explores ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. She is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press), honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and longlisted for the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and of Shotgun Lullabies (2011), described as “a revelatory work like Jean Toomer’s Cane.” Thomas edited the Dark Matter black speculative fiction volumes that won two World Fantasy Awards. In 2017 she was honored with the L. A. Banks Award for Outstanding Contribution to Speculative Fiction. She has been awarded fellowships from Bread Loaf Environmental, the Millay Colony of the Arts, Cave Canem, VCCA, Blue Mountain Center, Art Omi/Ledig House, the New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. She has received Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017. Her work appears in anthologies and literary journals, including Apex Magazine, FIYAH, Strange Horizons, Memphis Noir, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, Obsidian II, Stories for Chip, Revise the Psalm, Jalada, Circe’s Lament, African Voices, An Alphabet of Embers, Blacktasticon, Mojo Rising, Callaloo, Sycorax’s Daughters, and Harvard’s Transition. She is the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State University, Normal) and the founder of Black Pot Mojo Arts and BSAM Memphis (Black Speculative Arts Movement), a festival held in the historic South Main Arts District that celebrates Afrofuturism art, music, artivism, and scholarship. Follow her on Twitter @blackpotmojo and @shereereneethomas.
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Veronica Brush is the author of the novellas First Grave on Mars and Second Deception on Mars, a murder mystery series about the first colonizers of the red planet. Her work has been featured in several publications including Literary E-Clectic, Listverse, Mad Scientist Journal, and the Bubble Off Plumb anthology. She also has an occasional blog at www.ThemelessWriting.com.
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Artist Marcela Bolívar is from Curitiba, Brazil. She is a digital artist specializing in photomontage techniques. All her compositions are based in photographs that undergo a complex process of transformation, assemblage and detailing, bringing them closer to a pictorial expression. Her clients include Random House US, Harlequin UK, PS Publishing UK, Centipede Press, Envato Ltd, Editorial Planeta, and Wacom Americas.
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Lesley Conner is a writer/editor, managing editor of Apex Publications and Apex Magazine, and a Girl Scout leader. When she isn’t handling her editorial or Girl Scout leader responsibilities, she’s researching fascinating historical figures, rare demons, and new ways to dispose of bodies, interweaving the three into strange and horrifying tales. Her short fiction can be found in Mountain Dead, Dark Tales of Terror, A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre, as well as other places. Her first novel, The Weight of Chains, was published by Sinister Grin Press in September, 2015. She is the co-editor of two anthologies: Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1 and Do Not Go Quietly, both of which she edited with Jason Sizemore. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two daughters, and is currently working on a new novel. To find out all her secrets, you can follow her on Twitter @LesleyConner.
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Raised in the Appalachian hills of southeastern Kentucky, Jason Sizemore is a three-time Hugo Award-nominated editor, writer, and publisher who operates the genre press Apex Publications. He is the author of a collection of dark science fiction and horror shorts titled Irredeemable and the tell-all creative nonfiction For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher. He currently lives in Lexington, KY. For more information visit www.jason-sizemore.com. You can find him on Twitter @apexjason.
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