Widely known for his skill as a writing instructor, James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His books include Think Like A Dinosaur and other stories (1997), Wildlife (1994), Heroines (1990), Look Into The Sun (1989), Freedom Beach (1986) and Planet of Whispers (1984). His science fiction has been translated into fourteen languages. He has won two Hugos: in 1996, for his novelette "Think Like A Dinosaur" and in 2000, for his novelette, "10¹⁶ to 1." He writes a column on the Internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and his audio plays are a regular feature on Scifi.com's Seeing Ear Theater. He is one of fourteen councilors appointed by Governor Shaheen to the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and he also serves of the Board of Directors of the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Writer and critic Elizabeth Hand is the author of six novels, including the science-fiction novel Winterlong and the apocalyptic fantasies Waking the Moon (winner of the Mythopoeic Society and James M. Tiptree Jr. Awards) and Glimmering, as well as the collection Last Summer at Mars Hill, featuring the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning title story. With Paul Witcover, she created DC Comics' post-punk post-feminist series, Anima, and she has done the novelizations for 12 Monkeys, The Frenchman (pilot for the TV series Millennium), Fight the Future, the X-Files movie, Anna and the King and The Affair of the Necklace. Her short play, "The Have Nots," was a finalist in the 1996 London Fringe Theater Festival. She is a contributor to the Washington Post Book World and Village Voice Literary Supplement, and a columnist in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 2001 she received an Individual Artist's Fellowship in Literature from the Maine Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts. She lives on the coast of Maine with her two children, where she is completing another novel.

R. A. Salvatore began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic. His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988. Since that time, he has published numerous novels, including the New York Times best-selling The Halfling's Gem, Sojourn, and The Legacy, TSR's first hardcover. Salvatore is best known for his stirring battle scenes and vivid characters, particularly the dark elf Drizzt, one of the fantasy genre's most beloved figures. Over four million R. A. Salvatore books have been sold in the U.S. alone, with many translated into different languages and produced in audio versions. His gaming group of 18 years still meets on Sundays to play everything from Nintendo 64 Goldeneye to the AD&D game. Together they recently wrote The Accursed Tower, a Forgotten Realms game module set in Icewind Dale, from TSR. His hobbies include softball, hockey, and music, particularly a blast of Mozart while tooling down the highway. He lives in Massachusetts, with his wife, their three children, a dog, and a calico cat.

Thomas Monteleone has been a professional writer since 1972. He's published more than 100 short stories in magazines and anthologies. His stories have been nominated for many awards and appeared in numerous best-of-the-year compilations. He's the editor of six anthologies, including the highly acclaimed Borderlands series edited with his wife, Elizabeth. He has written for the stage and television, including the award-winning American Playhouse, and George Romero's Tales from the Darkside. His novel The Blood of the Lamb received the 1993 Bram Stoker Award, and The New York Times Notable Book of the Year Award. He's currently at work on his latest novel, Midnight Rambler, plus a collection of essays entitled The Mothers And Fathers Italian Association. He likes to call himself a writer, never an "author." He likes baseball, the Baltimore Ravens, computers, and teaching his kids how to be independent thinkers. He lives in Grantham, New Hampshire with his wife and daughter. Despite being dragged kicking and screaming into his fifties, he still thinks he is dashingly handsomeÑhumor him.

Matt Bialer has been in the book business since 1985. He started out as an assistant at Curtis Brown, Ltd. and then was with the William Morris Agency for fourteen years. He is now the Senior Vice-President and a founding member of the Trident Media Group. He represents a wide variety of writers from such diverse genres as suspense, mystery, science fiction, literary fiction, and pop culture/narrative nonfiction. His clients include New York Times best-selling authors Kyle Mills, Tad Williams, Brian Herbert, Tracy Hickman and Kevin J. Anderson.