Patricia A. McKillip was born in Salem, Oregon in 1948. She received an MA in English Lit. from San Jose State University, and has been a professional writer since then. Her first few novels, including The House On Parchment Street, The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld, which won the first World Fantasy Award in 1975, and The Riddle-Master Trilogy, were published as young adult novels.

She has also written science fiction both for adults and young adults: Fool's Run, and the Moon-Flash novels. In recent years, she has concentrated mainly on fantasy for adults, with such works as The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Something Rich and Strange, which was illustrated by Brian Froud, and which won the 1994 Mythopoeic Award, and Winter Rose, a very loose retelling of the Tam Lin ballad, which was nominated for a 1996 Nebula Award. Her latest, yet to be published, is Song for the Basilisk, which was in part inspired by the author's urge to follow musicians around, and which tells the story of how a wicked prince met his fate during an opera aria. She is at work at another fantasy, this one inspired by a musical rendering of Tennyson's poem, "The Lady of Shalott." She has also written a number of short stories, both science fiction and fantasy. Having had, after twenty-five years in the San Francisco Bay Area, an urge for seasons, she moved to the Catskills, some years ago, where she has learned about such things as snow shovels, renovating old houses, and how not to grow a tomato.

John Crowley is one of the most highly praised writers of science fiction and fantasy. Of his first novel, The Deep, based in part on the history of the Wars of the Roses, The New York Times Book Review said, "Anyone interested in the risk-taking side of modern science fiction will want to experience it firsthand." His third novel, Engine Summer, was nominated for the American Book Award. His next novel, Little, Big, won him the World Fantasy Award and was praised by the Washington Post as "ambitious, dazzling, strangely moving, a marvelous magic-realist family chronicle." His novella, Great Work of Time, also won the World Fantasy Award. He is the author of the philosophical romances AEgypt and Love & Sleep. He won an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Crowley also works as a writer of documentary films and television.

James Morrow's most recent novel, Blameless in Abaddon, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recounts the efforts of a small-time Pennsylvania magistrate to prosecute God before the World Court in the Netherlands. A sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning Towing Jehovah, this unconventional courtroom drama constitutes the middle volume of Morrow's projected Godhead Trilogy. Book three, The Eternal Footman, will appear sometime before the turn of the Millennium.

Morrow's earlier works include This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), a Nebula finalist and the BBC's selection as best SF novel of the year, and Only Begotten Daughter (1990), a Nebula finalist and a winner of the World Fantasy Award. Harcourt Brace recently reissued both books in trade paperback editions.

Most of Morrow's short fiction is collected in Bible Stories for Adults, including the Nebula Award-winning fable, "The Deluge." His 1991 novella, City of Truth, also received a Nebula Award and is currently available from Harcourt as a trade paperback.

Morrow lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Kathryn, and his son, Christopher. He makes a full-time job of writing fiction while simultaneously collecting videotapes of vulgar Biblical spectacles and trying to understand his family's dogs: Pooka, an SPCA Border Collie, and Amtrak, a Doberman mix that he and Kathy rescued from a train station in Orlando.

Ellen Kushner is the host of national public radio's weekly series, "Sound & Spirit." Her first novel, Swordspoint, is credited with originating the "Mannerpunk" or "Fantasy of Manners" school of fantasy. Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the 1991 World Fantasy Award as well as the Mythopoeic Award. She has worked as an editor for Ace Books and Pocket Books. She has also worked as a book reviewer, copywriter, literary scout and artist's representative. Her short fiction appears regularly in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Most recently, she is the co-editor of The Horns of Elfland, an anthology of music & magic. She lives in Boston, where she works at WGBH-FM. For more information on "Sound & Spirit" and Ellen Kushner, see the site at <www.wgbh.org/pri/spirit>.

Delia Sherman won the Campbell Award for best new writer in the speculative fiction field; she has also won the Mythopoeic Society Award. Her first book, Through a Brazen Mirror, is a fantasy novel based on a British folk ballad. Her second novel, The Porcelain Dove, published as a mainstream title, is based on French fairy tales and set during the French Revolution. She has also published short fiction and poetry in various collections, and works as a consulting editor for Tor Books in New York.

Warren Lapine began writing at the age of ten and decided to become a professional writer at the age of fourteen after reading Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber. He is the editor of Absolute Magnitude magazine, has sold more than thirty short stories, and nearly completed his first novel. He has co-edited (with Stephen Pagel) an anthology of stories from Absolute Magnitude that Tor published in June 1997.