Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  Damien Angelica Walters’ short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume One, Cassilda’s Song, Nightmare, and Apex. “The Floating Girls: A Documentary,” originally published in Jamais Vu, is on the 2014 Bram Stoker Award ballot for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction.

  Sing Me Your Scars, a collection of her short fiction, is out now from Apex Publications, and Paper Tigers, a novel, is forthcoming from Dark House Press. You can find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or online at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

  Heather Clitheroe lives and works in Calgary, Alberta. Her work has previously appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed Magazine's 'Women Destroy Science Fiction.'

  Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in _The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction_, _Asimov’s_, _Analog_, _Clarkesworld_, _Lightspeed_, and _Strange Horizons_, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Ken’s debut novel, _The Grace of Kings_, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, was published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories, _The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories_, in November of 2015.

  Sarah Goslee wants to know everything, and then to tell everyone else about it. She's a scientist because that's how you learn things that nobody else knows, writes fiction and nonfiction indiscriminately, makes things out of string, and dresses like a Viking on weekends. She writes about science, fiction, and other obsessions at http://www.sarahgoslee.com.

  Sunil Patel is a Bay Area fiction writer and playwright who has written about everything from ghostly cows to talking beer. His plays have been performed at San Francisco Theater Pub and San Francisco Olympians Festival, and his fiction has appeared in Saturday Night Reader, Fireside Magazine, and The Book Smugglers. Plus, he reviews books for Lightspeed, and he is Assistant Editor of Mothership. Find out more at ghostwritingcow.com, where you can watch his plays, or follow him @ghostwritingcow. His Twitter has been described as "engaging," "exclamatory," and "crispy, crunchy, peanut buttery."

  Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since the age of eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently Shelter; two fantasy series, The Books of Outremer and Selling Water by the River; and two ghost stories, House of Doors and House of Bells. As Daniel Fox, he has published a Chinese-based fantasy series, beginning with Dragon in Chains; as Ben Macallan an urban fantasy series, beginning with Desdaemona. A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. 2014 saw publication of two new books, a short novel—Being Small—and a collection, Bitter Waters (shortlisted for a Lambda Award). His time as crimewriter-in-residence on a sculpture project in Sunderland resulted in the earlier collection Blood Waters. His first play, A Cold Coming, premiered and toured in 2007. He is a prizewinning ex-poet, and has been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000. Chaz has recently married and moved from Newcastle to California, with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.

  B. Morris Allen grew up in a house full of books that traveled the world. Nowadays, they're e-books, and lighter to carry, but they're still multiplying. He's been a biochemist, an activist, and a lawyer, and now works as a foreign aid consultant. When he's not roaming the world fighting corruption, he's on the Oregon coast, chatting with seals. In the occasional free moment, he works on his own speculative stories of love and disaster. Find out more at www.BMorrisAllen.com

  Seanan McGuire writes things. It is difficult to make her stop. She spends a lot of time neck-deep in swamps, and is very fond of frogs. So fond that sometimes, she's the reason there's a frog in the kitchen. You're welcome. Keep track of her at www.seananmcguire.com.

  Wendy N. Wagner is the author of Skinwalkers, a Pathfinder Tales novel inspired by Viking lore. Her short fiction has appeared in many successful anthologies, including Shattered Shields, Armored, and The Way of the Wizard, and magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies and The Lovecraft eZine. She is the Nonfiction Editor of Women Destroy Science Fiction!, which was named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family.

  James Lowder has worked extensively on both sides of the editorial blotter. As a writer his publications include the bestselling, widely translated dark fantasy novels Prince of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose, short fiction for such anthologies as Shadows Over Baker Street and Truth Until Paradox, and comic book scripts for DC, Image, Moonstone, and Desperado. As an editor he’s directed novel lines or series for both large and small publishing houses, and has helmed more than a dozen critically acclaimed anthologies, including Madness on the Orient Express, Hobby Games: The 100 Best, and the Books of Flesh zombie trilogy. His work has received five Origins Awards and an ENnie Award, and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award and the Stoker Award.

  Andy Duncan has won a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and three World Fantasy Awards, most recently for the novella “Wakulla Springs,” written with Ellen Klages (Tor.com, 2013). Upcoming is his third collection, An Angel of Utopia: New and Selected Stories (Small Beer, 2016). His stories have appeared in magazines including Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Conjunctions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Weird Tales; in anthologies including the Eclipse, Starlight and Living Dead series; and in multiple year’s-best volumes. A Clarion West graduate, he has taught Clarion West twice (2005 and 2015) and Clarion twice (2004 and 2013) and is a member of the permanent Sturgeon Award jury. He is a tenured associate professor in the English department at Frostburg State University, where he coordinates the journalism minor and is faculty adviser to the independent student news organization, The Bottom Line. A native of Batesburg, South Carolina, he lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, Sydney.

  John Barth described Cat Rambo’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia” — her stories take place in a universe where chickens aid the lovelorn, Death is just another face on the train, and Bigfoot gives interviews to the media on a daily basis. She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow.

  Among the places in which her 200+ fiction publications have appeared are ASIMOV’S, CLARKESWORLD, and BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES. Her collection, EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT was an Endeavour Award finalist in 2010 and followed her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, THE SURGEON’S TALE AND OTHER STORIES. Her most recent collection is NEAR + FAR, from Hydra House Books, which contains Nebula-nominated “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain”. She was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2014 for her work with FANTASY MAGAZINE. Her nonfiction work includes AD ASTRA: THE SFWA 50TH ANNIVERSARY COOKBOOK (co-edited with Fran Wilde) and CREATING AN ONLINE PRESENCE FOR WRITERS. Her fiction forthcoming in 2016 includes novel HEARTS OF TABAT and fantasy collection NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.

  Vivienne Pustell is a graduate student at Stanford University and a former high school English teacher. She has presented her fiction at San Francisco's Litquake and to her cat. This is her first publication.

  Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantastic who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She writes short stories, nonfiction, novellas, and novels. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Nameless, Little Dead Red, and her latest release, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, from Ragnarok Publications. Mercedes lives and works in Sin City, and you can reach her at www.mercedesyardley.com.

  Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can
be found in the collections Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press), A Mayse-Bikhl (Papaveria Press), Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books), and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books), and in numerous anthologies including The Humanity of Monsters, Dreams from the Witch-House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror, Aliens: Recent Encounters, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, and The Best of Not One of Us. She is currently senior poetry editor at Strange Horizons; she holds master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats.

  Caroline Ratajski is a writer and software engineer currently living in Silicon Valley, California, USA. Previously published as Morgan Dempsey, her short fiction is currently available in Broken Time Blues and Danse Macabre, as well as at Redstone Science Fiction. She is represented by Barry Goldblatt of Barry Goldblatt Literary, LLC.

  z.m. quỳnh huddles in a room tinged with blue nursing calloused hands worn down from the chronic transcription of restless dreams. past lives have included scattered jaunts through urban minefields with each misstep hinting at a life less easily mapped out by this amateur cartographer. irrationally drawn to moving mountains one stone at a time, quỳnh has tackled the tasks of labor organizer, juvenile hall literacy coordinator, artistic director of a guerrilla feminist theatre troupe, mother, mentor and best friend (all rolled up in one), civil rights advocate, guardian ad litem for foster care youth, waitstaff at one too many late night diners (hey…free food—what?), slam poet, urban horticulturalist, visual junk artist, passionate lover, and cocktail server/candy salesperson at all night rave parties (hungry people pay $5 for candy bars!). Genius Loci will be quỳnh’s debut in spec fic.

  J. Daniel Batt is a recovering high school English teacher with a degree in Language Arts. He is

  finishing his MFA in creative Writing through National University. Jason and his wife Karen

  have three children: two boys, Tristan and Keaghan, and one girl, Aisleyn. He works with the 100 Year Starship as their Creative and Editorial Director. In this role, he works to bridge the gap between scientists and science fiction writers. He is also the editor for the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Symposium conference Proceedings, a collection of nearly 2000 pages of the latest research and thought about interstellar exploration and travel. He is the organizer of their annual Science Fiction Night, “Telling the Story,” bringing science fiction authors and scientists together to discuss the impact of science fiction on space exploration, and the lead for the upcoming Canopus Awards, celebrating the best in interstellar writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

  He serves on the Advisory Board for the Lifeboat Foundation with their Media/Arts Board, Futurism Board, and the Space Settlement Board. He served as a judge for the Lifeboat to the Stars award for science fiction literature presented at the 2013 Campbell Conference. Through the Lifeboat Foundation, he is currently editing their science fiction anthology titled Visions of the Future with stories from a wide array of authors.

  His short fiction has appeared in Bastion Magazine and Bewildering Stories. He also does marketing writing for television and film. He is on Twitter at twitter.com/jdanielbatt and online at jdanielbatt.com

  Katie Cord lives in the Pacific Northwest with her three dogs. She is the owner of Evil Girlfriend Media, a publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She spends her days creating and her nights nursing. She is the author of He Left Her at the Altar, She Left Him to the Zombies, and the forthcoming novel, Maxine. She can be found at www.katiecord.com and www.evilgirlfriendmedia.com.

  Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian writer and academic. NeWest Press published her first novel, The Paradise Engine in 2013.

  Haralambi Markov is a Bulgarian critic, editor, and writer of things weird and fantastic. A Clarion 2014 graduate, Markov enjoys fairy tales, obscure folkloric monsters, and inventing death rituals (for his stories, not his neighbors…usually). He blogs at The Alternative Typewriter and tweets at @HaralambiMarkov. His stories have appeared in Geek Love, Electric Velocipede, TOR.com, Exalted 3 and are slated to appear in Weird Fiction Review, Stories for Chip and Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling. He’s currently working on outdoing his output for the past three years and procrastinating all the way.

  Scott Edelman has published more than 85 short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and in anthologies such as Why New Yorkers Smoke, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three, Crossroads: Southern Tales of the Fantastic, Men Writing SF as Women, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Forbidden Planets, Summer Chills, and The Mammoth Book of Monsters. His most recent short story was published in the anthology The Monkey’s Other Paw: Revived Classic Stories of Dread and the Dead.

  A collection of his horror fiction, These Words Are Haunted came out from Wildside Books in 2001, and a standalone novella The Hunger of Empty Vessels was published in 2009 by Bad Moon Books. He is also the author of the Lambda Award-nominated novel The Gift (Space & Time, 1990) and the collection Suicide Art (Necronomicon, 1992). His collection of zombie fiction, What Will Come After, came in 2010 from PS Publishing, and was a finalist for both the Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Memorial Award. His science fiction short fiction has been collected in What We Still Talk About from Fantastic Books.

  He has been a Stoker Award finalist five times, both in the category of Short Story and Long Fiction. Additionally, Edelman worked for the Syfy Channel for more than thirteen years as editor of Science Fiction Weekly, SCI FI Wire, and Blastr. He was the founding editor of Science Fiction Age, which he edited during its entire eight-year run. He also edited SCI FI magazine, previously known as Sci-Fi Entertainment, for more a decade, as well as two other SF media magazines, Sci-Fi Universe and Sci-Fi Flix. He has been a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor.

  Laura Anne Gilman is the Nebula-nominated author of more than 20 fantasy and SF novels and novellas, including the forthcoming SILVER ON THE ROAD, Book 1 of The Devil’s West (Saga Press/Simon & Schuster). Ms. Gilman also writes mysteries under the name L.A. Kornetsky. She hangs out on Twitter as LAGilman, and blogs at http://www.lauraannegilman.net

  Thoraiya Dyer is an award-winning Australian writer. Her short science fiction and fantasy has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Analog, Nature and Cosmos, among others (for a full list, see www.thoraiyadyer.com). Her collection of four original stories, Asymmetry, available from Twelfth Planet Press, was called "unsettling, poignant, marvellous" by Nancy Kress. A lapsed veterinarian, her other interests include bushwalking, archery and travel. The first book in her TITAN’S FOREST trilogy is forthcoming from Tor books in 2016/17.

  Steven H Silver has worked as a writer, reviewer, editor, and publisher. His stories have appeared in Black Gate, Helix, and various anthologies. He was the founder and original editor and publisher of ISFiC Press and has also edited books for DAW Books and NESFA Press. Steven also serves as SFWA's Events Manager.

  Former film critic and teacher turned award-wnning horror author Gemma Files is best known for her Weird Western Hexslinger Series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also written two collections of short fiction, a story cycle (We Will All Go Down Together, CZP), and two chapbooks of speculative poetry. Her next novel, Experimental Film, will be out in November. You can learn more about her than you probably want to know by reading http://handful-ofdust. livejournal.com.

  Keris McDonald lives in the not-very-grim north of England and has seen her horror short stories published in 'All Hallows' magazine and anthologies by Ashtree Press and Hic Dragones Books. Her story "The Co
at Off His Back" appears in 'Best Horror of the Year, vol.7" (ed. Ellen Datlow). However, she spends most of her writing time under the pen name ‘Janine Ashbless’, spinning tales of supernatural erotica and passionate romantic adventure for publishers such as HarperCollins and Virgin. Her ninth novel, "Cover Him With Darkness," a tale of fallen angels and religious conspiracy, was published in 2014 by Cleis Press. "The Sleck" was inspired by the post-industrial landscape of County Durham and childhood memories of visiting her aunts and uncles in Newcastle, as well as stories of “sacred” wells and springs. “Sleck,” by the way, is a very old dialect word for “stinking mud”.

  Anatoly Belilovsky is a Russian-American author and translator of speculative fiction. His work appeared in the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology, Ideomancer, Nature Futures, Stupefying Stories, Immersion Book of Steampunk, Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, Daily SF, Kasma, Kazka, and has been podcast by Cast of Wonders, Tales of Old, and Toasted Cake. He was born in a city that went through six or seven owners in the last century, all of whom used it to do a lot more than drive to church on Sundays; he is old enough to remember tanks rolling through it on their way to Czechoslovakia in 1968. After being traded to the US for a shipload of grain and a defector to be named later (see wikipedia, Jackson-Vanik amendment), he learned English from Star Trek reruns and went on to become a paediatrician in an area of New York where English is only the fourth most commonly used language. He has neither cats nor dogs, but was admitted into SFWA in spite of this deficiency. He blogs about writing at loldoc.net.