New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com, fictionriver.com, pulphousemagazine.com).

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang.

His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

John Helfers is an author and editor currently living in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

During his sixteen years working at Tekno Books (the largest commercial book packager in the nation), he co-edited more than twenty short story anthologies, as well as overseeing many others for publishers in all genres. He has worked with many well-known authors and co-editors, including Lawrence Block, Larry Bond, Elizabeth George, Dale Brown, Stephen Coonts, Nelson DeMille, Charlaine Harris, John Jakes, Anne Perry, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, Walter J. Boyne, Harold W. Coyle, Mercedes Lackey, Margaret Weis, Kevin J. Anderson, Ice-T, Richard Belzer, and Max Allan Collins. He has also edited more than forty novels by such authors as Doug Allyn, Brendan DuBois, James Patrick Hunt, and Jean Rabe.

He has also published more than forty short stories in anthologies such as If I Were An Evil Overlord, Time Twisters, and Places to Be, People to Kill. His fiction has appeared in anthologies, game books, and novels for the Dragonlance®, Transformers®, BattleTech® and Shadowrun® universes. He has written both fiction and nonfiction, including the third novel in the first authorized trilogy based on The Twilight Zone™ television series, the YA novel Tom Clancy’s Net Force Explorers: Cloak and Dagger, and a history of the United States Navy. He also wrote three novels in the Room 59™ espionage series for Gold Eagle/Worldwide Publishing (including the launch book, The Powers That Be) and has written novels in their Deathlands™ and Mack Bolan/Executioner™ series.

His essays on the military have appeared in Beyond Shock and Awe, edited by U.S. Navy SEAL founder Eric Haney, and in the Civil War and World War II volumes of the How to Lose a War series. His most recent nonfiction book, The Vorkosigan Companion (co-edited with Lillian Stewart Carl) a guide to the science fictional world of award-winning author Lois McMaster Bujold, was nominated for a 2009 Hugo Award. In 2010, the original Shadowrun anthology Spells & Chrome won the Origins Award for Best Game-Related Publication. He’s also appeared on writing and editorial panels at national conventions, including GenCon, Love Is Murder, and the World Science Fiction Convention.

Currently he’s working on several tie-in and original projects in both the adult and YA genres. He also operates Stonehenge Art & Word, an editorial and literary fiction management company, which has worked with Mercedes Lackey on her first Elemental Masters shared-world anthology.

Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, an Active member of SFWA and the HWA, and the author of the Tokyo Blood Magic, The Hammer Falls, The Ronin Trilogy, and other novels. His more than thirty short stories appear in Baen Books’ anthology Straight Outta Deadwood, plus Apex Magazine, Tales to Terrify, Fiction River, Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII, and others. As a freelance writer, he has contributed a metric ton of work to such game properties as Firefly Roleplaying Game, Legend of Five Rings, EVE Online, and BattleTech, for which he’s been nominated for a Scribe Award.

He enjoys cycling, collecting martial arts styles and belts, torturing young minds with otherworldly ideas, and monsters of every flavor, especially those with a soft, creamy center.

An award winning writer and actor, Stephanie loves to tell stories in all forms and genres, and has been writing fiction professionally since 2011.

Stephanie does not use pen names, so all of her published writing can be found online with your preferred distributor or at your local bookstore under her name.

All of Stephanie’s published titles are scheduled to become available in paperback, eBook, and audio. To view all of her titles, news, and information, please visit her website at www.stephaniewritt.com.

Award-winning editor and author Kristine Kathryn Rusch describes Annie Reed as “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”

Annie’s one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories that are redefining the boundaries of urban and contemporary fantasy. Annie’s short fiction has also been recognized by inclusion of her story “The Color of Guilt” in The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016.

A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies, Annie’s also thrilled to be a part of the upcoming relaunch of Pulphouse magazine. Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novella “Faster,” which can be found in Hiding Behind the Cowl edited by Blaze Ward. Her novels include Pretty Little Horses, Paper Bullets, A Death in Cumberland, and the upcoming Missing in Cumberland, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to.

To learn more about Annie, visit her website at www.annie-reed.com, where Annie posts a story once a month that's available to read for free.

Angela Penrose lives in Seattle with her husband, five computers, and some unknown number of books, which occupy most of the house. She writes in several genres, but F&SF is her first love. She majored in history at college, but racked up hundreds of units taking whatever classes sounded interesting. This delayed graduation to a ridiculous degree, but (along with obsessive reading) gave her a broad store of weirdly diverse information that comes in wonderfully handy to a writer.