Staff

Amanda Helms (she/her) is a biracial fantasy, science fiction, and sometimes horror writer whose stories have appeared in or are forthcoming from FIYAH, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other fine venues. She and her family live in Colorado. Though all of them are natives, none ski or snowboard, proving that such creatures indeed exist. When not reading or writing, she’s likely chasing after her toddler or cooing over cute puppy pictures. Find her at amandahelms.com and on Twitter and Instagram under @amandaghelms.

Ziv Wities: Short fiction snuck into Ziv’s life in his teens. It struck a tent, has been entrenched ever since, and sometimes throws parties. (When prompted, he’ll also speechify about source control at the drop of a hat.)

Ziv writes expert overanalyses at zivwities.com, explains the marvels of story structure on YouTube, tweets, vaguely, as @QuiteVague.

A college dropout with a backup plan of becoming a taxidermist, j ambrose is an enthusiast of the weird and queer who now lives among the (super)natural horrors of Appalachia.

Please do not make direct eye contact, but you can find a full collection of his various sacrileges on his website caninebrainz.neocities.org or the dreaded thing itself on most socials (Twitter/Bluesky/Tumblr) @caninebrainz

Rida Altaf is a spec-fic writer from Pakistan who happens to love stories which are crazy, unexpected, and profound. She’s currently excited about moving over to the other side of the world as a Fulbright scholar to read more books and earn an MA in Comparative Literature. She is also a Salam Award Workshop graduate and has work published in two anthologies.

H.B. Asari is a Niger Deltan writer. She is the winner of the 2024 Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Stories Prize 2023 and the Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. Her work has appeared in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine among others.

Harklin (Hark) Ashe is an author, web content wizard, and doting pitbull mom. Her work has appeared in In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror from Tenebrous Press. She lives in Los Angeles, where she spends most of her non-writing time reading, missing thunderstorms, eating, or thinking about eating. 

Dan Binchy (he/him) is an Irish librarian, writer and improv comic from Dublin, Ireland. He lives with his brother and an anxiety disorder. When he’s not writing stories about fantasy characters going to therapy, he goofs around on-stage, plays tabletop RPGs, and reads about folklore and mythology. He has a lifelong obsession with Terry Pratchett and Final Fantasy. You can find him in the club, or more likely at his website: https://danbinchywriter.com/ (and not danbinchy.com, which is a site belonging to a cheese-platter artist).

As a former school librarian with a dusty music history degree, Rose Ciesla takes great pleasure in finding esoteric resources for her very tolerant friends. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son, a sadly neglected garden, and a very loud cat.

Ryan Cole is a speculative fiction writer living with his husband and snuggly pug-child in the greater Richmond, VA area. His work has so far appeared in Writers of the Future, Volume 37 and Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, and he is currently hard at work on his first novel. Follow his progress at www.ryancolewrites.com.

Caroline Cormack is an SF writer from London, UK, who hates talking about herself. I also hate having my photo taken so I’ve chosen instead to be represented by a picture of one of my bookcases, which, let’s face, it is what everyone who’s likely to be reading this really wants to see.

Monique Cuillerier (she/her) writes about lesbians in space from Ottawa, Canada, where she lives with her cat Janeway and a few too many houseplants. Her fiction has appeared at Diabolical Plots and in various Bikes in Space and Queer Sci Fi anthologies. When not reading or writing, she is running or gardening. She (still) spends too much time on Twitter (@MoniqueAC) and not enough on her website (notwhereilive.ca).

Meg Elison is a Hugo, Philip K. Dick and Locus award winning author, as well as a Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise awards finalist. A prolific short story writer and essayist, Elison has been published in Scientific American, McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn.
Her website is megelison.com.

A.R. Frederiksen is a Danish author who chose to write in English at the age of fourteen and never looked back. She writes speculative fiction and works as a creative writing instructor. Her short fiction can be found in Haven Speculative Magazine, Factor Four Magazine, Shortwave Magazine and in various anthologies. When not writing and teaching, she tends to her numerous cacti in the thanklessly sunless Denmark while her stony-eyed chihuahua watches from the sidelines. She can be found online as @ARFrederiksen and at www.arfrederiksen.com.

Maria Joannou is a speculative fiction and non-fiction writer living in the UK. When not writing, or trying to catch up on reading, she can be found fussing over her vegetable patch, meandering through forests, taking wildlife photos, or drawing silly monsters. She secretly wished to be marooned on a tropical island when she was four, and still quite likes the idea.

Ernestine-Vera Kabushemeye G. is a Burundian writer, reviewer, and artist who has had the good fortune of travelling all her life. This exposure to various cultures has been a well of inspiration for her; she is currently working on her first novel: an afro-futurist fantasy based in Burundian culture. She is (soon to be) published in the afro-futurist anthology (Re)Living Mythology. She has a blog where she shares writing woes, reading recommendations, and reviews. Her Twitter account is @ernestine_k.

Eleanor Konik teaches (& researches) ancient civilizations, then writes stories & articles inspired by all eras of history. Her nonfiction articles have been published by Tor.com, Worldbuilding Magazine, and the SFWA blog. She shares her short fiction (flash and micro) directly to fans subscribed to her newsletter, alongside nonfiction essays illuminating the obscure history and science behind each piece. In her free time, she helps sort submissions for Diabolical Plots, maintains a very practical garden, and enjoys programmatically-generated storytelling engines (aka video games). You can follow her on Twitter for updates @EleanorKonik.

Chido Muchemwa (she/her) is a Zimbabwean writer living in Toronto. Her speculative fiction has appeared in Augur Magazine and PodCastle. She was a 2022 Miles Morland scholar. Read more from Chido at www.chidomuchemwa.com. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @chidomuchemwa.

Leah Ning lives in northern Virginia with her husband and their adorable fluffy overlords. She spends her non-writing time drawing, playing video games, and playing piano. Her short fiction appears or is forthcoming in PodCastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and Human Monsters, among others. She’s also the assistant editor for the Storyteller Series Podcast. You can find her @LeahNing on Twitter and on her website, leahning.com.

Ada Onobu’s evolving understanding of what it means to be a writer is shaped by her voracious reading of celebrated authors. As a neurodivergent Nigerian, her unique perspective infuses her creative work and influences the projects she undertakes. Despite majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in French, Ada faced a hiatus from school but has recently returned to her studies. Her published works in Isele Magazine and Paragraph Planet attest to her ambition. Alongside her somewhat dreary job as a production assistant, Ada passionately explores her interests on social media. You can find her as @lafemmeidoma on Twitter and Instagram, where she immerses herself in posts about nail art, Victoria Monét, and adult animated shows.

Sarah Pauling spent several years sending other people to distant places for a living as a study abroad advisor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She’s now in Seattle, graciously sharing her home with two cats and a husband. A graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop, her stories have appeared in places like Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and Escape Pod. If approached without sudden movement, she can be found at @_paulings on Twitter, where she natters on about writing, tabletop gaming, comics, and books.

M. R. Robinson (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, where she studies time and desire in Renaissance literature. When not writing or teaching, she and her wife are very (very) slowly restoring their crumbly old house, which they share with too many pets and too many books. Her fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. You can find her at @mruthrobinson on Twitter.

Gideon P. Smith is a full-time scientist and nerd, and part-time speculative fiction writer. Their writing has appeared in Wyldblood Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, Troopers quarterly and a number of anthologies, including ones from Black Hare Press, Shacklebound, and Fairfield Scribes. Their non-fiction has been published by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, The British Science Fiction Association’s Focus Magazine, Dan Koboldt’s Science in SciFi and Fact in Fantasy series.  You can find them on X/Twitter at @gideonpsmith and on their webpage at  www.gideonpsmith.com.

Jaxon Tempest is an aspiring author of serialised fiction. When she’s not staring at a blank page waiting for words to manifest themselves, she’s drowning out the world with an audiobook or comic, or spending too many hours playing video games.
On social media, find Jaxon on Twitter and on Instagram.

Guan Un (he/him) lives in Sydney, Australia, with his family and a dog named after a tiger. He has been published at khōréō, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and The Dread Machine, and featured on the Tor.com Monthly Recommended List. He is a dumpling connoisseur and a book omnivore, and writes a newsletter about sentences at buttondown.email/topicsentence. Occasionally at @thisisguan and guanun.com.

As a fine art professional, Mar Vincent has wielded katanas and handled Lady Gaga’s shoes. As a veterinary assistant, she has cared for hairless cats, hedgehogs, and, one time, a coyote. As a writer, her short fiction can be found or is forthcoming in Analog, Escape Pod, Apex’s Robotic Ambitions anthology, and many other publications. She is a reader for Diabolical Plots and Interstellar Flight Press, and a graduate of the Wayward Wormhole. She resides in the Pacific Northwest or can be found on various social media @MaroftheBooks.

Lis Hulin Wheeler (she/her or they/them) lives outside Boston with her spouse and children where she spends her days chasing mail carriers and citing obscure postal regulations. Her life’s ambition is to eat the food of every country.

She writes as Valentine Wheeler and as one third of LK Fleet and serves as Managing Editor for Wizards in Space Literary Magazine. Find her on twitter @ghostalservice and at valentinewheeler.com.

T. Takeda Wise is a Japanese American spec-fic writer from the Mountain West currently living on the Eastern Seaboard. When not writing, T. can be found gaming, reading, or hiking public lands in search of dark skies, high strangeness, and yūgen.

Risa Wolf is a multi-gendered water elemental disguised as an
ink-stained lycanthrope. They live in various places in the northeast US
with their spouse, two bouncy dogs, a cat who moonlights as a Timelord,
and a group of sentient garden patches. They imagine houses for
book-ghosts for a living. Visit them at killerpuppytails.com.

Phoebe Wood is a British writer living near London. She writes long and short fiction in a range of genres, and has a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She has short stories published or forthcoming in such magazines as The Arcanist, White Wall Review, and Abyss and Apex. She also enjoys sharing her writing journey on her YouTube channel, PhoebeWoodWrites. 

Kel Coleman is a mom, editor, and Ignyte-nominated author. Their fiction has appeared
or is forthcoming in FIYAH, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Apparition Lit, The Best
American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022, and others. Though Kel is a Marylander at heart,
they currently live in Pennsylvania with their husband, tiny human, and a stuffed dragon named
Pen. They can be found at kelcoleman.com and on Twitter at @kcolemanwrites.