< Back Akua Lezli Hope Literary Poet Akua Lezli Hope, a Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry (SFPA), is a creator & wisdom seeker who creates poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, adornments & peace. In print since 1974 with more than 500 poems published in numerous literary magazines & anthologies, she's a third generation New Yorker, whose honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, SFPA & Rhysling awards, NYSCA grants, Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominations, 2024 IGNYTE award, among others. She has twice won Rattle’s Poets Respond. Her first collection, EMBOUCHURE, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, won the Writer’s Digest book award. A Cave Canem fellow, she created the Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series, now in its 6th year. Her speculative poetry chapbook, Otherwheres, won the 2021 Elgin Award. Her micro-chapbook, Stratospherics, is in the Quarantine Public Library. She edited the first BIPOC speculative poetry anthology, NOMBONO (2021) & the historic, largest Eye to the Telescope issue #42 on The Sea. Other Socials

< Back D.H. Aire Literary Author D.H. Aire has published more than 20 books, most recent are Knight's Blood and Bigfoot Hunting. His love of history & archaeology found expression in writing his epic fantasy/sci fi Highmage's Plight, Hands of the Highmage, and his sense of adventure and humor in Apocaplyse Knot, and Knights Tower Series. He is a member of SFWA & an Indy author. Other Socials http://dhaire.net

< Back Christopher Mark Rose Literary Author Christopher Mark Rose is an engineer for NASA spacecraft by day, a writer of speculative fictions by night. His work has appeared in Asimov's, Interzone, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and in Parker Solar Probe, DART, and the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan. He is an alumni of the Viable Paradise Writers Workshop and founder of the Charm City Spec reading series in Baltimore. He keeps an occasional blog at curiousful.wordpress.com. He hopes his writing is affecting, humane, and concerned with large questions. Other Socials

< Back Salinee Goldenberg Literary Author Salinee Goldenberg is a speculative fiction writer and multimedia artist who lives in Washington DC, and is drawn to outsider perspectives. Her debut fantasy novel, The Last Phi Hunter, will be published by Angry Robot in April 2024. A biracial, bisexual, diaspora writer, Sal often explores themes of identity, obsession and alienation in her work. A gaming industry veteran, Sal has created narrative trailers for titles such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Dishonored, and Minecraft. When not writing, she likes to paint, listen to records, and play in punk bands. Other Socials

< Back Carolyn Ives Gilman Literary Author Carolyn Ives Gilman is a Hugo, and Nebula, and Sturgeon Award-nominated author of science fiction and fantasy. Her books include Dark Orbit, a space exploration adventure; Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles, a two-book fantasy about culture clash and revolution; and Halfway Human, a novel about gender and oppression. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and others. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and appeared in numerous Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies. Gilman lives in Washington, D.C., and works as a freelance writer and museum consultant. She is also author of seven nonfiction books about North American frontier and Native history. Other Socials

< Back D. A. Xiaolin Spires Literary Author D. A. Xiaolin Spires steps into portals and reappears in sites such as Hawai’i, NY, various parts of Asia and elsewhere, with her keyboard appendage attached. Besides Eye to the Telescope, her work appears in publications such as Clarkesworld, Analog, Nature, Terraform, Fireside, Star*Line, Liquid Imagination, and anthologies such as Make Shift, Ride the Star Wind, Sharp and Sugar Tooth, Deep Signal, and Battling in All Her Finery. Select stories can be read in German, Spanish, Vietnamese, Estonian, French and Japanese translation--and have been selected for The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories Year's, The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time, Year's Best Hardcore Horror, and The Year's Best Issue for Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Her poetry has been nominated for the Dwarf Star, Rhysling, Best of the Net and Pushcart Awards. She can be found on Bluesky at @spires.bsky.social, Twitter @spireswriter, Mastodon: wandering.shop/@spireswriter and her website: daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com. Other Socials http://daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com

< Back Nicole Glover Literary Author Nicole Glover is the author of the historical fantasy series, Murder and Magic, which begins with The Conductors. When she's not writing, she's working as a UX researcher where her knowledge about murder and other mysteries is surprisingly useful. Other Socials

< Back Misha Gaming Gamer Born in the 70s, raised in the 80s, and trying hard to recover from both of those traumas, I crawled into my first RPG before I became a teenager and never looked back; around the same time, I took a trip to Quag Keep and never entirely returned. Like most long-time Eternal GMs, I'm an unpublished game developer and have any number of my own worlds in various stages of building at any given moment. Other Socials

< Back Rigel Ailur 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 Melissa Scott Literary Author Melissa Scott was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College. She earned her PhD from Brandeis University in the comparative history program. Since then, she has published more than thirty original novels and a handful of short stories, most with queer themes and characters, as well as authorized tie-in work for Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Wars: Rebels, and Overwatch. She has won four Lambda Literary Awards, four Spectrum Awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and been shortlisted for the Otherwise (Tiptree) Award. She is also the new owner/publisher of the well-respected SF/F press Candlemark & Gleam. Her most recent novel, Point of Hearts, was published in March 2025. Other Socials

< Back Merrily Wolf Costuming Cosplay Merrily Wolf is a creative crafter who was raised in family with an appreciation of arts and a desire to try them all. She has tried to pass on her love of crafts with her own kids, Girl Scouts, and children con programming. She is a member of the Maryland Costumers and Cosplayers guild and International Costumers Guild. Other Socials

< Back Dr. Neil Ottenstein Science Physicist Neil Ottenstein obtained a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics in 1990 and since then has been working in flight dynamics for one of two NASA Goddard Space Flight Center contractors. He is currently the contractor flight dynamics lead for the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. He has been reading science fiction and fantasy most of his life, and going to science fiction conventions since 1980 (and a couple of comic book conventions before that). Babylon 5 is his favorite television program. Other Socials