Sydnie Beaupré is more than just a girl: they're an openly LQBTQ2IA author that lives in their own imagination: a post-apocalyptic, zombie-inhabited world, where magical creatures and supernatural occurrences are simply the mundane.

*     *     *
Joel Bisaillon of Umbra Ludus (shadow play) focuses on illustrating dark, dramatic, bold, and colourful imagery with a flair for the fantastical. With years of tabletop gaming and delving into Hitchcock, Baum, and Lovecraft at an early age, he led his creative focus towards the dark fantasy, cosmic and American gothic horror genres.

His art has graced the pages of Aurealis Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine, BYU’s Leading Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, New Myths E-Zine, Electric Spec Magazine, Expanded Horizons Speculative Fiction Magazine, Hyphenpunk, Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, and The British Fantasy Society's Horizons Magazine. As well as several renowned roleplaying, tabletop gaming, and publishing companies, including New Comet Games, Vermin Games, Blasphemy Press, Jester’s Hand Publishing, Kelestia Games, Lostlorn Games, and Legendary Games.

*     *     *
Pixie Bruner (SFPA/Dread Writers Society)is a poet, editor, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta Georgia with her doppelgänger and deranged cats. Her debut The Body as Haunted (Authortunities Press) was Elgin-nominated . Her words are in Amazing Stories, Strange Horizons, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Space & Time Magazine, Angry Gable Press, and many more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs were her fault. 2025 SFPA Rhysling Chair survivor and 2025 Kay Snow Prize Winner. https://pixiebruner.substack.com/

*     *     *
Lisa Cai is from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in Diabolical Plots, The Dark Magazine, Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others. When not reading or writing, she is probably wrangling with IT at a university, watching anime, taking a long walk, or solving crimes in Among Us. Her socials are listed at https://linktr.ee/lisacai.

*     *     *
A 2015 Nebula finalist, Beth Cato is the author of the cozy mystery Cheddar Luck Next Time as well as fantasy-like A Thousand Recipes for Revenge. She’s a Hanford, California native now moored in Red Wing, Minnesota. She usually has one or two cats in close orbit. Find out more at BethCato.com; follow her on BlueSky at @BethCato and Instagram at @catocatsandcheese.

*     *     *
Stefani Cooke is a writer and middle school teacher from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, whose narratives focus on identity, self-discovery, and anxiety. Her writing has appeared in Ryga Journal, Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal, and the Drabbledark III anthology by Shacklebound Press. You can read her work and find her socials at https://linktr.ee/stefthescribbler

*     *     *
Viviana De Cecco is a writer, translator, and visual artist. She works as a content writer for Tint Journal. She was the second-place winner of Sunlight Press Magazine’s 2024 Photography Contest. Her visual art and photography appeared in Zoetic Press, Newrosis, Spellbinder Magazine, Pink Hydra, among others. Her fiction and translations have also appeared in various liteerary and speculative magazines, including The Seize Press, Grim&Gilded, Dark Holme Publishing, Poets' Choice, Azonal Translation, among others. Her work can be found at: https://vivianadececco.altervista.org/

*     *     *
Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems. His fiction can be found in Utopia Science Fiction, Crepuscular, and several Shacklebound anthologies. His debut drabble collection, "Darkness Rises, Hope Remains," was published by Shacklebound Books. Support him at patreon.com/kaidelmas and find him at www.kaidelmas.com or on Bluesky @kaidelmas.bsky.social

*     *     *
Kit Harding is a writer who belongs to the cities and wilds of New England. Her work has previously appeared in Cossmass Infinities and Soul Jar: Thirty-One Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors (which was on Booklist's top ten SF/Fantasy & Horror list for 2024!). You can find her online https://writerkit.dreamwidth.org.

*     *     *
Alexandra Haverská is a Czech speculative fiction writer of German origin living in Prague, a city that breathes the fantastic. Her English fiction recently appeared in Cosmorama, Space Squid and HyphenPunk magazines, and in the Daily Flights of Fantasy (Iron Faerie Publishing) anthology. Her Czech fiction is published in various Czech SF&F and horror venues.

*     *     *
Noah Isherwood is an aspiring scavenger and sometime researcher of art-science collaboration who lives in Athens, GA. His fictions have appeared in HAD, Uncharted, Cold Signal, Bewildering Stories, and Ramifications. You can find him several places at once at linktr.ee/noahisherwood


*     *     *
Joshua Kepfer lives in California, where he enjoys exploring the wilderness of the mountains and ocean with his wife and daughters. Much of his inspiration to write prose, music, and poetry comes from nature and his faith in Jesus. He has work published in The Bookends Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Azure Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMUmXzK1O3c&list=PLieAkiPEbJLBegn9wiiH4xqNh4xQyShad
• https://medium.com/@kepferj
• https://substack.com/@jkepfer

*     *     *
Ian Li (he/him) is a Chinese-Canadian economist, developer, writer, and poet, who started writing in late 2023 after a lifetime of believing he could never be creative. Find his work in Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Year's Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, among other venues. Learn more at https://ian-li.com.

*     *     *
Alison McBain’s novels are the recipients of 13+ awards, including the Foreword INDIES. In her current project “Author Versus AI” she’s writing a book a week for a year, using NO AI at all (52 books total). When not writing, Ms. McBain is associate editor for the magazine ScribesMICRO and draws all over the walls of her house with the enthusiastic help of her kids.

*     *     *
Rebekah Postupak lives on a fault line between two volcanoes which, disappointingly, relates in no way to her day job of answering the phone. Her stories can be found in places such as Solstitia, Not One of Us, and tdotspec's Strange Wars. Rebekah is a producer and writer for the Nebula Awards and serves on the team at Willamette Writers. She is indebted to these creative communities and so many others for demonstrating the power of words to change lives.

*     *     *
Kathryn Ptacek is a long-published writer in a number of genres, although mostly in horror. She has written a number of novels, short stories, articles, poems, and various whatnots; long ago, she edited three anthologies, including Women of Darkness and Women of Darkness II (and also Women of the West. You may note a theme here ...).

*     *     *
Brian Malachy Quinn uses watercolors, pen and ink, digital media, block prints, and etchings. As an artist he has won 23 international juried awards in last 26 months and sold 45 illustrations to date. He has always created art since early childhood. His style can be surreal for speculative fiction or literary fiction, or realistic for his fallback of lion paintings. He is compelled to create art and does so every day and finds it as a way to put aside his worries and stresses and produce "good brain chemicals". His online portfolio is at brianquinnstudio.com, and he is open to all projects.

*     *     *
Rachel Rodman’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and many other publications. She is also the author of two collections: Art is Fleeting and Exotic Meats + Inedible Objects. You can find her online at www.rachelrodman.com.

*     *     *
Vekhan Sametyaza is a transmutative artist, author, and musician with a deep interest in promoting dark awakening through authentic self-expression. An enduring love for sci-fi and fantasy themes has inspired his work for publications like Cosmic Horror Monthly, Burning Light Press, Florida Roots Press, and Inkd Publishing. You can find more of his work at elakhtarvekhan.wordpress.com.

*     *     *
Carl Scharwath has appeared globally with 180+ journals selecting his writing or art. Carl has published four poetry books and his latest book is The World Went Dark, published by Alien Buddha Press. Carl has four photography books, published with Praxis and CreatiVingenuitiy. His photography was exhibited in the Mount Dora and Leesburg Centers for the Arts. Carl is currently an art editor at Glitterati and former editor for Minute Magazine. He was nominated for four The Best of the Net Awards (2022-25) and two different 2023 Pushcart Nominations for poetry and a short story.

*     *     *
Mahaila Smith (they/them) is the author of the novelette in verse, Seed Beetle (Stelliform Press, 2025). They are a researcher, poet and editor based on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Canada. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca. (photo by Curtis Perry)

*     *     *
Christina Sng is the three-time Bram Stoker Award® and Elgin Award-winning author of A Collection of Nightmares, A Collection of Dreamscapes, The Gravity of Existence, and with Geneve Flynn, Lee Murray, and Angela Yuriko Smith, Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in numerous venues worldwide, including Interstellar Flight Magazine, New Myths, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post. Visit her at christinasng.com and connect @christinasng.

*     *     *
Karina Steffens lives in Dublin and co-owns a boutique web design agency. Born in Ukraine, she emigrated twice and settled down in Ireland at the turn of the millennium. A lifelong bookwyrm, she devoured science fiction, fantasy, and Slavic folklore and amassed a small hoard of books, which is yet to achieve L-Space or open a portal to another world. To help it along, she turned her hand to writing. Her work has also appeared in Empyreome, Gathering Storm, and the anthology Runs Like Clockwork from Wyldblood Press. You can find her on Blusky @karinasteffens.bsky.social.

*     *     *
Irina Tall (Novikova) is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art, and also has a bachelor's degree in design.

The first personal exhibition "My soul is like a wild hawk" (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich. In her works, she raises themes of ecology, in 2005 she devoted a series of works to the Chernobyl disaster, draws on anti-war topics. The first big series she drew was The Red Book, dedicated to rare and endangered species of animals and birds. Writes fairy tales and poems, illustrates short stories. She draws various fantastic creatures: unicorns, animals with human faces, she especially likes the image of a man - a bird - Siren. In 2020, she took part in Poznań Art Week. Her work has been published in magazines: Gupsophila, Harpy Hybrid Review, Little Literary Living Room and others. In 2022, her short story was included in the collection The 50 Best Short Stories, and her poem was published in the collection of poetry The wonders of winter.

*     *     *
Garth Upshaw lives in Portland, Oregon, with his super-genius wife, three precocious grown children, and six enthusiastic chickens. His work has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Bristol Noir, and other fine venues. He has an MA in Theoretical Mathematics and loves carving spoons, bicycling, and curling up with a good book.

*     *     *
Sherry Yuan spent the first five years of her life in Suzhou, China and the next 18 in Vancouver, Canada. She currently lives in San Francisco with her partner and small brown dog, where she writes code by day and fiction by night. She loves writing, reading, art, rock climbing, and trying Trader Joe’s cheeses. She has stories published in Infinite Worlds Magazine and Luna Station Quarterly. You can find her at sherryyuan.me.