PAOLO TADINI BACIGALUPI was born August 6, 1972 in Colorado Springs CO, moving with his parents to rural western Colorado soon after. When his parents divorced, he split his time between them, finishing high school at the private Colorado Rocky Mountain School. He attended Oberlin College in OH, where he met his wife-to-be Anjula (they married in 1998) and majored in East Asian Studies, spending time in China for …Read More
SUZAN PALUMBO was born in the 1980s in Trinidad & Tobago, and moved to Canada with her family as a young child. She grew up in Rexdale, Toronto, a Caribbean and South Asian immigrant neighborhood.
Palumbo began publishing work of genre interest with ‘Bloody Therapy’ in 2017, and has published more than a dozen pieces since in various magazines and anthologies, including WSFA Small Press Award and Nebula Award …Read More
RHONDA S.A. GARCIA was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where she has lived her entire life. Though she earned her A levels and qualified to enter university, her mother’s illness and other difficulties made it impossible for her to attend. She worked various jobs, most recently as an administrator in the engineering industry, until becoming a full-time writer following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021.
Garcia began publishing SF …Read More
ANANDA FERNANDES LIMAwas born in Brasília, Brazil, and grew up there. She attended high school in Australia for a year through an exchange program and returned there for her undergraduate degree. While in college, she did a year abroad in Los Angeles and later moved back to attend grad school at UCLA, where she earned her MA in linguistics. She met her husband there, and they later lived in …Read More
LEV GROSSMAN was born June 26, 1969 and grew up in Lexington MA. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 and worked toward a PhD in comparative literature at Yale for three years, leaving before finishing his dissertation. He moved to New York, where he became a journalist and novelist. From 2002 to 2016, Grossman was a book critic and senior writer for TIME magazine, where he covered the internet, …Read More
JUSTIN CARLYLE KEYwas born June 18, 1987, in Washington DC, where he grew up. He studied biology at Stanford University, attended medical school, and is now a practicing psychiatrist.
He began publishing genre fiction with The Roller Coaster in 2012, and his stories have appeared in F&SF, Lightspeed, Tor.com, Out There Screaming, and other magazines and anthologies. Notable stories include novelette One Hand in the Coffin (2020) an Ignyte …Read More
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTEwas born May 5, 1979 in Seattle WA, and grew up moving between her parents in Seattle and Sacramento CA. She attended high school in Davis CA, graduating at age 15 and attending UC San Diego, where she took a degree in Classical Studies. She attended grad school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but quit to move overseas. She lived near Yokohama, Japan for just …Read More
MONIQUILL BLACKGOOSE is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe and a lineal descendant of Ousamequin Massasoit. She writes extensively about depictions of Indigenous and Indigenous-coded characters in SF, and is an active member of steampunk and cosplay communities. She studied cognitive psychology, and worked for several years in a children’s home before becoming a phlebotomist.
Debut novel Cygenic was published in 2020 under the name Monique Poirier. …Read More
SARAH LANGAN was born in 1974 and grew up in Long Island NY. She attended Colby College in Waterville ME, earned an MFA from Columbia University in 2000, and an MS Environmental Health Science from NYU in 2012. She lived in Brooklyn NY before relocating to Los Angeles CA, where she resides with her husband J.T. Petty and their children.
Langan began publishing work of genre interest in 2000, …Read More
CHỊKỌDỊLỊ EMELỤMADỤwas born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK, and raised in Awka, Nigeria. She attended boarding schools there, and went to college at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria, graduating with a BA in English language and literature. She returned to the UK in 2004 and attended the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where she earned a Master’s in Cross Cultural Communications and International Relations. She went on to earn a …Read More
CORY EFRAM DOCTOROW was born July 17, 1971 in Toronto, Canada. He attended alternative schools and worked at SF specialty store Bakka Books, but dropped out of high school at 17 and briefly moved to Mexico to write. He dropped out of four universities in two years and worked as a CD-ROM programmer, website designer, volunteer in Central America, CIO for a film company and an ad agency, founder …Read More
TRAVIS WAYNE BALDREE was born March 28, 1977 in Nacogdoches TX and grew up on a dairy farm. In fourth grade, his family moved to Washington State, and he attended Washington State University briefly before dropping out to work in tech, primarily as a software engineer and video game developer. He cofounded game companies including Runic Games and Double Damage, and is best known for creating the Torchlight and …Read More
MICHAEL R. CAREY was born in Liverpool, England in 1959. He attended St. Peter’s College, Oxford, where he studied English, and worked as a teacher for 15 years before becoming a professional writer.
His career began as a comics writer in the 1990s, first for smaller companies and later for Marvel and DC. He is best known for the Lucifer series (1999-2006) and his run on Hellblazer (2002-2006). The …Read More
VICTOR MANIBOwas born in Manila, Philippines where he lived until moving to Jersey City NJ at age 23 to attend law school. He graduated from Cardozo School of Law with a concentration in constitutional law and civil rights, and he works in private practice as an immigration lawyer.
Manibo’s debut SF noir novel, The Sleepless, was published in 2022, and his second book, Escape Velocity, will be published on …Read More
MALKA ANN OLDER was born October 30, 1977. She attended Harvard for undergrad, where she studied literature, and has a master’s degree in international relations and economics from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. She got her doctorate in political science at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, where she did work on governmental disaster responses. Older is an expert in humanitarian aid and international …Read More
KENNETH MACRAE MACLEOD was born August 2, 1954 in the Western Isles of Scotland. He attended Glasgow University, earning a degree in zoology in 1976, then studied biomechanics at Brunel University outside London. He took a decade-long break from reading SF, and became a computer programmer for ten years. In 1988 he completed a Master’s degree in Biomechanics.
After finishing his thesis, he tried his hand at fiction, producing …Read More
NALO HOPKINSON was born December 20, 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up there and in Trinidad and Guyana, though she also spent some time in the US as a child. Her father was noted Guyanese poet Muhammad Abdur-Rahman Slade Hopkinson. She moved with her family to Toronto, Canada in 1977, where she lived until relocating to Riverside CA in 2011. She earned a Master’s degree in Writing Popular …Read More
MOSES OSE UTOMI was born July 26, 1988 in San Bernardino CA and grew up in Las Vegas NV. He studied psychology as an undergrad, then attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he earned a MFA in creative writing. Utomi is also a lifelong martial artist.
He began publishing work of SF interest with The Story of a Young Woman (2018, as Ose Utomi). His short work also includes the …Read More
SHELLEY PARKER-CHAN was born in New Zealand and is of Malaysian-Chinese heritage. They studied engineering and anthropology, and did graduate work on war crimes and restorative justice. Parker-Chan was an international development advisor on issues of human rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights in Southeast Asia, and worked extensively in several countries in Asia. They now live in Melbourne, Australia.
Debut She Who Became the Sun appeared in 2021, …Read More
MARTHA SUSAN WELLS was born September 1, 1964 in Fort Worth TX. She attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a BA in anthropology. She lives in College Station TX with her husband.
Her debut fantasy novel The Element of Fire (1993) began the Ile-Rien series, which includes The Death of the Necromancer (1998) and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and …Read More
AI JIANG was born June 18, 1997 in Fujian, China, and emigrated to Canada with her family at age four. She attended the University of Toronto, the Humber School for Writers, and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2022.
She began publishing work of genre interest with Hello” (2021) in The Dark, and more than 35 stories have …Read More
Andrea G. Stewart was born August 3, 1982 in Vancouver, Canada, and grew up in various places in the US.
Stewart began publishing work of genre interest with Dreameater (2013), a quarterly winner in the Writers of the Future competition. She has published more than a dozen other stories in anthologies and magazines.
Her first novel, urban fantasy Loose Changeling, appeared in 2014 under the name A.G. Stewart, and …Read More
Robert James Sawyer was born April 29, 1960 in Ottawa, Canada. His family moved to Toronto when he was a baby, and he has lived there ever since. He earned a bachelor’s in radio and television arts (broadcasting) from Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto in 1982. After graduating, he briefly worked at SF specialty store Bakka-Phoenix Books before spending most of the ’80s as a freelance non-fiction writer, doing journalism …Read More
Locus recently hosted a virtual roundable discussion with leading SF/F writers Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik, who sat down for a wide-ranging and lively conversation about the art, craft, and business of short fiction, and the impact of the form on their creative work and lives. Excerpt from the roundtable follows.
TED CHIANG is the author of collections Stories of Your Life and Others and …Read More
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO was born July 3, 1986 in Allentown PA. She studied at American University in Washington DC, graduating with a degree in photography in 2008. She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, graduating with her MFA in 2012, the same year she attended the Clarion Workshop. Machado has received fellowships and residencies from the Speculative Literature Foundation, Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and other programs. She …Read More
JUSTINA IRELAND was born in French Camp CA, and grew up in San Bernadino and outside Sacramento. After graduating high school, she joined the Army, got married, and later settled in Pennsylvania with her husband before eventually moving to Maryland.
Her first novel, Vengeance Bound, a YA fantasy about a girl with a psychic link to the Furies, appeared in 2013, followed by YA fantasy Promise of Shadows …Read More
JOHN MICHAEL SCALZI II was born May 10, 1969, and grew up in Southern California, going to school in Claremont. He graduated from the Webb School in 1987 and attended the University of Chicago, where he became editor-in-chief of the Chicago Maroon and graduated with a philosophy degree in 1991. He moved back to California, where he became the film critic and later a columnist for the Fresno Bee. …Read More
JOHN CORCORAN WISWELL was born September 4, 1981, and grew up around the Mount Kisco area of New York State. He attended Bennington College, graduating in 2005, and went to the Viable Paradise writing workshop in 2013. Wiswell has multiple disabilities, including a neuromuscular syndrome, and often explores disability issues in his fiction.
His first SF story, Alligators by Twitter , appeared in 2010, and he has since published …Read More
OLUWOLE TALABI was born February, 28, 1986 in a steel town on the outskirts of Warri, a city in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, and grew up there and in Benin City before his family settled in Lagos. He currently lives in Malaysia, where he works as an engineer, but expects to relocate to Australia in the future.
Talabi’s first SF story was The Human Thing (2011), and …Read More
ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE & ELLIOTT MCLEMORE are married co-authors of Venom & Vow (2023).
Anna-Marie is a queer, Latine, nonbinary author who grew up in Southern California. Their debut YA The Weight of Feathers appeared in 2015, and other books include Otherwise Award winner When the Moon Was Ours (2016), Wild Beauty (2017), Blanca & Roja (2018), Dark and Deepest Red (2020), Miss Meteor (2020, with Tehlor Kay Mejia), The …Read More
KAREN LORD was born May 22, 1968 in Barbados. She attended secondary school at Queen’s College, and later attended the University of Toronto. She earned a master’s degree in science and technology policy at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, and got her doctorate in the sociology of religion at Bangor University in Wales. She has traveled widely, taught physics in school, trained soldiers, and worked in the foreign service. She …Read More
KEMI ASHING-GIWA WAS BORN August 22, 2000 in Southern California. She attended Harvard University, where she studied integrative biology and astrophysics, and is now a PhD student at Stanford University.
She began publishing short fiction with Paper Suns in Anathema in 2021, and in 2022 published two stories at Tor.com, Fruiting Bodies and The Sufficient Loss Protocol, followed by The Puppetmaster in 2023. SF horror novella This World Is …Read More
