Leigh Kimmel is a writer, artist and bookseller living in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, a city best known for automotive racing. She has degrees in history and in library and information science, and has worked in both libraries and archives. You can find information about her latest projects at her website, www.leighkimmel.com.

Stephen Gaskell. Paraphrasing Alan Partridge, Stephen Gaskell “basically wants to understand Man’s inhumanity to Man… and then make a science fiction story about it”. He is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop, a Writers of the Future XXIII winner, and recently became SFWA Active Member eligible. He has published fiction in Interzone, Nature: Futures, Futurismic, and Clarkesworld, amongst other places. He is currently working on his first novel, a near-future SF tale set in Lagos, Nigeria. More of his work and thoughts can be found at stephengaskell.com. 

Nigel Brown has had stories published in various magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, Aboriginal Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF 9 (Hartwell & Cramer). As well as science fiction, he has had fantasy, ghost and historical fiction published in the UK, USA and Japan. He has been a regular book reviewer for Interzone, and has been a co-editor on the William Hope Hodgson Night Land tribute website at www.thenightland.co.uk/nightmap.html. He first published in the 1970s with A Chronology of the Planet of the Apes, and writes the occasional article on comic ooks on the SuperStuff website at www.superstuff73.blogspot.com

David L Clements is an astrophysicist working at Imperial College London on the Herschel and Planck atellites and in the broad fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. He also writes science fiction, and has been published in Analog, Nature Futures and in a number of anthologies including Footprints (Hadley Rille Press), One Weird Idea (Glorious Dawn Press), Cheer Up Universe (Whortleberry Press) and Conflicts (Newcon ress). His story in Conflicts, 'In the Long Run', received an honourable mention in the 2011 Year's Best Science Fiction anthology edited by Gardener Dozois.

Craig Pay lives in the North of England and runs a writing group in Manchester. Sometimes he writes fiction that people label as ‘literary’; other times he writes fiction that they label as ‘genre’. He loves it when they’re not sure. In 2011, Craig won the NAWG David Lodge trophy and his fiction has appeared with a number of magazines and websites including Murky Depths, Daily Science Fiction and Structo Magazine. He has just finished writing a historical/genre novel set in the 1800s. He is now learning Chinese. He can be reached at craigpay.com.

Berit Ellingsen is a Korean-Norwegian fiction writer and science journalist. Her stories have appeared in many places, including Metazen, Coffinmouth, Hyperpulp, the Gothic anthology Candle in the Attic Window, and the biopunk anthology Growing Dread. Berit’s debut novel, The Empty City, is a story about silence (emptycitynovel.com). She was a runner-up in Beate Sigriddaughter’s 2011 Ghost Story competition and a semi-finalist in the Rose Metal Press 2011 chapbook competition. Berit likes space science and dancing.

Eric Choi is an aerospace engineer, writer and editor in Toronto, Canada. He has worked the MOPITT instrument on the NASA Terra satellite, the RADARSAT-1 satellite, the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station and the meteorology payload on the Phoenix Mars Lander. In 2009, he was a finalist in the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment campaign. He is currently a business development manager at COM DEV Ltd. The first recipient of the Asimov Award, his fiction has appeared in The Astronaut From Wyoming and Other Stories, Footprints, Northwest Passages, Space Inc, Tales from the Wonder Zone, Northern Suns, Tesseracts6, Arrowdreams, Science Fiction Age and Asimov’s. With Derwin Mak, he co-edited the Aurora Award winning anthology The Dragon and the Stars.

Martin McGrath is a wastrel who masquerades as a journalist and writer. Originally from Nothern Ireland he now lives in St Albans, England with a wife and daughter who put up with his peculiar habits and treat him kindly. He’s had stories published in a variety of books and magazines in recent years and he’s working on a novel, but who isn’t? He edits Focus, the British Science Fiction Association magazine for writers, is the administrator of the James White Award (www.jameswhiteaward.com) and blogs infrequently at www.mmcgrath.co.uk and tweets nonsense as @martinmcgrath.

Stephen Palmer first came to the attention of the SF world in 1996 with his Orbit Books debut Memory Seed and its sequel Glass. Flowercrash, Muezzinland and Hallucinating followed from the Wildside Press, then in 2010 Urbis Morpheos from PS Publishing. Ebooks of his most recent three novels have been published by PS Publishing and Infinity Plus. He lives and works in Shropshire and maintains a blog at stephenpalmersf.wordpress.com

Carmelo Rafala spent far too much time studying fiction, which he discovered can kill one's appreciation for the form. So he stopped doing that and thought it might be fun to write instead. His stories have appeared in Jupiter, Atomjack, Estronomicon, Neon Literary Journal, as well as the anthology The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories and poetry in Scifaikuest. He currently serves as Senior Editor for Immersion Press. Carmelo lives on the south coast of England with his wife and daughter.

Iain Cairns has spent most of his life daydreaming about being a science fiction writer. Recently, he decided to actually become one for real. His short story ‘Bringer of War’ (a Wellsian alternative-history space opera featuring Gustav Holst) was published in Concept Sci-Fi, and was selected by author Sean Williams as the winner of their first short story competition. Iain attended Kingston University’s sci-fi and fantasy writing course, taught by author Paul McAuley. He is a member of the Cola Factory speculative fiction writing group, WriteClub London and the BSFA. He works as a marketing and advertising copywriter, and lives in south London with his wife and two children.

Helen Jackson lives in Edinburgh, having moved there more than a decade ago after falling in love with the city during a weekend break. She is a member of the critically acclaimed spoken word collective Writers' Bloc. She is also a Scottish BAFTA-nominated animation director. Her stories can be found in the anthology ImagiNation: Stories of Scotland's Future and in Daily Science Fiction. Her writing blog is at www.helen-jackson.com.

Karen Burnham is an engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, specializing in electromagnetic interference and compatibility (EMI/EMC). She has degrees in both physics and electrical engineering. As an avocation she is a reviewer and scholar of science fiction, publishing reviews in Strange Horizons and SFSignal and articles in the New York Review of Science Fiction and Clarkesworld magazine. She is currently the editor of the blog for the Locus magazine website.

Gary Cuba lives with his wife and a teeming horde of freeloading domestic critters in South Carolina, USA. Now
retired, he spent most of his career working in the commercial nuclear power industry, and holds several US patents in that field. His short fiction has appeared in three dozen magazines and anthologies to date, including Jim Baen's Universe, Flash Fiction Online, Universe Annex (Grantville Gazette), Abyss & Apex and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. See www.thefoggiestnotion.com to learn more about him and to find links to some of his other stories.

Sam Kepfield was born in 1963, and raised in western Kansas. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1986, and received his law degree from the University of Nebraska in 1989. He later completed post-graduate work in history at the University of Nebraska and the University of Oklahoma. He practices law full-time in Hutchinson, Kansas, in order to support his writing habit. His work has appeared in Science Fiction Trails, Aiofe’s Kiss, Electric Spec, Jupiter SF, as well as a number of anthologies. In 2009, his story ‘Salvage Sputnik’ was a winner in the Robert A Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest.

Colum J Paget sold his soul to science fiction in the 70s, and has never stopped being bitterly disappointed with ‘progress’ since. He lives in Brummiegum, UK, with many aged but adorable computers that he’s rescued from abuse and neglect (but mostly from the trash). He’s been published in Daily Science Fiction, Hub Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Kasma SF, Bards and Sages, Jupiter SF, and the Anywhere but Earth anthology. He writes because no one else seems to be writing the shit he wants to read.

Bill Patterson, 51, has been interested in writing science fiction ever since college. The author of one commercially successful CAD software book, Bill was a magazine columnist in the same area. He has been published in JournalStone's 90 Minutes to Live. He and his wife of 28 years, Barbara, live with their two sons in Central New Jersey. Bill has been an avid space weather hobbyist since 2002.

Simon McCaffery writes SF, horror and hybrids of both genres. You can blame his father, the artist James McCaffery, who bought him George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides when he was ten, and Warren’s Eerie and Creepy magazines instead of the fourcolour, cheaply printed comic books of the day. Simon’s stories have appeared in Black Static, Tomorrow SF, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Space & Time and in a number of anthologies. He is currently completing a novel that mixes elements of horror and emerging medical technology. Drop him a line at simonmccafferyfiction.blogspot.com

Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog: deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com. Her science fiction has appeared in Nature's Futures, Cosmos and Daily Science Fiction.

Dr Philip Edward Kaldon teaches Physics at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo by day and writes of the great wars of the 29th century and elsewhen at night. His stories have been published on three continents on this planet, appearing in Analog, Writers of the Future XXIV, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Abyss & Apex and 100 Stories for Haiti, among others. His website can be found at www.dr-philphysics.com. 

Duncan Lunan is an author, researcher, tutor, critic, editor, lecturer and broadcaster on astronomy and spaceflight, plus a wide range of other subjects. He has published four books, over 700 articles and thirty short stories, was SF critic of the Glasgow Herald 1971-92 and as Manager of the Glasgow Parks Department Astronomy Project, he designed and built the first astronomically aligned stone circle in Britain for over 3000 years. He is a Director of the educational company Astronomers of the Future, and his next book, Children from the Sky, is scheduled for publication by Mutus Liber in late May 2012.

Sean Martin is a writer, poet and filmmaker. He is the author of The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order, The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages and Andrei Tarkovsky, amongst others. His films include Lanterna Magicka: Bill Douglas & the Secret History of Cinema. He is also the winner of the 2011 Wigtown Poetry Prize. He lives in Edinburgh.

Ian Sales’ writing has appeared in Jupiter, Postscripts, Alt Hist, and the anthologies Catastrophia (PS Publishing), Vivisepulture (Anarchy Books) and The Monster Book for Girls (theExaggeratedpress). He has also published a novella, Adrift on the Sea of Rains (Whippleshield Books). Rocket Science is his first anthology. Ian reviews books for Interzone, and is represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency. His website is at iansales.com.