Sharon Shinn is the author of Archangel and four additional books in the Samaria world (Jovah’s Angel, The Alleluia Files, Angelica, and Angel-Seeker), as well as five other science fiction/fantasy novels (The Shape-Changer’s Wife, Wrapt in Crystal, Heart of Gold, Summers at Castle Auburn, and Jenna Starborn). Her first young adult novel, The Safe-Keeper’s Secret, was published this summer. She won the William C. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer for her first book, The Shape-Changer’s Wife, and Summers at Castle Auburn was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. In addition to writing fiction, she has been an editor on a number of trade magazines that cover the wide-ranging fields of photography, picture framing, and business management education. A graduate of Northwestern University, Sharon has spent most of her life in Chicago and St. Louis, where she now lives. She spends her free time going to movies, rooting for St. Louis sports teams, watching any Joss Whedon TV show she can find, and traveling to whatever city her young nephews currently reside in.

Website: www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~thomass/shinn

Stanley Schmidt was born in Cincinnati and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1966. He began selling stories while a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, where he completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1969. He continued freelancing while an assistant professor at Heidelberg College in Ohio, teaching physics, astronomy, science fiction, and other oddities. (He was introduced to his wife, Joyce, by a serpent while teaching field biology in a place vaguely resembling that well-known garden.) He has contributed numerous stories and articles to original anthologies and magazines including Analog, Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rigel, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, American Journal of Physics, Camping Journal, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. He has edited or coedited about a dozen anthologies.

Since 1978, as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, he has been nominated 24 times for the Hugo award for Best Professional Editor. He is a member of the Board of Advisers for the National Space Society, and has been an invited speaker at national meetings of that organization, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Association of Physics Teachers, as well as numerous museums and universities. In his writing and editing he draws on a varied background including extensive experience as a musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist. Most of these influences have left traces in his five novels and short fiction. His nonfiction includes the book Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer's Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms and hundreds of Analog editorials, some of them collected in Which Way to the Future?. He was Guest of Honor at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, and has been a Nebula and Hugo award nominee for his fiction.

Website: sfwa.org/members/stanleyschmidt/index.html

Charles Dana Vess was born in 1951 in Lynchburg, Virginia and has been drawing since he could hold a crayon. He drew his first full-length comic when he was 10 and called it "Atomic Man." Minimalist in nature, it required no drawing of hands, feet or heads ("they just glowed"). Since then, he has painstakingly drawn thousands of hands, feet, and heads in great detail. Charles graduated with a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and worked in commercial animation for Candy Apple Productions in Richmond, Va., before moving to New York City in 1976. It was there that he became a freelance illustrator, working for many publications including Heavy Metal, Klutz Press, and National Lampoon. His award-winning work has graced the pages of numerous comic book, publishers such as Marvel, DC, Darkhorse and Epic. He has been featured in several gallery and museum exhibitions across the nation, including the first major exhibition of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art (New Britain Museum of American Art, 1980) and "Dreamweavers" (William King Regional Arts Center, 1994-95).

In 1991, Charles shared the prestigious World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story with Neil Gaiman for their collaboration on Sandman #19 (DC Comics) -- the first and only time a comic book has held this honor. In the summer of 1997, Charles won the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Penciler/Inker for his work on The Book of Ballads and Sagas (which he self-publishes through his own Green Man Press) as well as Sandman #75. Soon after Charles finished the last of 175 paintings for Stardust, a novel written by Neil Gaiman, for which he was given the 1999 World Fantasy Award as Best Artist.

In 2002 Charles won a second Will Eisner award, this time as Best Painter for his work on Rose, a 130-page epic fantasy saga written by Cartoon Books’ Jeff Smith. The year continued to be busy for Charles with the publication of Seven Wild Sisters (Subterranean Press) and The Green Man, Tales from the Mythic Forest (Viking), both utilizing cover art and interior b/w illustrations by the artist, and both making the 2003 American Library Association’s list for Best Books for Young Adults! By the end of the year he had completed 28 paintings for his first children’s picture book, A Circle of Cats, done in collaboration with writer Charles de Lint (Viking). This cover art won the Gold Award for Best Book Art in the 10th annual "Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art" even before it was officially published. A new edition of Peter Pan (Tor/Starscape) featuringa cover aswell as over 30 b/w interior illustrations by Vess was released this past Fall.

Another collaboration with de Lint, Medicine Road (Subterranean Press) and the YA anthology, The Faery Reel (Viking) will be arriving this coming Spring and he is currently hard at work producing drawings for several new books, including, A Storm of Swords (MeishaMerlin), the 25th anniversary edition of Moonheart (Subterranean Press) and a graphic novel collection of his ballads material for Tor.

Website: www.greenmanpress.com.

Chaz Boston Baden is the proprietor of Hazel's Picture Gallery, an online repository of 18,000-plus photos, most of them fans; the index lists about 3500 names. He is also the custodian of the Fan Photo Gallery, one of the continuing Worldcon exhibits. He is known for his attempts to collect "complete sets" of photos, that is, trying to shoot pictures of every single person attending an event (such as a party, a wedding, or a convention).

Apart from digital photography, Chaz is also interested in daily newsletters (his idols are Langford, Glyer, and Filthy Pierre) and web pages. Bruce Pelz once called him "L.A.'s Electronic Octopus," and that was ten years ago. In addition to science fiction and convention-related web pages, he created a web page to generate Celtic knotwork, just for fun. He originated another adult use for Lime Jell-O (using tequila, but no bathtub) circa 1992. His website of Jell-O recipes has been cited in print a number of times, most recently in the February 2004 Playboy Advisor column.

Chaz once organized an ice cream social with a "Hell Freezes Over" theme, which by all reports was quite convincing. (It was co-sponsored by Good Intentions Paving Company and Handbasket Tours & Travel.) He invented "blue boards" to keep the hotel happy by giving fans an alternative place to post signs for parties etc., and also originated the Registration Apron. One of his current projects is the launch of a new fannish animé convention in Los Angeles.

He has been spotted baking fresh home-made cinnamon soft pretzels at some recent conventions in the midwest. Chaz and his teddy bear ears were seen at a number of cons in recent years on behalf of the L.A. in 2006 "Space Cadets" Worldcon bid, but Armadillocon will be his first Texas convention. He looks forward to it, and hopes to host a party of some sort during the convention.

Website: www.boston-baden.com

K.D. Wentworth lives in Tulsa with a hundred pound Akita named Bear and her husband, Uncle Guido. Until 2003, she taught fourth grade by day and wrote at night, but the State of Oklahoma let her retire after a mere twenty-seven years in the grade school trenches so she wouldn't ax-murder anyone. This was a good decision on their part.

She got her writing start in 1988, when she won in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and has since sold over 60 short stories to such markets as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hitchcock's, Realms of Fantasy, Return to the Twilight Zone, The Chick Is in the Mail, Ring of Fire, and Dying for It. Twice in recent years, she's been a Nebula Nominee for Short Fiction.

Her first three novels, The Imperium Game, Moonspeaker, and House of Moons are currently being reprinted by iBooks in mass market editions, while Black/on/Black and Stars/Over/Stars are still available in mass market from Baen. Her most recent books are both in hardcover, This Fair Land, an alternate history Cherokee fantasy from Hawk, and The Course of Empire, science fiction written with Eric Flint and published by Baen. Her next book, Moonchild, will be published in hardcover by Hawk in 2004.

She currently serves as Coordinating Judge for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest and teaches in their L.A. workshop with Tim Powers each year. She also works on the con committee for Tulsa's literary sf convention, Conestoga.

Most of all, she most fervently hopes never to grade another math paper as long as she lives.

Website: www.kdwentworth.com

A native of the south, Charlaine Harris has been a published writer for over two decades. Her current series include the crossover mystery/horror/fantasy books about Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress, and the Aurora Teagarden books, which have been described as “cozies with teeth.” Harris also wrote the Lily Bard books (her walk on the noir side) about a weightlifter with a terrible past.

Harris, who is married and has three children, spends her “leisure” time reading, lifting weights, and wishing someone would weed her flowerbeds. In addition to her human family, she has an animal family consisting of three dogs, a ferret, and a duck.

Website: www.charlaineharris.com

Since her first published fantasy in 1982 – THE TIME OF THE DARK – Barbara Hambly has touched pretty much all the bases in genre fiction, including historical murder mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, comic books, and scripts for Saturday morning cartoon shows. In the upcoming year she'll catch a couple that she's missed: a "contemporary occult romance novella" for Harlequin, and a straight historical novel about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, THE EMANCIPATOR'S WIFE.

Born in 1951, she grew up on science fiction and fantasy in Southern California, and attended the University of California where she received a Master's degree in Medieval History, and a black belt in karate. She attended the University of Bordeaux and traveled in Europe in 1971-72, and held the usual assortment of day-jobs before being published: teacher, secretary, liquor-store clerk. She married science-fiction writer George Alec Effinger in 1998 and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years.

Hambly's interests include historical research, bellydance, hiking, costuming, and carpentry. Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.

Website: www.barbarahambly.com