Ruthanna Emrys lives in a mysterious manor house in the outskirts of Washington DC with her wife and their large, strange family.

Ian McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He has won the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

John Kessel holds a B.A. in Physics and English and a Ph.D. in American Literature. He helped found and served as the first director of the MFA program in creative writing at North Carolina State University, where he has taught since 1982. He is also an award-winning author.

Sarah Kendzior is a writer, journalist, and researcher who has studied authoritarian states in Central Asia. She is a former columnist for Al Jazeera English and is credited with being one of the first to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.