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< Back Matt Henderson Gaming Game Master Lead Designer and co-owner of Loke Battle Mats, a company that creates products for tabletop roleplaying games that are best known for the 'Books of battle Mats' range of map books. I've got around four decades of experience playing and running TTRPG games and was able to turn my hobby into my career in the last ten years. Other Socials

< Back Ann Chathamann Art Artist Ann is a writer, crafter, and naturalist who makes things semi-compulsively because her head is full of ideas and it generally seems like a better idea than screaming. Her preferred media include secondary world fantasy, plants, textiles, clay, wood, watercolor, and gel pen, with periodic digressions. She is fond of history, functioning ecosystems, and reclaimed materials, and is happy to take inspiration from whatever odd connections her brain has been making lately. Other Socials

< Back Rigel Ailum Literary Author Rigel Ailur wrote her first novel—all of seven pages!—at the age of seven and hasn't stopped since. Now with twenty-four novels and ninety short stories published, including for Star Trek and Shadowrun, she writes mostly science fiction and fantasy. Her series include: otherworldly adventures and intrigue in Tales of Mimion; Gods and magic in Sorcery & Steel; an intergalactic worldship with the most diverse crew in history in A Little Piece of Home; enigmatic aliens threatening millions of lives in Curai'Nal; and interstellar exiles working together in Escapes. Her non-genre work includes The Vagabonds' Adventures, about two millionaires living in a luxury double-decker RV; the historical Last Abbot of Lin Duachaill; the romance Masquerade; and the hockey novel Breakaway. She's contributed essays to the Outside In series. Most importantly, she dotes on her astronomically adorable feline kids. For more information including a bibliography and cover gallery, visit her website. Other Socials http://BluetrixBooks.com

< Back Leslye Penelope Literary Author Leslye Penelope has been writing since she could hold a pen and loves getting lost in the worlds in her head. Her novel The Monsters We Defy won the 2023 Audie Award for Best Fantasy Audiobook. Her debut novel Song of Blood & Stone was chosen as one of TIME Magazine's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. Equally left and right-brained, she studied filmmaking and computer science at Howard University and sometimes dreams in HTML. She hosts the My Imaginary Friends podcast, co-hosts the Ink & Magic podcast, and lives in Maryland with her feline dependents. Visit her at: http://www.lpenelope.com. Other Socials

< List of Vendors French, John L. Dealer's Room John’s first story “Past Sins” was published in Hardboiled Magazine and was cited as one of the best Hardboiled stories of 1993. More crime fiction followed, appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, the Fading Shadows magazines and in collections by Barnes and Noble. Association with writers like James Chambers and the late, great C.J. Henderson led him to try horror fiction and to a still growing fascination with zombies and other undead things. His first horror story “The Right Solution” appeared in Marietta Publishing’s Lin Carter’s Anton Zarnak. Other horror stories followed in anthologies such as THE DEAD WALK and DARK FURIES, both published by Die Monster Die books. It was in Dark Furies that his character Bianca Jones made her literary debut in “21 Doors,” a story based on an old Baltimore legend and a creepy game his daughter used to play with her friends. John is an author of science fiction, pulp, horror, fantasy, and, of course, crime fiction.

< List of Vendors Dealers Wanted Dealer's Room Balticon’s Dealers Room is a curated selection of vendors catering to fandom. We offer space for everything from games and gaming paraphernalia to jewelry, booksellers, authors, and more. While Artist’s Alley focuses on artists and their creations, our Dealers Room is open to creators and resellers alike. We work hard to offer the members of Balticon a variety of selections so we’re careful to curate our vendor applications. This means we try not to have duplicate vendors. Please select the following button to be added to the email list: Balticon Dealers Room Registration We are only accepting vendors related to Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror literature and geek culture to ensure a good fit for our event (Companies not currently being accepted include but are not limited to: travel, home improvement, direct/home sales, etc.). Thank you for your understanding. Half Table (authors only) $100 6’ x 8’ space $190 10’ x 10’ space $330 To register for an Dealers Room table: Fill out the Dealers Room Application Form. After being accepted, you will receive an email with the Dealers Information Packet and a Square invoice. For more information, email dealers@balticon.org . Check out our list of confirmed vendors closer to the con! Read more to learn about becoming a Dealer!

< Back Yakira Heistand Costuming Cosplay Yakira wears a lot of hats, hand-knit of course. Yakira's cosplay career began at age nine when she used the good bedsheets to make herself a Princess Leah costume. When not sewing (or knitting, or spinning, or making soap,) Yakira writes queer romance and military sci-fi. Active in SMOF, Yakira has her hands in more cons than she ought. She also owns more wool, fabric, spinning wheels, and sewing machines than she ought, but that's not really a problem, per se. Other Socials

< Back The Lights Above Months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a series of unidentified aircraft sightings over Los Angeles lead a determined journalist to reluctantly pair up with a Japanese American photographer to prevent another attack. In 1942, a series of unidentified aircraft sightings over Los Angeles lead a determined journalist to reluctantly pair up with a Japanese American photographer in order to prevent another attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpybAr3C4lw Previous Next

< Back Mary Soon Lee Literary Author Mary Soon Lee is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association and a three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers’ Award and the Rhysling Award. An illustrated print edition of her epic-fantasy-told-in-poems, The Sign of the Dragon, was published in January 2025. She hides her online presence with a cryptically-named website (marysoonlee.com) and BlueSky account (@marysoonlee.bsky.social). Other Socials http://marysoonlee.com

< List of Vendors Greek Gods Giggling Dealer's Room Greek Gods Giggling, LLC is a Maryland based small business located just south of Baltimore right next to BWI airport. Proud to provide items that are 100% hand-burned. We do not use lasers, CNC machines, or direct transfer of any kind. All pieces are hand drawn onto the wood directly, then burned by hand with a wire-nib wood burning pen. Custom orders are accepted, and most of the items we make can be personalized with names, dates, initials, etc. Handmade woodburned home decor and novelty items. Graphic designer. http://GreekGodsGiggling.com

< Back Eric Hardenbrook Literary, Artist, Fan Author, Artist, Fan Eric is a fan, an author and an artist, usually in that order. Eric lives in central Pennsylvania with his amazing family. He writes to try to get the stories out of his head. When he's being a fan he helps run Watch The Skies and assists in the publication of their monthly fanzine. He can be found (at least some of the time) at The Pretend Blog. When not working on those things, Eric enjoys board games and is an old school role player, running Groves of Inan with many episodes available on YouTube. Other Socials

< Back Dr. Eric Haag Science Scientist Eric Haag, PhD, is Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of The Other Big Bang: The Story of Sex and Its Human Legacy (2024, Columbia Univ. Press). His lab conducts research on the evolution of animal reproduction and the genes that regulate it. A Nevada native, he attended Oberlin College and earned a Ph.D in molecular, cell, and developmental biology at Indiana University. In his postdoc at the University of Wisconsin he began a long-standing project on the evolution of self-fertile hermaphroditism in nematodes. This work has explored the genetics causes and reproductive consequences of adopting self-fertility. In 2015, Haag’s group began working with the only self-fertile vertebrate, the mangrove killifish. You can read more about the Haag Lab's NIH and NSF-supported research at his website. Other Socials http://www.haaglab.org