About the Authors
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of novels, children’s books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry, literary criticism, and essays. She was widely recognized as one of the greatest science fiction writers in the history of the genre. She won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards on several occasions, as well as the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, and many other honors and prizes. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse , as well as many other books. He has also written the Earth 2: Society comic book series for DC Comics. In 2008, he hosted The Works, a television series airing on the History Channel that uncovered the science behind everyday stuff. He earned a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and masters degrees in artificial intelligence and robotics. He has published over a dozen scientific papers and holds four patents.
Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the highly acclaimed The Drowned Cities and the New York Times bestseller Ship Breaker, which was also a Michael L. Printz Award winner and a National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories and is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.
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 and Locus Awards. 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.
Greg van Eekhout is a science fiction and fantasy writer. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended UCLA, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English. He earned a master’s in educational media and computers at Arizona State and worked for a time designing multimedia. He is the author several stand-alone novels and several novels in the California Bones series. His middle-grade science fiction novel, The Boy at the End of the World, was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award.
Ellen Oh is the cofounder of We Need Diverse Books and author of the award-winning Spirit Hunters series for middle grade readers and the Prophecy trilogy for young adults. She was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Notable People of 2014. She is a former adjunct college instructor and lawyer.
Cindy Pon is the author of Silver Phoenix, which was named one of the Top Ten Fantasy and Science Fiction Books for Youth by the American Library Association’s Booklist, the first title in another Chinese-inspired fantasy duology, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and received starred reviews from School Library Journal and VOYA. She is the cofounder of Diversity in YA with Malinda Lo and on the advisory board of We Need Diverse Books. Cindy is also a Chinese brush painting student of over a decade.
Malinda Lo is the critically acclaimed author of several young adult novels, including Last Night at the Telegraph Club, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award. A Line in the Dark was a Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2017 and one of Vulture's 10 Best YA Books of 2017. Her novel Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and was Kirkus Reviews Best Book for Children and Teens. She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her nonfiction has been published by the New York Times Book Review, NPR, the Huffington Post, The Toast, the Horn Book, and the anthologies Here We Are, How I Resist, and Scratch.
K. Tempest Bradford is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose debut novel Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion won the Andre Norton Neburla Award. She is a writing instructor, media critic, reviewer, and podcaster. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies and magazines. She is the host of ORIGINality, a podcast about the roots of creative genius. Her media criticism and reviews can be found on NPR, io9, and in books about time lords. When not writing, she teaches classes on writing inclusive fiction through LitReactor and WritingtheOther.com.