Eden Royce is a writer from Charleston, South Carolina now living in Southeast England. She’s a Shirley Jackson Award winner for her adult fiction, which has appeared in a variety of print and online publications. Her books for young readers have won the Bram Stoker and the Ignyte Awards; been a finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award; been a Walter Dean Myers Honoree as well as been named a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She has also written for Writer’s Digest, The Horn Book Magazine, Western Colorado University, and We Need Diverse Books. Find her online at edenroyce.com.
DaVaun Sanders is an author and editor residing in Phoenix, Arizona. He currently serves as publisher and executive editor for the award-winning FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His middle-grade fantasy “Keynan Masters & The Peerless Magic Crew” debuted in 2023, with the sequel out in 2025. His novel “Minecraft: The Tournament” was released in 2024. His short fiction has appeared in Fireside, Uncanny, Podcastle, the New York Times bestselling anthology “Black Boy Joy,” and elsewhere. He continues to expand his work in children’s SFF for kids everywhere who deserve to enjoy inclusive stories. When deadlines are scarce he enjoys exploring the world with his wife and twins, cheering himself hoarse for the 49ers, collecting new injuries in Muay Thai, and any DIY project that requires outrageous new power tools.\
Brent Lambert is an author, editor, podcaster and lifetime nerd based out of San Diego. His work is focused on the Black and queer experience through a speculative lens. As a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine, he helped show the world the breadth of talent amongst Black SFF authors and turned that dedication alongside an amazing team into a Hugo Award. Currently, he has a novella A NECESSARY CHAOS out from Neon Hemlock and is part of the queer pulp SFF anthology I WANT THAT TWINK OBLITERATED and Black horror anthology ALL THESE SUNKEN SOULS.
Shingai Njeri Kagunda is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts MFA from Brown. Shingai’s work has been featured in the Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2020, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2020. They have fiction, essays, and poetry in, or upcoming in Omenana, FANTASY magazine, FracturedLit, khōréō, Africa Risen, Baffling Magazine, LIGHTSPEED and Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction, Apex, the Cookout anthology among others. Shingai’s debut novella & This is How to Stay Alive published by Neon Hemlock Press in October 2021 won the Ignyte Award for best novella in 2022. She was the co-editor of Podcastle Magazine between 2022-2025, the co-Editor-in-Chief of Fantasy Magazine between 2024-2025, and the co-founder of Voodoonauts (an Afrofuturist summer workshop nominated for a community Ignyte Award). Shingai’s second book, and debut short story collection, Let the Star Explode is forthcoming in 2027 with Neon Hemlock. Shingai is a creative writing teacher, a land justice worker by day, an eternal student, and a lover of all things soft and Black.