Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but now lives in Pittsburgh. Crowned is the first part of her epic fantasy about the heroic King Xau, The Sign of the Dragon. Several poems from this epic, including “Interregnum,” winner of the 2014 Rhysling Award for the Long Poem, may be read at thesignofthedragon.com. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, two children, and two cats.

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist's Daughter, and, winner of the Moon City Press Book Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 6. Her website is webbish6.com.

Ann K. Schwader is the author of seven collections of speculative poetry. Two of these—Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam's Dot Publishing, 2010) and Dark Energies (P'rea Press, 2015)—were Bram Stoker Award Finalists. Schwader has also won both the Short Form (2010) and Long Form (2016) Rhysling Awards, and was the Poet Laureate for NecronomiCon Providence in 2015. A Wyoming native, she now lives and writes in suburban Colorado.

Shannon Connor Winward is a Delaware editor and author of literary and speculative writing. Her poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling award, and appears widely in such venues as Analog, The Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, Literary Mama, Star*Line, Thank You For Swallowing, Eternal Haunted Summer and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine. Her stories have been published (or are forthcoming) in Psuedopod: Artemis Rising, Persistent Visions, Cast of Wonders, Gargoyle, Spinetingler Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Plasma Frequency Magazine, PANK, and Heiresses of Russ 2015: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press) as well as in genre anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. A Semi-Finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest, Shannon was also runner-up for an emerging artist fellowship in literature by the Delaware Division of the Arts in 2014 and 2015. In between fiction, poetry, parenthood, and other madness, Shannon is also Madame Secretary for the Science Fiction Poetry Association, a poetry editor for Devilfish Review, and founding editor of the forthcoming Riddled with Arrows Literary Journal.

John Philip Johnson writes poetry and short stories which have appeared in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, Strange Horizons, Apex, Phantom Drift, Silver Blade, Dreams and Nightmares, Mythic Delirium, Ted Kooser’s newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry,” and elsewhere. He would to love to live on Mars. A sample of Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town, (along with an audio accompaniment by the divine diva, Diane Severson Mori) can be found at rattle.com/stairs-appear-in-a-hole-outside-of-town-by-john-philip-johnson-and-julian-peters/

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and author living in Austin, TX. She is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website and her next anthology, Hysteria: Writing the female body, is forthcoming from Sable Books. She is currently curating Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on ’90s pop culture for ELJ Publications. Kristin is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), She Witnesses (dancing girl press), and We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press). Kristin is Special Projects Manager for ELJ and is a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.