by Renee Ahdieh
PAUL S. KEMP is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels Star Wars: Crosscurrent, Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived, and Star Wars: Riptide, as well as numerous short stories and fantasy novels, including The Hammer and the Blade and A Discourse in Steel. Kemp lives and works in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with his wife, children, and a couple of cats.
MUR LAFFERTY is a writer, podcast producer, gamer, geek, and martial artist. She is the host of the award-winning podcast I Should Be Writing, and the host of the Angry Robot Books podcast. She is the winner of the 2013 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She loves to run, practice kung fu (Northern Shaolin five animals style), play Skyrim and Fallout 3, and hang out with her fabulous geeky husband and their eleven-year-old daughter.
KEN LIU is one of the most lauded authors in the field of American literature. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Locus, Sidewise, and Science Fiction & Fantasy translation awards, he has also been nominated for the Sturgeon Award. His short story “The Paper Menagerie” is the first work of fiction to simultaneously win the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards. He also translated the 2015 Hugo Award winning novel The Three-Body Problem, written by Cixin Liu, which is the first novel to ever win the Hugo Award in translation. The Grace of Kings, his debut novel, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series set in a universe he and his wife, artist Lisa Tang Liu, created together. It was a finalist for a Nebula Award and the recipient of the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He lives near Boston with his family.
GRIFFIN MCELROY is an Austin-based writer, video producer, and podcaster, and co-founder of the video game website Polygon. He co-hosts My Brother, My Brother and Me, an advice podcast, with—you guessed it—his two brothers, and serves as Dungeon Master for The Adventure Zone, a D&D Actual Play podcast he created with his family. He and his wife, Rachel, host a Bachelor franchise recap podcast called Rose Buddies and also recently co-founded a human baby called Henry.
JOHN JACKSON MILLER is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith, and the Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic graphic novel collections from Marvel, among many other novels and comics. His website is farawaypress.com.
NNEDI OKORAFOR was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young-adult books, and she won a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death. Okorafor’s books are inspired by her Nigerian heritage and her many trips to Africa. She lives in Chicago with her daughter, Anyaugo, and family.
DANIEL JOSÉ OLDER is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, composer, and author of the Bone Street Rumba novels, including Midnight Taxi Tango and Half-Resurrection Blues, and the YA novel Shadowshaper. He has been nominated for the Kirkus Prize, the Locus and World Fantasy awards, and the Andre Norton Award. Shadowshaper was named a New York Times Best Book of the Year.
MALLORY ORTBERG is Slate’s “Dear Prudence.” She has written for Gawker, New York magazine, The Hairpin, and The Atlantic. She is the co-creator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women. She lives in the Bay Area with her laptop and her cat.
BETH REVIS is the author of the New York Times bestselling Across the Universe series, the companion novel The Body Electric, a twisty contemporary novel A World Without You, and numerous short stories. A native of North Carolina, Beth is currently working on a new novel for teens. She lives in rural North Carolina with her boys: one husband, one son, and two dogs roughly the size of Ewoks.
MADELEINE ROUX received her BA in creative writing and acting from Beloit College in 2008. In the spring of 2009, Madeleine completed an honors term at Beloit College, proposing, writing, and presenting a full-length historical fiction novel. Shortly after, she began the experimental fiction blog Allison Hewitt Is Trapped, which quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, bringing a unique serial fiction experience to readers. Born in Minnesota, she now lives and works in Wisconsin where she enjoys the local beer and preparing for the eventual and inevitable zombie apocalypse.
GREG RUCKA is the New York Times bestselling author of almost two dozen novels, including Star Wars: Before the Awakening and Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills, and has won multiple Eisner Awards for his graphic novels. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.
GARY D. SCHMIDT is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars. He lives with his family on a 150-year-old farm in Alto, Michigan, where he splits wood, plants gardens, writes, and feeds the wild cats that drop by.
CAVAN SCOTT is an author and comic writer for both adults and children. He has written for a large number of high-profile series including Doctor Who, Star Wars, Adventure Time, Judge Dredd, Disney Infinity, and Warhammer 40,000. He is the writer of Titan Comics’ Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor miniseries and currently writes Minnie the Minx and Gnasher & Gnipper for legendary British comic The Beano. A member of both The Society of Authors and the Dennis the Menace Fan Club, Cavan lives near Bristol with his wife, two daughters, and an inflatable Dalek named Desmond.
CHARLES SOULE is a New York Times bestselling, Brooklyn-based comic book writer, musician, and attorney. He is best known for writing Daredevil, She-Hulk, Death of Wolverine (inspiration for the film Logan), and various Star Wars comics from Marvel Comics, as well as his creator-owned series Curse Words from Image Comics and the award-winning political sci-fi epic Letter 44 from Oni Press. His debut novel, The Oracle Year, will be published in 2018 by HarperCollins.
SABAA TAHIR grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel. There she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash, and playing the guitar badly. She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor. She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks, and all things nerd. Tahir currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
ELIZABETH WEIN was born in New York City, grew up abroad, and currently lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She is an avid flyer of small planes and holds a PhD in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. Elizabeth is the author of Code Name Verity, winner of the Edgar Award in the Young Adult category and a Printz Medal Honor Book; Rose Under Fire, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and Black Dove, White Raven, winner of the Children’s Africana Book Award.
GLEN WELDON has been a theater critic, a science writer, an oral historian, a writing teacher, a bookstore clerk, a PR flack, a movie usher, a spectacularly inept marine biologist, and a slightly better-than-ept competitive swimmer. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, and many other places. He is a panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour and reviews books and comics for NPR.
CHUCK WENDIG is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He’s the author of many novels, including Star Wars: Aftermath; Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt; Star Wars: Empire’s End; Blackbirds; Atlanta Burns; Zer0es; and the YA Heartland series. He is co-writer of the short film Pandemic and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus. He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with his wife, son, and red dog.
WIL WHEATON began acting in commercials at the age of seven, and by the age of ten had appeared in numerous television and film roles. In 1986, his critically acclaimed role in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me put him in the public spotlight, where he remains to this day. In 1987, Wil was cast as Wesley Crusher in the hit television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Recently, Wil has held recurring roles on TNT’s Leverage and SyFy’s Eureka; he currently recurs on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory. He played Axis of Anarchy leader Fawkes in Felicia Day’s webseries The Guild, and just completed writing, producing,
and hosting The Wil Wheaton Project on Syfy. He is also the creator and host of the multiple award-winning webseries TableTop, now in its fourth season.
As a voice actor, Wil has been featured in videogames such as There Came an Echo, Broken Age, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Brütal Legend, DC Universe Online, Fallout: New Vegas, and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. He has lent his voice talents to animated series including Family Guy, Legion of Superheroes, Ben 10: Alien Force, Generator Rex, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Teen Titans.
As an author, he’s published many acclaimed books, among them: Just A Geek, Dancing Barefoot, and The Happiest Days of Our Lives. All of his books grew out of Wil’s immensely popular, award-winning weblog, which he created and maintains at WIL WHEATON dot NET. While most celebrities are happy to let publicists design and maintain their websites, Wil took a decidedly different turn when he started blogging in 2001, when he designed and coded his website on his own.
Wil personally maintains a popular social media presence, including a popular Tumblr, Facebook page, and Google Plus page. His frequently cited Twitter account is followed by more than 2.75 million people.
Wil is widely recognized as one of the original celebrity bloggers and is a respected voice in the blogging community. In 2003, Forbes.com readers voted WWdN the Best Celebrity Weblog. Wil’s blog was chosen by C|Net for inclusion in their one hundred most influential blogs, and is an “A” lister, according to Blogebrity.com. In the 2002 Weblog Awards (the Bloggies), Wil won every category in which he was nominated, including Weblog of the Year. In 2007, Wil was nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Bloggie, alongside Internet powerhouses Slashdot and Fark. In the 2008 Weblog Awards, Wil was voted the Best Celebrity Blogger, and in 2009 Forbes named him the fourteenth most influential Web celebrity. This is all amusing to Wil, who doesn’t think of himself as a celebrity, but is instead “just this guy, you know?”
GARY WHITTA is the former editor in chief of PC Gamer magazine and is now an award-winning screenwriter best known for the explosive post-apocalyptic thriller The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington, and as co-writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He also co-wrote the Will Smith sci-fi adventure After Earth, and was writer and story consultant on Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, for which he was the co-recipient of a BAFTA Award for Best Story. Most recently he served as writer on the animated TV series Star Wars: Rebels. He also wrote the film adaptations of the Mark Millar comic Starlight and David Petersen’s Mouse Guard for 20th Century Fox, and the David Fisher book The War Magician for StudioCanal and Benedict Cumberbatch. His first novel, Abomination, is now available, and his original comic series Oliver arrives via Image Comics in 2017. Born and raised in London, England, Gary currently lives with his wife and daughter in San Francisco.
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