With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 230 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.
David Farland is an award-winning, international bestselling author with over 50 novels in print. He has won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Special Award for "Best Novel in the English Language" for his science fiction novel On My Way to Paradise , the Whitney Award for "Best Novel of the Year" for his historical novel In the Company of Angels , and many more awards for his work. He is best known for his New York Times bestselling fantasy series The Runelords .
Dr. Nnedi Okorafor is a speculative fiction novelist of Nigerian descent. Her novels include Who Fears Death (winner of the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel), Akata Witch (an Amazon.com Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (winner of the Parallax Award). Her children's book Long Juju Man won the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa. Her short story "Windseekers" was a Writers of the Future Contest finalist in 2001 and was published in Vol. 18.
Katherine Irene Kurtz is the author of numerous fantasy novels, especially the Deryni novels. Although born in America, for the past several years she has lived in a renovated castle in the south of Ireland with her husband.
Jody Lynn Nye is known for her numerous works of science fiction and fantasy including An Unexpected Apprentice and its sequel, A Forthcoming Wizard, Applied Mythology, Advanced Mythology, and others. She has collaborated with New York Times best-selling author Anne McCaffrey on The Death of Sleep, The Ship Who Won, Doona and other novels, and with another New York Times best-selling author, Robert Asprin, in his Myth series. She lives in Illinois with her husband and two cats of superior bearing.
Sean Williams is a No 1 New York Times bestselling writer for adults and the author of Twinmaker and Crashland, as well as coauthor of the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix. As a resident of South Australia--which he reports is a lovely place a long way away from the rest of the world--Sean has often dreamed of stepping into a booth and being somewhere else, instantly. This has led to a fascination with the social, psychological, and moral implications of such technology.
Echo Chernik has more than twenty years of experience as a professional commercial artist in the advertising field, and five years as an instructor of graphics and digital illustration at Pratt Institute, Westchester Community College, Marymount Manhattan and Skidmore CCI. She specializes in art nouveau-influenced poster design, advertisements, package design and book covers.
Mike Perkins is an illustrator for Marvel Comics who has worked on Captain America, Thor and The X-Men. After wrapping up a thirty-one-issue adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand he transitioned into illustrating Astonishing X-Men and has now re-launched Deathlok. He has been nominated numerous times for Eisner and Harvey Awards, and has won the Eagle Award. He counts being on the New York Times Bestseller list and being exhibited in Munich, London and Paris amongst his career achievements.